Your lips move, but I can't hear what you say

[halloweenjack]

Some interesting developments regarding music and my enjoyment of same:

As someone who hasn't had hearing in his right ear since he was three, I've been looking for an adequate substitute for stereo earphones for most of my adult life. In the early eighties, I had a set of headphones that had a stereo-mono switch on the side, but they would have been too big for use with a Walkman. I took a pair of Walkman headphones and shorted the wires together, but the sound was usually crappy.

Around about 1991 I found out that Radio Shack had a stereo-to-mono adapter; however, the Radio Shack dude would not sell it to me, because he said that it would eventually ruin whatever I plugged it into. I came back the next day and bought it from another salesperson, but it always bugged me a little, and so eventually I turned to a then-new source of information: the internet. I quizzed an electronics newsgroup, and their responses broke down into three groups: 1) yes, it might damage the device; 2) they didn't think that that was so much of a problem with up-to-date cassette players; and 3) if I wanted to make my own stereo-to-mono converter, here was what I needed to do--one respondent even typed out a circuit diagram in ASCII. I went ahead and used the adapter, but noticed that over time, I'd have to fiddle with it to get sound coming through. I think that it was indeed damaging the Walkman somehow, and although I could accept replacing a Walkman after a few years, that changed once I got an iPod, which was considerably more expensive, of course.

So... I checked Google every now and then for a mono headset. Usually, I'd get hits for a VoIP-type headset, but recently I ran across this discussion on Macintouch (an Apple discussion board) on the topic. I'd already tried converting tracks to mono on iTunes (labor-intensive, and the sound quality wasn't great), and didn't want to go with the custom earpiece from the hearing aid people, as it sounded super-expensive and inconvenient to find a dealer... but then I ran across the 1-BUD. I ordered two, and just tried one out. This is what I've been looking for for about the last quarter-century. Now my one eared brethren, such as Stephen Colbert and Brian Wilson, and I can hold our heads high! Hurrah for Monaural Nation!

The song that I played first was "Silent Lucidity" by Queensrÿche, a recent favorite of mine. Reading about it on Wikipedia, I found out that it had long been compared to "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd, which I can agree with now that they mention it, and that led me to realize that I didn't have a copy of either The Wall or Dark Side Of The Moon. There are a lot of albums that I listened to bunches when they came out, but that I didn't replace when my vinyl collection was destroyed because I couldn't afford to at the time. So... I went to B&N, went to their record section, found the Floyd... and holeeee crapp, DSOTM was $19 and The Wall was, wait for it, $35. Now these might have been remastered editions--the price stickers were over other stickers on the shrinkwrap (smooth move, B&N)--but after being out for decades apiece, you'd think that the price would have gone down a bit, even for a super-duper-special edition that was gently farted upon by maidens fair in Stonehenge at the rise of the midsummer sun, or something. (Amazon is charging about $12 for DSOTM and $21 for The Wall, which seems about right.)

Part of it, I'm sure, is that I feel like I still own both of them, even though the original medium is long gone. Some of that is probably from having listened to them, both the individual songs and the entire albums, in sequence, on the radio, growing up. There was a great radio station called WMET in Chicago when I was a teenager, and sometimes they'd do things like play all of Led Zeppelin's songs in alphabetical order, and I'm sure that there were people in their listening area who popped in blank cassettes and furiously labeled each song by hand when they did that, and it wasn't a huge deal. There are a few albums that I've paid to migrate from format to format--I know that I've owned Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols and Destroyer by KISS in LP, cassette, and CD formats--but for the most part I feel like K in Men in Black when he held up the mini-CD and said, "This just means that I'm going to have to buy the White Album again."

So... I probably will end up buying the two albums on CD, but I'm willing to wait to get them via free shipping; after all, I've had neither of them for two decades and some change.

Comments

[alessar.livejournal.com]

... I'd just buy the MP3s. DSOTM is only $8, and The Wall is $9 -- for BOTH disks. ^_^

[jackolantern.livejournal.com]

mmmmaybe. I still prefer to have the physical medium when possible, but a 57% markdown is pretty tempting (not to mention instant gratification).

[alessar.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I relate to wanting the media. But you know, I have some casettes and some scratched-up CDs I want to replace and for me, all-digital is looking miiiiighty tasty to my wallet.

[a-nightengale.livejournal.com]

You could always burn them to CD once you get them into iTunes. :)

[sew-crafty-girl.livejournal.com]

I only recently bought DSOTM and The Wall. Got them both at HMV on sale. The Wall was one of those "Buy 2 for $25 deals".

I'm like you and want to have the physical albumn. Unless it's a couple songs that I want to try by an unfamiliar artist, then I buy singles off iTunes.