Every Monday night, from 7-9 PM, I will be presenting DJ
Sue’s Vinyl Siding.
Back in the late 60’s and 70’s, we had vinyl LP records. This was before iPods, CD’s, and randomized
favorites. There simply was no way to
put together a playlist. If you wanted
to hear a Led Zeppelin tune you needed to get the record out and remove it from
both the outer and inner sleeves. Then
you placed it on the turntable and cleaned it.
After that, you picked up the tonearm and placed it delicately onto the portion
of the record that held song. After the
song played through, if you wanted to hear a Stones song next, you had to get
up, walk to the turntable, put Led Zeppelin away and then repeat the process
with another record. It was all time
consuming.
There was one obvious solution and that was to play the
album side all of the way through. This
way you could go maybe 18 minutes before attending to the music. There was just one problem, there was usually
a song or two that really weren’t worth listening to or were just not ones you
liked. Some of us would just suffer
through those songs, while others would get up, lift the tonearm and move it
forward beyond the unwanted cut.
Every so often, we would discover an album side on which
every song was a winner. Those would be
joys to play and we would often put those special sides of our vinyl LP records
on when we were working on something or we had a party going on. While we might play both sides, we seldom
did. After 18 minutes we were usually ready for a new band or artist.
DJ Sue’s Vinyl siding does not involve home improvement
contracting, but revisits that era where the quest for the perfect album side
reigned. I’ll be presenting those album
sides that were popular because you could drop the needle at the beginning and
play the whole side through.
Every Monday night I will feature 4 complete vinyl album
sides by 4 different artists. (On the
first Monday of each month, I only do a 90 minute set do to the AWT Concert
Series. Those Mondays I will only do 3
sides.) Hope to see you there.