Wednesday, October 17, 2007

I think of you, and let it go...

A long time ago I bought this thing called an iMic. I played around with it a little but never did anything serious with it. Today, in a task that was way more strenuous than it should have been (still kind of woozy from that flu shot), I dug out some patch cords and messed around with an old Zenith stereo and my computer and got everything to work.

Now I can begin digitizing my vinyl collection. This is a very time-intensive job, but what the hey, I need something to do when I get burned out on blogging. Also, I have a lot of records that I haven't listened to in a long, long time.

So I record the records using Gold Wave, which I also use to normalize and filter the pops & clicks, then break the big one-side-of-an-album .wav file into the individual songs, save them to mp3, and set the tags with MP3 Tag Tools. No, it doesn't have sparkling digital clarity. But who needs cold, brittle digital when you can have that warm, fuzzy analog?

Today I just grabbed one off the shelf that was easy to reach to start with. Considered a one-hit wonder in the United States, Nena is nevertheless an international (and especially German) star who continues to record music and, if I recall correctly, writes children's books. And besides, 99 Red Balloons is not my favorite song from this record. My favorite is one called ?, which makes it quite difficult to Google lyrics for. I could understand everything she sang except one line that I wasn't sure of, but I finally found it. The English translation of the German lyrics is not the same as the English lyrics of her English version, if you can follow that.

My mind makes up ideas
That I forget too fast
How do I know when it begins
No one can tell me
What could be the best
Hey that's one thing I'd never miss
I look around and try it out
I don't know which way to go

Today I'm coming
Today I'm leaving too
And tomorrow it's gonna be all over
Maybe I'll stick around
Come bother yesterday
Today I need a love that never ends

You drive your car too fast
You're just traveling around
I haven't seen much of this world
No one can tell me
Who the greatest is
Hey, that's one thing I'd never miss
'cause I really know so well
What will be the best for me

Today I'm coming
Today I'm leaving too
And tomorrow it's gonna be all over
Maybe I'll stick around
Come bother yesterday
Today I need a love that never ends

And it ends with a one-and-a-half-minute saxophone solo of such wistful joy that it always chokes me up a little. One of my aborted projects from days gone by was to put together a mix tape of pop songs I liked featuring the saxophone. This song would have been on it.

When I get around to putting together my mix CD of The Official Soundtrack of the Blogonomicon, this will definitely be on it.

Lyrics thanks to Nena Fanwebsite.

3 comments:

  1. The wowwy wowwy supah scuwwy, caw the twoops out in a huwwy

    This is what we've waited foh this is it boys this is wah

    The Pwesident is on the wine, 99 wed bawoons go by

    Actually liked that song a lot.

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  2. I have a copy of that album on digital. What I need to record is some of my vinyl that was never re-released in other media.

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  3. I'm pretty sure I have some vinyl that was never re-released on digital. But I have a lot of vinyl that I just don't want to spend the money to buy the CDs.

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