Audiosaurus

n. 1. A creature in pursuit of the highest reproduced musical fidelity available. 2. Any beast enchanted by recorded sound.

Hello and Welcome to my first blog!

By way of introduction...obviously, my name is Gary O. but you can call me Gary if you are so inclined! I am a 45 year old man, who, as this blog will show is very single and an unabashed collector of vinyl. It all started when I was 5 years old with my first Winnie-The-Pooh story book and record sets. There was something magical about hearing POOH talking to me from that sweet black disc. That was 1969 (yeeouch). 1970 proved to be the point of no return and one of the sweetest years of my life. Picture it, Brooklyn, NY, winter, a 5 year old boy gets a call from his favorite person on the planet, my Aunt Barbara, telling him to put on American Bandstand because, "there is this brother and sister group on and SHE is playing the drums!"! It was the Carpenters! (by the way, I know there is no THE in the name of the band but whaddyagonnado!) "(They Long To Be) Close To You" was one of my first "grown-up" 45s. I have been buying vinyl ever since.

Fast-forward (making that muffled sound with my hand over my mouth) years to this past Christmas. I was inpsired by events of the holiday to start this blog. I watched "Julie and Julia" twice with my family and loved it. I also received one of the greatest presents! My brother and sister-in-law, Steven and Nydia respectively, gave me a USB Turntable. I can now digitize my treasure. Now, I know I may not have the most amazing collection of vinyl out there but it is mine and I love it.

Here is what this blog will be.....I am going to count and digitize my 45 collection, which I should clarify right here and now is comprised of the singles that both my brother and I have purchased over the years. See Steven, I gave you credit. Anyway, once I have a final count, I am going to set a goal for myself both in time that I am allowing myself to complete this mission and number of songs I will digitize each day. I will share what each song is, whatever memories I have of those songs and if I can, I may even post soundclips of the songs.

Be prepared gentle reader, that this collection ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous. I am not putting them in any order. I will just take it as it comes and share it. The objective is to set a goal for myself and, hopefully come out victorious (very hard to type with fingers crossed) and the goal is to have the whole collection on my computer.

I have already done ALL of my Carpenters singles (89 sides including imports, jukebox singles and radio station promos in mono and stereo) as well as some of my other favorite artists. I thought it would be too monotonous to begin blogging about those. What will follow here is a hodgepodge of most every type of music from the late 60s through to the 2000s.

I hope my friends will take this journey with me and that I pick up a new friend or two out there in the world that shares my passion. Wish me luck and I will see you again in a day or two. Time to start counting.

G.