I've always loved music. When I was a preteen, I could be found holed up in my bedroom, listening to the nightly listener-requested Top 10 with my cassette player next to my radio's tiny speaker, ready to record the songs I loved (See kids, back then, I had a radio and a cassette player; they were two separate entities. Ipod? I wish). Some days, I even skipped school to record songs off the radio.
Yeah, some kids skipped school to drink, smoke, chase girls, and raise hell. I skipped school to listen to the radio. Loser.
I was also anal as hell about it. If the DJ would speak over the beginning or ending of the song, I would erase it and try again the next evening. And since most disc jockeys are in love with their own voice, I had to do this quite often. I returned the favor later on in life when I was a college DJ. I never spoke over a song in case someone was recording my show (oh, the vanity!).
In high school, I learned of bootlegs. This love affair lasted for ten years. I would travel one hundred miles to visit a tiny little record store with enough guts to sell vinyl boots. I would regularly attend record conventions with the hope of finding LPs of unreleased demos or live recordings. I was a junkie. Hell, I had demos of most of Use Your Illusion I & II before it was released to the public. I also had tons of live recordings of my favorite bands. Although quite a few were of inferior quality, every once in awhile I'd stumble across a live show that was recorded straight from the sound board. Pure bliss!
But you kids have it easy. If you hear a song you like, just take a quick trip to iTunes and it's yours (and you don't even have to worry about some idiot DJ doing a station ID at the beginning of it). Hundreds of live sets from your favorite bands can easily be found online. Demos and remixes are floating out in cyberspace, yours for the taking.
So there! That's something you kids can be thankful for this Thanksgiving. Now go play with your cousin so I can get back to watching the football game.
Grandpa, Tell Me A Story
