Because We Love You, Part 1: Some Old-School H-Town for Christmas

A month or so ago, I picked up something I’ve been meaning to get for a while, a little gadget from Ion Audio they call both the U Record and the MixMeister (no, I have no clue why). It’s nothing fancy, just a little box I can hook up to my turntable & tape deck’s audio output and a USB port on my laptop and use to magically rip songs straight off a 7″, LP, or tape to MP3 format.

Granted, this is hardly new technology, but in spite of the fact that I work in the software business and have been around computers since my pre-teen years (go, IBM PCJr, go!), I’m a relative moron when it comes to how sound recording software-type stuff works. The U Record/MixMeister, however, is basic enough so I’m able to work out how to use it w/o the benefit of much documentation (although Ion Audio’s online tech support’s been very helpful; I was having a problem for a while there with one of my MacBook’s codec’s, turned out). Plug in the stereo equipment, plug in the laptop, and poof!, I’m ripping songs off vinyl.

Which is very cool for me, because I rarely get to listen to the turntable, these days, instead generally doing most of my music-listening either in the car or on headphones at the Day Job. And while my coworkers actually probably wouldn’t object to me bringing a turntable up to the office, it’d be a bit clunky, to say the least. So now I can grab whatever 7″ or cassette or whatever I want to be listening to in its non-flat & plastic form and transmute it into a bunch of handy little MP3 files to listen to wherever.

The other cool part is that I can finally dig out my collection of old-school vinyl & tape from the Golden Age of H-town Indie-Rock (i.e., the mid-to-late 1990s) and start slapping it up here for all who feel like checking it out. I haven’t ever found most of it online anywhere, so hopefully I can rectify that situation somewhat both now & later on. Consider this a bit of a Christmas present from us here at SCR to you, our dearly beloved readership. Enjoy.

[NOTE/CAVEAT #1: If anybody involved in any of these bands or labels doesn’t want this stuff posted here, just tell me (“gaijin” at “spacecityrock dot com”), and it’s gone, I promise. I’m not trying to take food out of any artists’ mouths or steal or whatever else; my only interest is to re-expose good “old” stuff to the light of day. Don’t sue, please.]

[NOTE/CAVEAT #2: I’m still new to the vinyl-converting thing, so the quality of these ain’t the greatest, sorry. I’m still working on the levels…]