Last week when the temps here in Central PA were at -4F one morning I had to travel towards Indiana,PA thru Punxsutawney to pick up an upright bass. On my way back thru Punxsy I pulled over at a Goodwill hoping to find an old Gibson L-5 or at least a Kalamazoo Oriole.I'm a positive thinker

I came upon a stash of 33 1/3 LP's...your typical Goodwill fare....101 Strings,Larry Welk,A Taste Of Honey by Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass......that LP is in every thrift store, right? Anywho,there was a nice bunch of country and I got Tammy Wynette's Greatest Hits on Epic,Freddie Hart's Easy Lovin,and a George Jones compilation. Not bad but I felt old and out of touch when the young girl at the check-out said... I remember these things my Grandpa used to have some.

Today as I sat in front of my old B&O turntable,Marantz 1060 amp and Polk bookshelves listening to Tammy sing Stand By Your Man,D-I-V-O-R-C-E,and Run Angel,Run (beautiful sad song with great arrangement and recording)I couldn't help but feel the World is passing me by. Especially when I'd just had a conversation with one of my friends yesterday and he was raving about mp3 players and how I needed to get one.

All I know is that I was at peace today with Tammy Wynette on the stereo and an old rocking chair listening to some recorded beauty coming out between all those pops and scratches from an old 33 1/3.

I understand completly. As a former record store worker { remember a chain called Peaches Records? }I had amassed a collection of over 3,000 LP's. It pained me to get rid of about a third of the collection many years ago but it was just too much work to move them all. And I still think of some I never should have parted with.

I just got the stereo hooked up again at the new house so I broke out some records. I hadn't heard "Thick as a Brick" in years. Maybe I'll pop on some Doc Watson tonight.

This lunchtime I went to the thrift store and picked up a clean copy of King Crimson's In The Wake Of Poseidon (never heard it but it'll be, uh, heavy) and - spectacularly! - a copy of Hawkwind's 1971 opus 'In Search Of Space' for 50p ($1), complete with gatefold sleeve and original hippie-mystic 'space logbook' designed by the great graphic designer Barney Bubbles. My brother used to have this album... I grew up on it. It's super-psychedelic drone rock with excessive use of a square-wave generator. Nothing like dropping the needle on a new score. It's gonna be a fun night!

I understand that The Who have a new vinyl release. But do the modern music stores have anywhere to display a dinosaur that large?

One of my buddies came up with recording software by DAK that does amazing things to old LP's when recording them to CD,depoper's etc...I had him do the first Lindsey Buckingham & Stevie Nick's LP that to my knowledge has never been released on CD to date for whatever reason.Turned out great!Found that LP used by the way years ago at Peter Dunn's Vinyl Museum in Tucson Az.

Talking of LP's that have never been released on CD: I'm in search of a digital copy of a fairly hard-to-get 1974 Bert Jansch LP called LA Turnaround.

A long shot, I know... but I'm sure there's some obscure vinyl lurking out in Collings-land...