LATEST ADDITIONS

Last winter an old audio biz friend of mine visited bearing a gift: a new Italian 45rpm pressing of Gil Evans' dark, brooding and oh so slinky 1960 recording of Out of the Cool originally issued in 1961 by the then new Impulse! label created by producer Creed Taylor for parent company ABC-Paramount. The album was Impulse! A-4, the label's fourth release.

This reissue on the DOXY label puts the entire album on a single 45rpm record. Given that side one runs almost 21 minutes, I was surprised they squeezed it onto a single side. Sides two's approximately 16 minutes is slightly more manageable with "slightly" the operative word.

Have you noticed how the pace of things "going digital" has increased? There's no escaping it, and television's next. It'll take about 10 years, but then, like abandoned canals, the empty two-lane cement of Route 66, and overgrown railroad rights of way, the analog broadcast pathways will be discarded, handed back to the government for reuse in what will no doubt be a far less glamorous endeavor—garage-door opener or pocket-pager frequencies, perhaps.

Route 66 has made a tailfin'n'Elvis–based nostalgic comeback. So have steam trains, taking railroad buffs on daylong excursions over commuter rails. Last year I took one myself—and I enjoyed every soot-sprayed, purgatory-hot, steam-stinking, smoke-belching minute of it. (I hung out in one of the two open cars: standing room only, no glass in the windows.)

But analog television? Is anyone going to miss it? I doubt it—which is how most people felt about records with the introduction of the compact disc. Remember? People dumped their vinyl like carcinogens, and most haven't looked back with regret. Clearly, from our perspective, that's their loss.

Register to win an Ortofon 2M Black Phono Cartridge from Music Direct (MSRP $720.00) we are giving away.

From Music Direct:

Music Direct is happy to offer a brand-new Ortofon 2M Black for one lucky subscriber to Michael Fremer’s Analog Planet. The flagship of the 2M line, the Black is absolutely one of the finest Moving Magnet cartridges ever built. The 2M Black has Ortofon’ s best Shibata stylus, which is usually found on much more expensive cartridges.  It’s fast, dynamic, extremely well-detailed, yet supremely musical. A Music Direct best-seller, this $720 cartridge digs deep down into the grooves, playing parts of the groove no other stylus has ever reached. Good luck to all of you.

[This Sweepstakes is now closed.]

John Prine's Grammy Award winning (for "Best Contemporary Folk Album") 1992 album The Missing Years will make its "long overdue" vinyl debut July 9th on his Oh Boy record label.