Ten albums that...

There is a chain thing doing the rounds on Facebook and Twitter at the moment and I have had a couple of nominations to take part. So I thought I would post here in one go rather than inflict my choices on people over a needlessly long time. If you ask me tomorrow it will probaby be 10 different albums. Yes it's cheating, but what's the use of a music blog if you don't abuse the privilege, so in no particular order, here we go.

Album Challenge Day 1-10 Thanks John, David & Rich for this amazing opportunity to stun all my FB/Twitter friends with incredible music wonders!  I’ve been given a task to choose 10 albums that greatly influenced my taste in music. No explanations, no reviews, just album covers.
 

Dave Greenfield - Walk On By

The Stranglers were never a punk band. Their first three albums are still regular plays for me. Hugh Cornwell said last night that Dave Greenfield, who as passed with Covid 19 should be remembered as the man who created the music of Golden Brown. Personally I would prefer to think of the Black and White album which as an old progressive rock fan had his stamp all over it. Curiously, despite loving the Stranglers I've never much liked their main influence, The Doors, but they did introduce me to Soul through this song, and also to Van Der Graaf Generator who were probably a subconscious influence. Indeed when Hugh was in jail Peter Hamilll was one of the guest singers at a show at The Rainbow London. The resulting album is hardly better than bootleg quality but as a document of a band evolving from their roots it is fascinating. The Stranglers as prog band, discuss.

 

Is iTunes the future?

The most recent update of iTunes killed my library. I ended up with the grey song titles of death, and while this prompted me to start moving everything to a bigger external hard drive connected to the laptop that travels with me, it has made me wonder about the future of committing to the platform.

When even my iPhone obsessed daughter has shifted to Android because of the problems she has had with her iPhone 6S and the price of an upgrade it makes you think. While this article in The Guardian from June 2019 says that I am fine for now, who knows how long this will last. If they are moving away from iTunes on Mac then the development costs of keeping it up to date for Windows will become for than they care to pay in the end, think 30 pin connector and the fate of the iPod Classic.

Then there's the hardware. My last of the line 160gb 6th generation iPod is now 6 years old. Hard drives don't last forever, and having had my fingers burnt with an SSD upgrade to 256gb which ate the battery in a matter of a few months I'm not inclined to go down that route again.  If you were here in 2018 you may remember the first stirrings of discontent in a post called Why Pod? Many of the arguments in favour of Apple have gone away since then. Personally I still want a dedicated music player because I'm not a young folk and can put my phone down to allow me to switch off from business and social media. So when CEX in Weston Super Mare had a bargain I took the plunge.

So say hello to my Sony Walkman NW-A45. With 16gb of internal storage and the potential for an agrophobia sized micro SD card it seems like the answer. With my usual Sennheiser earphones the sound is a noticeable improvement over Apple and despite a lot of the reviews saying that the User Interface is clunky, I'm not finding it that way. Bluetooth and NFC get over any problems with it talking to the car. It works with Audible so another tick. Podcasts I haven't tried on it yet and I'm still working on finding the best software, currently I'm using Music Center for PC, but may look elsewhere as well.

While this is also an older model, it is not subject to the whims of Sony's software developers to keep it running. That was a let down on my eariler Sony NW-A3000 which was a great piece of kit at least partially tied to the CONNECT player and ATRAC file format. Mine still works, except for a dodgy headphone socket but has sat in drawer for the last few years because of the complexities of working with it.

So, good news I can move backwards into the future seated comfortably on a bit of old tech that shouldn't become too obsolete to use. I haven't abandoned the iPod, and won't until it finally gives up the ghost. My old 120gb version lasted 10 years so you are stuck with me at least that long, and then all we will need is a change of logo and name, 272gigblog perhaps? No, 528gigblog sounds better.