Back to the Music

The fatiguing  debate about the relative merits of CD versus Vinyl has surfaced again.  There  is no solution to the question since listening to recorded music is entirely subjective. My listening ranges over both formats with the occasional download meriting my time as well. A recent  house move has given me the bonus of a room , more or less, to myself where I have re-installed the hi-fi and lined one wall with books.  I took a picture of the configuration of leads on the rear of my audio gear before packing it all up and it proved totally worthless in the reassembly; it was back to basics with colour coded phono in and audio out. One discovery has paid listening dividends; a few years ago , I bought a fairly expensive Cyrus cd player with its own separate power supply; I was very happy with the product but wondered why the power supply did not also have a power light.  It has only come to my attention that the power unit has an on/off switch on the rear and that for years , I had  been listening to the cd player alone.  Now switched on, it enhances the listening experience, giving  a noticeably stronger and more detailed sound.

It has also reinforced for me that cd is a much cleaner , interference – free sound. I have gone back to listening to some old favourites such as Irish writer and singer ,Christie Hennessy whose life ended so tragically and prematurely; an undiagnosed dyslexic, Christie left school at twelve years old and worked with his father around Tralee before taking the well trodden road to London building sites and demolition work where he spent the next twenty years. He was always interested in words and melody and wrote his songs by recording them with a tape recorder. His music was picked up by established artists, particularly Christie Moore who had a big hit in both England and Ireland with ‘Don’t Forget your shovel’. Hennessy also released some of his own music . A favourite of mine is ‘The Vision’, written in ballad narrative style and redolent with dark imagery of a troubling Ireland, a dead young woman and her new born baby found by a religious grotto and the Magdalene laundries. Listen here,  Exposed to asbestos during  his time in London, Christie contracted mesothelioma and died at 62.

Irish Women in Harmony, an ad hoc collection of female musicians made a charity record , ‘Dreams’ , paying tribute to the wonderful Dolores O’Riardon and raising funds for the victims of domestic abuse. Each artist was recorded alone and collated for video to great effect. I bought the 12″ vinyl single but the audio sound on my player is inferior to the download.

One of the brightest moments in the Pandemic; you may make your own judgement here

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