GARDENING IN STEREO

The receiver, a Teac AG790, just arrived. Lets go back in time for some short music related notes If I may.

The first long playing record in our house was brought home by dad, after he won it in a raffle.  Like some bones in Ten Decades of Solitude, it went from one closet to the chiforobbe and so forth.


However, there was no record player,  until two years later (circa 1965), when me sister the avaricious adventist, bought one Magnavox, with the income from her part time job while in high school.


This record player had the appearance of a coffin for a child, but adequate bass and treble sound.  It was automatic, and one was able to stack five records to avoid the exercise in getting up for changing.


In those days, looking back, seems like prehistoric, others  were adults coffin size, with television, radio, huge ugly monsters in the living room.


That first record, was Llanera music from Venezuela, with some legendary singer vocalist whose name escapes my memory but her voice is still around.


My first buys at the record store were, "Equinox", by Sergio Mendes, in AM Records, and "Acid" by RIP, Ray Barreto on Fania.


The first serious stereo component I was able to check out in those days was a Pioneer, in El Verde, a housing project for the upper middle class and hand to mouth wanabees.


Fernando Monteverde was his name. His family were the only negros around.
An oddity not like USA, but weird. This family of professionals, had excellent music at home and knew how to take care of records.


The paraphernalia, D4, discwasher, Record Care System included the velvet wood/velvet cylinder to clean the surface of the records with the cleaning fluid, and small brush to keep the stylus clean.

Their children there were four, listened to War, Vanilla Fudge and Santana not very common music among the natives then. I got the skills to maintain and care for the records and stereo from these people by watching them.  That made possible to listen to some of my first records forty years later.


Years later during my first migration to Northampton, MA (1977), I got a Harman/Kardon receiver with Epicure speakers and a Sanyo turntable. That stereo lasted until the fabric on the speakers became brittle and I had to glue them with silicone, at least 15 years.

One of the ironies of life now,  with digital music, is that young and not so  people, some with stereo equipment in their cars with a 1,000 watts is the shitty hip hop, regueton and rap they are in the habit of listening.

Why can't some of them listen to music with lyrics, melody or just instruments?
Why can't these retarded fellows balance the bass/treble controls? That way their cars will not vibrate with the annoying distortion while driving by me house?


Time to go.  Connect the system Dario.