Someone asked me recently for a copy of a cassette tape which was recorded in 1980. As I am now in my eighth decade, 1980 feels like yesterday, and it came as a bit of a shock to realise that I received that tape nearly forty years ago. I eventually found it by searching through a large cupboard where all my old stuff is stored, and I was amazed by the sheer number of cassette tapes in there plus a shelf full of LPs that had overflowed from my main record cabinet. The tape was duly copied and dispatched to the person who had requested it, who generously showed his gratitude by sending me a couple of CDs to add to the hundreds already in my collection.
The amount of listening that we do over the years is amazing. For me it was initially via the record player or stereo, then cassette tapes came in and it seemed like heaven to be able to carry a cassette player or in due course a Walkman around with you and have music at the touch of a button. Come the digital age the availability of music has increased by a quantum leap, and now you can find nearly anything online and transfer it to your mp3 player.
There comes a point in the expansion of your collection of recordings that much of the older stuff gets neglected or forgotten. I am more likely to listen to recent arrivals in my collection together with a few old favorites, but I have now started reminding myself to delve into the archives, put some older recordings into digital form and load them on to the mp3 player.
The title of this article is a phrase used by the pianist and conductor Alberto Semprini to introduce a music programme called ‘Semprini Serenade’, broadcast by the BBC way back. The programme featured a miscellany of pieces of light music which were old or new, loved or neglected. I have recently discovered in my own listening that I have particularly and unfairly neglected the dobro. Digging out Mike Auldridge’s old LPs, Dobro and Blues and Bluegrass has been a revelation. This has led me to The Great Dobro Sessions which have been on my CD shelf for the last twenty years – what a feast of everything dobro, which I’d never really given the attention that it deserves.
We all have our favorite music but you may well find some pleasant surprises if you have another listen to some of the older and more neglected or forgotten recordings in your collection. Happy listening over the holidays and in 2019!
