We must all respect each other's feelings. The other day, I bought an inexpensive, portable mono transistor radio. It was at a flea market, as we Americans refer to what essentially amounts to a junk bazaar. I was feeling nostalgic for my 70s childhood. It was either the radio or an 8-track player, but I thought I'd have more listening options with the radio. Anyhow, shortly after this purchase, I noticed that my CDs would only play in mono -- even the ones recorded in stereo. This was acutely obvious with my Zombies and middle-period Beatles CDs, hard-panned as they are, since I was hearing mostly-only vocals or mostly-only backing tracks. Apparently, while I didn't realize it at the time, either the CDs or the stereo (still not sure which was the culprit) had gotten the wrong message -- that my purchase of the monaural radio indicated a preference on my part for listening to things in mono. Their feelings were hurt. In reaction, the stereo tracks somehow merged or went missing, depending on the artist. While this did result in some interesting new mixes of some of my favorite records (for some reason, all of my ELO records filtered out everything but the strings and Jeff's voice, sounding quite disembodied and ethereal), it was rather disturbing. After all, every artist should have the right to determine how its music is mixed, and my stereo / CDs had no business tampering with the finished product! Besides, I missed the lovely backing vocals on my TFC CDs, and Cotton Mather just isn't the same without any guitars. Whatever was behind this mutiny also had the audacity to replace the real horns and strings on all of my beloved B&S releases with really cheesy synthesizer reproductions. (Bad 80s Yamaha sounds, not even nice Korg patches.) Claudio Reyna is from the next town over from my home town and I feel bad his team was humiliated so badly, but maybe that will rile them up enough to actually accomplish something in Europe. But that's beside the point. Where was I? Oh yes. So I went to my CDs and demanded an answer. "What's up with these bizarre mixes? How dare you?" No response. I turned to my stereo and implored, "Please return yourself to your prior condition! I miss hearing my music in stereo! Why are you doing this to me?" "Hey, don't look at me -- I'm inanimate, remember?" it replied. "Oh, right, sorry," I apologized, feeling quite silly for having personified my audio equipment. Then things got strange. Whatever CD I put on the stereo, only one song would play (in mono) -- "Feelings". (Yeah, the one from the 70s. Suppose I asked for that bit.) Even more curious, every occurance of the word "feelings" was replaced by the word "mono". ("Mono, nothing more than mono . . .") Those were about the worst few days of my life, until the light bulb went off. I eventually realized that I had unintentionally dissed the stereo portion of my CDs and/or my stereo system by focusing my attention on the little mono transistor radio. My quest for nostalgia had caused modern audio technology to abandon me! So I sold the sucker on eBay for twice what I had paid for it, moved my speakers farther apart for better separation, and, as quickly as it had arisen, my little mono dilemma was history. But now <gulp>, everything plays in quadraphonic. And I still only have two ears! +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named +-+ +-+ Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ ++++++ ++++++ ++++++ August 27th Sinister Third Birthday Red Underwear Day ++++++ ++++++ ++++++ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+