Retro Days with our family

In the last couple days, I've had the pleasure of getting an old AKAI GX-4000D reel to reel tape player working so that we could play tapes of the band (Paul Burton and his Orchestra) that my sister-in-law's grandfather played sax in, and arranged for, for many years. Burton's band stayed around Cleveland, and was a fixture at the Aragon Ballroom for over 30 years and had a weekly radio broadcast from there. We were listening to tapes made in the ballroom, from the feed that was given to AM 850 at the time. Nothing beats analog sound for big band music, and it sounds incredible over my brother's new stereo system. My siter-in-law's dad, Nick Modock, identified some of the solos we heard and having heard the band live many times said the sound reproduction was just fantastic.

There are hundreds of reel to reel tapes to go through.

While doing that we also had the best coffee ever (EVER, including the whole long history of coffee everywhere) that I made in my newly-acquired but old Pyrex glass stovetop percolator. We also had fun trying to play some old instruments, myself producing some particularly non-pleasant sounds on my birthday gift, which was sis's grandfather's clarinet. That'll take some work, but I figured out at least how to get the right kind of sound. It needs grease but it's otherwise perfect.

How's that for a few retro days?