Connecticut Record Club

Hi again from beautiful Kenya. As many of you know, I filmed a series of short videos about the world of records that I intended to post on Youtube about 6 months ago. I got the filming finished just before we left for Africa, and since we’ve been here, I’ve been trying to edit the footage with my son, who did the filming, pro bono. We finished editing the first video, which is about 12 minutes long, and tried to upload it, but the bandwidth here is so inadequate that it would have taken almost five hours, and the quality would have been very “jumpy.” We are trying it from different places, via data cable or wifi, to see if it can work any better somewhere, and hope to get it online next week. It’s going to be in 4 parts probably, and is a general introduction to the world of records: genres, formats, covers, labels, sizes, etc., In the first video I look at one-sided records, covers, some labels, things like very small to very large, flexi discs, etc.

I found some record players today in a guy’s basement shop, but not one of them had a stylus. I’m going to se if I can get some cartridges and stylii from needledoctor.com, and hope I don’t have to pay through the roof for postage! Count your blessings every time you go to a tag sale or thrift store – no such thing here!

By the way, if anybody wants to keep up with some of our family’s adventures in Kenya, google siggsinafrica and you will get to a blog.

Kwa heri (Bye),

Sam

Here they are:

Hi from Nairobi, Kenya, everybody. I haven’t been able to look for records too much, but I did find a few, so check out the pics. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a record player yet, but I hope they will sound as good as they look. I’m trying to focus on African music so far, but if anyone wants stuff like Abba’s “Dancing Queen” or other major pop hits on an African label, let me know – I can probably find a 45.