A few months back, my wife’s favorite uncle died and we’ve been helping her aunt clear out the house so that she can move. I’ve been through this before with older relatves, but Uncle John was only ten years older than me, and he had another two or three good deacdes in him. Except that it didn’t work out that way.

Among the things that John had been holding onto was a pretty large record collection. We didn’t quite have to explain to Nephew John, who was helping clear things out, what a record was…but he’d never heard one, either.

Now, one of the thing’s I’d always liked about Uncle John was his taste in music. He’d been into sixties folk same as me, and there were a number of records that I couldn’t just let go to a record store without at least listening too, or better yet, ripping to digital.

Audiophiles are now turning over in their graves, because everyone knows the warmth and liviness of records can’t be caught in digital recordings. Ideally you need a vacuum tube amplifier as well. But I figure that great sounding music may not be as good a tremendous sounding music, but it’s better than a kick in the head.

Today’s reciever/amplifiers often don’t even come with an input that a phono output will work with, because phonographs didn’t come with their own amplifiers for the weak signal that the phono cartridges oputput. You have two choices for getting records into your computer. First, you can buy a USB turntable for between $60 and $200 which solves all your problems at once. Danile Dern, a journalist friend of mine, did a review of that option a while back and I almost borrowed one of his review units from him…but not quite.

[amazon_link id=”B003UPTE4K” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][/amazon_link]The other option you have is to buy a free standing phono amplifier and plug it into a turntable, making it compatible with contemporary recievers or computer sound cards. John had kept a perfectly good Dual turntable with the records, though he had no place to plug it in, so all I needed was the preamp. You can spend as much or as little as you want on that, from $12.95 to $300 or more. Me, I spent $12.95 to see how it worked, buying a “Bozak Madisson Phono Preamp” off Amazon. It took three days to arrive, and when I opened it up there was an unsettling rattling noise in it, so I unbent the tabs on the bottom and shook out what turned out to be a glob of hardend glue which wouldn’t have caused any trouble anyway.

Once I had the preamp, hooking the turntable up to my desktop pc was pretty simple. Since the turntable had been built into a cabinet the uncle made for it I had to rig something up, which wound up being for cans of beans, one uncer each of its vibration isolating feet, so that the motor could hang down in the middle. Between the jumble of wires, unmouneted amp and jury rigged base, the whole setup looked pretty frightneing. FrankenPhono. But it worked fine.

I had some software specifically made for recording old vinyl and breaking up the songs into individual tracks, but that sems to have gone away with the last desktop pc. No matter, I don’t care about breaking up the songs anyway. These are albums, with an order and identity to them. Dicing them up into mere songs just doesn’t seem right. I remember many of them, and there’s a certain anticipation that gets thwarted if the next song isn’t the next song.

For recording the songs I chose Adobe Soundbooth from CS4, which I had loaded on the system. I’m not sure I’ve used it before, but it was straightforward, at least after I figured out how to choose the line level input from my realtek sound card and adjust the levels so it didn’t peak the meter. After that it was just a matter of putting on the record, clicking on record, waiting to the end of the side, stopping record, running a slight pop and hiss reduction on it, trimming the ends and saving to an mp3. Simple. Realy.

RIght now I’m listening to the previous album (Kim Karnes – Mistakent Identity) on my media system in the living room while recording the next album, John Prine’s first, which has special meaning to me, on the system in my loft/office.

Life is good.

The Prine album looked to be in nearly perfect shape, but as soon as I started it the needle jumped a track, then did it again. I stopped the turntable, spun it around and examined the surface closely. Sure enough, there was a short, but distinct scratch across the first few grooves.If it had been slight enough so that the needle would still track, there’d be no problem, since I could edit it out as a “pop.” In this case, there was no saving it, but the rest of the track, and record were fine, so I’ll take that as a remider of how fragile records are.

It’s a pity that kids today don’t get to experience that fragility. Digital music is largely indestructable and unchanging. That’s good, in far as it goes. but there are lessons to be learned from things that need to be taken care of but wear out anyway.

How about that, we just got to a track I’d totaly forgotten about. Pretty good too. I wonder what it would sound like with a big tube amp and speakers the size of two drawer file cabinets?

Since Westminster has been making Oyster Crackers in New England since the early 1800's it's a safe bet they made the crackers in question.

It was March in Bristol, Vermont. It may have been March other places as well, but family folklore is silent on this point. My Great Great Grandfather, Boardman Marsh Bosworth, came home to the homestead (One Park Place, Bristol Vt, the oldest frame structure in the town) to find that Dorothy, his wife and companion of many years, had a pot of oyster stew on. This was good news, as a stew made from rich Vermont butter, cream, and milk with winter oysters, which have a richer flavor than summer ones, was always welcome provender.

Sadly, she told him…they had no oyster crackers…so they would have to do without.

Boardman was not the sort of man to let a little extra effort stand in the way of doing something the way it should be done, so he put his boots back on and went back out into the cold wet night. Did I mention it was sleeting?

Bristol Market wasn’t all that far from the homestead, and is still there today, a few blocks away on the other side of the street, so it wasn’t more than a half hour later that he came tromping back up the rear porch steps, shaking the ice and snow off his boots and clutching a bag of oyster crackers.

Attaining the top step he slipped on the slush, falling backwards down the three steps to the drive, his fall cushioned only by the bag of crackers.

Dorothy, having heard the commotion,  went to the door to see what was the matter, and found Boardman sitting in the slush at the foot of the stairs. Looking up at her, he uttered what has become an enduring comment regarding lost causes in our family, to wit:

“Well…that settles the cracker question.”

Then he brushed himself off and went inside.

(In Vermont, this is considered high hilarity)

My friend Meredith, on hearing that I’d be spending my evening without EJ, asked if I’d be watching sci-flicks and listening to bad music to celebrate my birthday. Well, pretty much. Except that she left out cooking soup. She should have known better.

I haven’t settled on a flick yet, but I have settled in cooking my all time favorite soup, New England Clam Chowder, and listening to all the Judy Collins and Joan Baez in my collection. And the soundtrack from Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

Good times.

I made up the chowder totally on the wing, and we’ll see how it comes out. Right now it’s in a simmer phase coming together while the Indigo Girls do a very good cover of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice.” TIme was I knew the picking to that, in my younger days. Don’t tell EJ, but I’ve been thinking about getting myself a banjo and getting back into playing and singing. I’m not great, but I’ve heard worse…

Ern’s New England Clam Chowder

Unlike many of the soups I make, this one doesn’t get blended towards the end. Keep in mind that the size everything goes in is pretty much the size everything is going to come out at the end, so figure out how big you want your bits and chop all the ingredients to that size before adding.

• One medium onion (about 10 oz)
• 3 slices bacon
• 1 generous cup of celery
• 2 tbs butter
• 1 tbs flour (I use Wondra, which is designed not to lump)
• 3 bay leaves
• 2 8 oz bottles of clam juice
• 1 qt half and half
• 1 tbs chicken stock base (it couldn’t hurt)
• 1.5 lbs boiling potatoes (white, gold, whatever…just not Russet’s or any other baking potato, they’re too mealy)
  Want to get wacky? Add:
• 1/4 tsp Old Bay Seasoning

Saute the bacon in your kettle until it starts to give up its fat, then add in the chopped onions and cook for about ten minutes, until the onions are getting pretty soft. Add in the celery, bay leaves and butter and stir it for another three of four minutes. Add the flour in and get it evenly mixed throughout.

Add the clam juice, including the juice in the can (assuming you’re using canned clams) and the half and half.

Add the diced potatoes and clams and bring the whole thing to a gentle simmer.

If you’re feeling adventurous, add the quarter tsp of Old Bay Seasoning. If you’re making this for Yankee purists, it may raise some eyebrows, but not in a bad way. Crank a few turns of fresh ground pepper and either the tbs of chicken stock base (Better Than Bullion Organic Chicken Stock) or a tsp of salt. The base is pretty salty, so you really don’t need both. You’ll get to adjust the seasoning at the end anyway.

That’s pretty much it. Simmer (gently for 20-25 minutes) and you’re done. This is one of those soups that benefits from being made the day before and having a chance to come together, but it’s just fine right off the bat.

The most important thing is to find a brand of canned clams that you trust. I used Trader Joe’s Whole Cherry-stones, and the soup came out fine, but I think that Snow’s is probably a better call.

Thickness in clam chowder is a personal and regioinal thing. This will be what I consider “north of Boston” thickness, which means creamy but not thick at all. South (or West) of Connecticut, folks add enough flour so that spoons stand at attention. This, I gather, gives them the feeling that they’re getting value our of their thick, rich, soup.

I’m not hard over on the right amount of flour, myself. You could add a second tablespoon and it would probably be just fine. If you wanted to.

The traditional, garnish is oyster crackers, about which I’ll tell you a funny family story sometime. Well, funny by Vermont standards. A pat of butter and a grind od pepper dont hurt either.

For me, especially since Clam Chowder is a part of my childhood, A&W Root Beer and a hot dog are the perfect pairing, or is that a mange-a-trois?

Anyway, I’ve got lots of folk music left in the mix, the soup’s done, and I’m ready to dig in.

—

Epilogue

I never did queue up a cheesy sci-fi flick, just kicking back with the soup (and a hot dog), listening to music and doing a little blogging here turned out to be the perfect evening. Well, the oyster crackers would have been nice.

Also: The Cracker Question (as promised)

[slickr-flickr set: Atlantic Cty]