Turen Går til København!

Helen and I are going on our hon­ey­moon! Yes, we’ve been mar­ried near­ly four years and are just two months away from wel­com­ing our first baby into the world, but we final­ly have the time and mon­ey so we fig­ured, “Why not!?” It’s long overdue.

Where are we head­ed? Den­mark, naturligvis! I spent a year in love­ly Skan­der­borg, Den­mark from 1995 to 1996 as a Rotary exchange stu­dent. It was an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence that I’ve cher­ished since I returned from my exchange. I’ve nev­er total­ly for­got­ten Dan­ish, but I haven’t been back since a quick jaunt to vis­it my sec­ond host fam­i­ly in 1999 after row­ing at Hen­ley Roy­al Regat­ta with the Saint Joseph’s Uni­ver­si­ty light­weight crew. I can’t believe ten years have passed already!

We’ll be on the ground in Copen­hagen at 7 a.m. local time tomor­row, vis­it­ing old friends and my sec­ond host fam­i­ly, whom I’ve man­aged to stay in touch with­out every real­ly writ­ing as often as I ought. Now my host sib­lings are all on Face­book, which is hilar­i­ous when you con­sid­er that the Inter­net was just a baby when I was on exchange. Heck, my eldest host sis­ter just got married!

Helen and I will be post­ing pic­tures and videos in case you’re inter­est­ed in fol­low­ing our com­ings and goings while we’re over­seas. What’s on tap? Every­thing from a canal tour of Copen­hagen — some­thing I’ve nev­er done — to a trip back to my old stomp­ing ground in Skan­der­borg, which I may not rec­og­nize, to all the stan­dard tourist des­ti­na­tions like Den Lille Halvfrue, Fred­eriks­borg Slot, Amalien­borg, and oth­ers. I can’t wait to share this won­der­ful coun­try with Helen!

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Renewing My Love for Records

I’ve had a love affair with music for most of my life. It’s meant spend­ing mon­ey I did­n’t have just to get a par­tic­u­lar album, lest it sell out and not be restocked. It meant run­ning to Repo Records from Haver­ford Col­lege in the mid­dle of my high school track meets. It meant secret trips to Young Ones in Kutz­town when I was sup­posed to be head­ed to the pool to life­guard. Lat­er, it meant lunch break pil­grim­ages to Space­boy Music when I worked at TLA Video. It meant spend­ing hours at AKA Music just soak­ing in new and unfa­mil­iar sounds.

The affair end­ed unex­pect­ed­ly. I’d been going to record stores since I was a teenag­er, whether it was the afore­men­tioned Young Ones, or just ask­ing the hap­less clerk at Sam Goody in the Coven­try Mall in Pottstown if they had any Fugazi. I pestered the guys at Space­boy as they migrat­ed west on South St. right up until the store closed. I mourned the loss of Repo Records on Lan­cast­er Avenue even after it had been com­plete­ly picked over and left for dead long before they shut the doors for good. I still cared about the alleged­ly obso­lete rit­u­al that we nos­tal­gics will strug­gle to explain to our chil­dren; “Once upon a time, we went to record stores, argued with clerks, and bought music, face to face.”

Then one day I just stopped going. I tried to tell myself it was a pass­ing thing and that I would find myself brows­ing the racks at AKA again soon enough, but a few months quick­ly became two years. I’d walk by the store some­times and remem­ber that I helped them move twice as they drift­ed up 2nd St. to their present location.

Now I’ve fall­en in love all over again, head over heels. I wan­dered back into AKA on Record Store Day and picked up Pave­men­t’s Live in Koln LP, along with two Son­ic Youth split 7″. I’ve been hunt­ing down R.E.M. on vinyl, too. It’s felt great to get back into the swing of things and to real­ly enjoy the lush sounds of heavy vinyl warm­ing up the house. The whole expe­ri­ence is so much more sat­is­fy­ing for me, speak­ing as some­one who found that I lis­tened to music less at home since the advent of the iPod.

I’m hap­py to be back in the habit of look­ing for old and new favorites on LP. I’ve resolved to buy any album I rec­om­mend over the course of the year, and I’ve been doing due dili­gence to pick up those I con­sid­ered favorites dur­ing the past two years. In short, I’ve been giv­ing Insound and eBay an awful lot of busi­ness late­ly, which puts a smile on my face.

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My Turntable Returns!

My turntable
Orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by J T. Ramsay

One of the things that makes me laugh is the slew of arti­cles that have been writ­ten late­ly about the resur­gence of vinyl. I laugh main­ly because I felt that the vinyl resur­gence had come and gone. I asso­ci­at­ed the trend with Mata­dor’s renewed com­mit­ment to reis­su­ing some of their back cat­a­logue on 180 gram vinyl, some­thing they did four or five years ago.

I chew my friend Mark’s ear off all the time when­ev­er I read a new sto­ry declar­ing that the vinyl LP — the vehi­cle that brought rock ’n’ roll into garages, liv­ing rooms, and base­ments across Amer­i­ca — would rise like a Phoenix, car­ry­ing the music indus­try on its back. It’s a love­ly, roman­tic thought to which I say, “Fat chance.”

Me? I’ve been see-saw­ing back and forth between lov­ing the medi­um and lov­ing it but hav­ing no room for the cum­ber­some equip­ment that can dom­i­nate any Philadel­phia apart­ment or rowhome eas­i­ly if you’re not care­ful. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

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The Phillies: Beer and Baseball

The Phillies start their title defense as they play host tonight to the vis­it­ing Atlanta Braves in the sea­son open­er at Cit­i­zen’s Bank Park. Helen and I did­n’t get tick­ets to tonight’s game, so we decid­ed to catch the first of two On Deck pre­sea­son matchups against last year’s World Series run­ners-up, the Tam­pa Bay Rays.

It was an amaz­ing, if blus­tery, night. We sat under the over­hang in sec­tion 137 and watched Pat Bur­rell warm up on his old left field stomp­ing grounds. It was an emo­tion­al moment for Helen and me. We both felt that we real­ly got to “know” Pat in his last sea­son as a Phillie, and sup­port­ed him in our cus­tom­ary seats in sec­tion 143 with rau­cous cheers. We did the same for him last Fri­day, even though he now wears a Rays uniform.

The Phillies hon­ored Pat’s career with a pre-game mon­tage that start­ed when he signed with the team in 1998 right up until he spoke at last fal­l’s World Series cel­e­bra­tion. It was chock full of great mem­o­ries, both good and bad. Pat walked out of the dugout and doffed his cap at the Phillies faith­ful. Pat may not have the great­est rep­u­ta­tion, but on the field, he’s a true class act.

On a lighter note, I was able to enjoy one of three new addi­tions to the Cit­i­zen’s Bank Park beer selec­tion, pair­ing a Troegs Sun­shine Pils with one of Hat­field­’s finest processed meat prod­ucts. Deli­cious! I fig­ure if you’re either pay­ing near­ly dou­ble for Bud­weis­er swill, or you can get one of Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s finest craft brews for $6.75. I fig­ure it’s a great ratio­nale for choos­ing the good stuff when you’re out at the ballpark!

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My Phillies Moment on WHYY


The World Series Trophy
Orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by J T. Ramsay

As a new base­ball sea­son approach­es (Helen and I are head­ed to the ball­park this Fri­day, as well as twice next week), I just hap­pened to find a record­ed snip­pet I gave to WHYY out­side of John­ny Bren­da’s on WHYY’s Unob­struct­ed View blog.

If I sound like a com­plete doo­fus, it’s prob­a­bly because I was over­come with joy when the Phillies won, and sad that Helen was in sun­ny San Diego on busi­ness. (Trust me: she was sad, too. After all, she changed her trav­el plans so we could go to World Series Game 4 togeth­er. We’ll nev­er for­get Blastin’ Joe Blan­ton slam­ming a homer over the left field wall in Cit­i­zen’s Bank Park.)

It feels like it was only yes­ter­day that I was lit­er­al­ly rac­ing down Frank­ford Avenue as I ran from Mem­phis Tap­room to cel­e­brate with friends at Frank­ford and Girard. I can’t wait for the Phillies to begin their 2009 cam­paign to defend their well-deserved World Cham­pi­on title.

Let’s go, Phils!

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