LIFE’S THE SAME I’M MOVING IN STEREO

The thing that I most regret losing in my recent divorce is something that never actually became part of our marriage. In the transition of selling one home and relocating to another, I was forced to basically empty the contents of my house so I could somehow stuff myself into my wife’s house. In this hurried process, I took all of my old stereo components that had been boxed up and stored in the attic and dropped them off at a second-hand store. They were heavy, cumbersome, appeared to have little value, and were basically obsolete. 

The items that I dropped off included a beautiful Marantz analog receiver that I bought used at Audio Replay in Harvard Square in 1998 for roughly $100.  It was somewhat of a dinosaur even then. Living in the North End of Boston at the time, this receiver along with a cassette deck and a 5-disc CD player (vinyl had yet to make a comeback) became my source of pre-digital music. This system sounded great through a set of large studio monitor floor speakers that a friend had conveniently stored away after being purchased suspiciously out of the back of a van in the city years before. 

After finalizing my divorce, I got onto Craigslist and nostalgically began attempting to replace my old stereo equipment believing it was just the touch that the living room in my new house needed. I found that replacing the Marantz receiver that I had lost would be a tall order. Similar receivers were shockingly selling for anywhere between $500 and $1,000 (meaning someone got lucky on their trip to that second-hand store a few years back). With a little dedicated shopping, however, I located what appeared to be the perfect fit – a silver-faced 1980 Yamaha CR-240 stereo receiver with a Garrard GT-15 turntable and two Technics floor speakers for only fifty bucks.

Except for a little scratch which is evident when turning the volume dial too quickly, the receiver immediately provided the warm tone of perpetual 1970s stereo music courtesy of local DJ and old friend, Patrick Kevin Cronin. Bennie and the Jets came on causing me to recall Christmas 1974 when my oldest sister, Linda, found Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album under the tree.  Last Dance by Donna Summer made me think of my other sister, Carol-Ann, dancing around the family den during the disco craze of the 1970s. Then the title track to what would be the last album from the Eagles played.  Hearing The Long Run through this system inspired me to remember listening to that actual record as a new release back in 1979. The turntable also worked beautifully although the only records that I had available to me in the house were left upstairs after the sale, so I experimented with sound listening to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass and then Barry Manilow’s Weekend in New England. I have to admit, it is somehow hard to get a better 1970s ambiance than the atmosphere created when listening to a Barry Manilow record (even if it is for the last time). 

I considered adding an old CD player that I had picked up somewhere and stored away, but I thought it would take away from the simplicity of the system I that had created so I decided against it. Perhaps I’ll add a cassette deck if I find the right one in the future, but I don’t want to get  any more technological than that in my current living room, a sitting room that will never have a television. 

Although I had managed to reasonably recreate the sound and feel of my old Marantz receiver from years ago in Boston, I soon realized that my actual record collection was still at my (now) ex-wife’s house including Simon & Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits which had been saved from the collection my parents had when I was a kid, Billy Joel’s 52^nd Street album that my sister received as a gift upon its release in 1978, The Knack’s Get the Knack smash LP which would be their only smash LP, and some other records that had been picked up more contemporarily at Mystery Train Records in Gloucester to add to my collection. 

I was left with little choice. I immediately logged on to E-Bay and ordered Glenn Frey’s No Fun Aloud album, his initial solo effort without the Eagles in 1982 as the first addition to my new record collection. 

Taking clear advice from John Lennon’s Double Fantasy album, another record left behind at my ex-wife’s house, it’s going to be a lot more fun starting over.