We’re Moving!

Since WordPress doesn’t allow any Javascript to be run here, I couldn’t add the flash music players I wanted to. So we’re moving to a new URL.

MothEatenMelodies.com.

 

Update and a special treat.

I’m in the process of ripping more of my record collection so that I have a variety of audio for the show. I’m hoping to get enough done so that I can start producing the show on a regular schedule.

Until then, I’d like to share one of the treasures I picked up at a rummage sale this weekend. It’s two 16″ acetates¹ that lost their labels a long time ago. I love picking up acetates as it’s usually a complete surprise. Sometimes it’s a child’s bad piano rehearsal, sometimes it’s gold like this one.

The recording is an almost 13 minute long WWII field report for NBC. The reporter (Tom Stewart) is in Italy and is doing a segment on the Red Cross Trainmobile called the “Yankee Dipper”.

I have been trying to research the “Yankee Dipper”, but have not found any information. The Red Cross website says:

Records indicate that specialized use of railroad cars during World War II may have been limited to two “trainmobiles” that delivered services and comfort supplies to Allied armed forces overseas, much like the converted buses and trucks, called “clubmobiles,” that provided doughnuts and coffee to the military.

One of the two they mention operated in the Persian Gulf area and the other in the remote areas of Burma and India. It looks like I found a lost third Trainmobile.

The report was in four pieces. I recorded all of them, cleaned them up the best I could, then assembled them back into one report. You will notice a change in quality as you listen. The “B” sides of the records were the noisiest.

So now what you’ve been waiting for. Slip on your headphones and have a listen to a lost memory:

Red Cross Trainmobile – Italy (1945) 12:41

¹ “Acetates are records, usually recorded at 78 RPM, usually 10 inches in size, recorded on primitive home disc recorders, which were on the market during the 1940′s. They have an aluminum metal base, coated with black lacquer, which the recording stylus etches (cuts) the groove into while recording. Most recorders had a constant-pitch feedscrew which moved the arm containing the recording-stylus across the record at a constant rate.” source

Working on the next show.

I’m learning a lot from the feedback I’m getting. It’s good to know that I’m hearing the same suggestions/critics that I’ve already given myself. I’m on the right track, and it feels good.

Hopefully I’ll get some time this weekend to root around the collection and see what I can find.

First Show!

Welcome to Moth-Eaten Melodies. A few years ago I was given a few hundred 78 records and that started the ball rolling. Now I can’t pass by any old records for sale without at least looking through them to see if any treasures await. I have not come close to listening to everything I own, so in my desire to digitize my collection, I’ll be putting together podcasts of the better material I discover.

Here is the first show that I put together as I was teaching myself Audacity

Download Moth-Eaten Melodies – Show 1.1 (59:27)

Please save the file to your computer before listening.

Set list below the cut.