A Bit of Puffery

The morning began with computer problems as the SD card reader was not reading. Hmph.

There were a lot of solutions online and none of them worked — until this one turned up: blow air into the slot. With your mouth. OK, why not? It only took one sharp puff into the SD reader for the card to work when it was reinserted.

Fixing this trouble impressed me so, that it was hard not to imagine spending my retirement working at the Apple store. That would be my specialty, blowing air into the openings in people’s computers. One could do worse. 

Fast forward 13 hours.

The Beatles White Album has been on my turntable since Christmas. The new remastered version was released in the fall, including my vinyl copy, a double album that’s nearly identical to the original release’s packaging.

This evening, side one sounded odd, and after a moment of Back In the USSR it was obvious that a big old clump of dust was clinging to the stylus. So, what did it take to fix this tech problem? One sharp puff of air directed at the needle. Bam — fixed.

How fortunate is it to be a master of the machines, both digital and analog? And it was just a burst of breath that solved their troubles.

5 thoughts on “A Bit of Puffery

  1. An interesting remaster of The White Album to be sure. Great separation of instruments and voices and (now) well defined bass. The most intriguing part of the deluxe package (4 LPs) are the Esher demos – essentially the entire White Album in demo format. They sound like they’re having creative fun, instead of torturing one another. A valuable piece of insight into the making of one the best rock records of all time.

    1. I’d like to hear more, as my copy has just the original tracks. I needed to supply a “hint” on what I’d like for Xmas to a grab bag gift-giver and this fit the budget.

  2. I concur with everything “-R” says, I’m loving the new remaster. A few interesting things I learned with this release: The airplane sounds “whiny” on the old stereo mix of Back in the U.S.S.R. as compared to the mono mix because the tape op didn’t use the right tension on the tape loop and stretched the tape (stereo was mixed after the mono). Also, Paul sings “Bah!” (brother) after the “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” lyric, that’s the way the expression was used when the band heard Nigerian conga player, Jimmy Scott-Emuakpor, say it (and he plays on the song, as well). In addition to the Esher demos, the session tracks are wonderful to listen to. The super deluxe edition is streaming on Spotify.

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