Not so long ago, I got myself a new record player. It's a fairly basic model, just has a USB port. I'll admit it's not the best record player in the world, but it was the best I could find that suited my needs. (In fact, I remember talking to someone at the folkie who reckoned that record players like that one are pieces of shit. I went off it a bit then, but hey! It does do what it says on the outside box.)
So far I have copied four records. The first one was Great Film Themes No. 1 by the New Hollywood Orchestra, the second was No. 2. These both came out on Music For Pleasure in 1967.
The third one was Let a Frown Be Your Umbrella by Oscar the Grouch. One of a handful of Sesame Street records in my collection. It's an Axis record that first came out in 1974. Now I have copied a various artists set called Our Kinda Country. It's a Columbia record from 1967 and has 17 songs about Australia and/or sung by Australians.
This is also one of those records where the song publisher's logos appear on the label. (The aforementioned Great Film Themes No. 2 also has them.) Whenever I copy one of those records that has more than one of these royalty stamps (I think that's what they used to call them) I like to read the track listing and see who published what. The first side of Our Kinda Country has 8 songs, each with a different publisher, that means 8 royalty stamps appear on the label of this side. Side 2 on the other hand, while containing 9 tracks, only has 7 of these logos as some publishers had the publishing rights to more than one song on the second side.
From what I have been able to figure out, these song publisher's motifs appeared on nearly every record commercially released in Australia until the end of the sixties. Since then, records made here have only born publishing credits.
I must say however, that the transfer is hard work if you haven't had much practice. Copying the records on to the USB stick is easy, but transferring them to the computer's hard drive is much harder. I think I have got them copied though, I am listening to the copy of Our Kinda Country on the computer now, and the USB stick has been removed, so it must have worked, mustn't it?
