it is a truth universally acknowledge that if i wished for many thousands of readers here each day then all that would be required is for me to write of David Lee Roth. thanks to so many having good taste it is easily the case that my posts on Roth Tapes and Roth Asteroids have quite large reader figures, look you see. quite odd then that i write of a smaller figure for David Lee Roth.
recently, as i am so prone to be found doing, i picked up some tapes. well, no, not actual tapes as such, but compact discs what had music on them. in some circles it remains far easier to just call (or refer to) them as tapes and move on. you shall not be surprised, based on the title and the many references in the first paragraph, to learn that (at least) one of them was off of David Lee Roth.
my David Lee Roth purchase in this instance, then, was the seminal Just Like Paradise single off of the equally, or none more so, seminal album Skyscraper. from what i recall, or at least i think this is so, this was the one with the video of him hanging off of some mountain playing a quasi heart shaped guitar. such is the way of David Lee Roth. as a plus, this CD single (or tape) has Yankee Rose on it. this is not just the zeitgeist of Roth; it's entirely possible that it shall be recorded in history as the last truly great song (or artistic achievement) any American achieved.
whereas purchasing something simply for having "David Lee Roth" written on it is (very much) a formality for me, there was, oddly, a reason for purchasing this not related to the actual single. maybe out of a sense of nostalgia or possibly from a sense of practicality, the main motivation to buy this was that it was a 3" (three inch) single with an adaptor. i am guessing these things are getting to be increasingly rare. actually not even sure if i still have one beyond this recent acquisition.
something of a "throwback" history lesson, then. above you can see the CD single itself, which is the disc in the middle, the silver shiny one with writing. the outer off-white (bone, beige, cream) disc is the adaptor. when the 3" single disc came along in the 80s it was so that some compact disc players could not handle them, so you needed an adaptor. unless there was some insane level of budgetary saving to be made i still can't work out why they ever bothered with the smaller disc. and no, i can't see how making 3" discs plus adaptors worked out as cheaper than standard 5" (or whatever) discs.
from memory i don't think i have all that many 3" singles. somewhere in the collection is the Batdance one off of Prince, as well as a couple of Simple Minds ones. in respect of the latter, Belfast Child (or Ballad Of The Streets EP) and Don't You Forget About Me. also a Peter Gabriel one in the form of Sledgehammer. now, obviously, this one too. oh, hang on, there was a U2 one, i think off of the quasi album Rattle & Hum, but i gave that to the person i gave my copy of The Fly single to too.
above, in the VHS mode that i have neglected for a bit, is a snippet of Yankee Rose. this is so you may hear how excellent it is, what with it being the last truly great artistic statement off of America. it's my favourite bit of the song, where Roth has a conversation with a guitar (played by Steve Vai, i think). honestly i could listen to the way Roth says "what" all day every day.
back to (vague) memories of the 3" CD single and i promise you the novelty factor, if it even ever existed, wore off fast. the "adaptor" was unreliable, and usually you couldn't get the disc to play properly, or at all. now that i think on, the maximum capacity of these discs was (is) 20 minutes, which happens to the the "maximum" running time for singles the chart company set. you know, when charts were based on sales, and not how many computers the record labels of certain acts could get the songs continuously streaming on. perhaps that's why they tried these discs out.
delighted that this 3" single at least came in a standard, "slimline" jewel case with the adaptor. which again makes it make no sense that they used a 3" disc rather than the standard. often these 3" singles were in very small cardboard sleeves. they were tricky to get the discs in and out of, and also quite a problem to store in the collection. bad idea all around, really.
who knows, this post may well prove to be a celebration of the last 3" compact disc what i ever find and feel a need to purchase. it could just as easily be the last David Lee Roth related item i buy. for the latter i would hope not, but it's not like i am short on his stuff.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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