Janis Ian - Between the lines (vinyl)

It's spring 1975 and we're in Paris, France...At a luxurious apartment on the General Foch Avenue there's quite a lot of activity. A crew is moving furniture, electrical appliances and a load of old things to the apartment...A woman's voice is heard: "Please, be careful...oh no no no, don't put this here.."..It's a familiar voice, the voice of our friend, the Hamburg Girl. She just purchased this lovely apartment in Paris, the City of Lights and Love, leaving for the first time in her life her home in Hamburg to live alone and independent.
At noon, the crew finished the moving and now the Hamburg Girl was alone with a friend of hers, a professional photographer...Inside was still a mess but the first thing she did was to connect her Hi-Fi and the TV set. She tuned the Tv to the TF1, which was showing a horse race...not very interesting... "OK, let's listen to some music and then lets go for a walk outside..The weather is lovely and Paris is wonderful this time of the year" said the Hamburg Girl to her friend. She picked from a stack of records one of Janis Ian with her recent great hit "Between the Lines"..The song started playing.."Isn't it beautiful?.. You know I've just come back from the States, where I recorded my first U.S. album and there I was introduced to her and her music...I'll cover this song for my upcoming album". "Oh, that's great..." said the photographer...After the song finished thy went for their walk...They went to various Paris sight seeings, they enjoyed a nice cup of coffee at Cartier Latin area and encountered a group of Gypsy women...The Hamburg Girl offered her hand palm to one of them to foretell her future, while the photographer was snapping all the time photos...At evening they returned exhausted to the apartment aftr their long walk...The Hamburg Girl turned on the TV and sat on her sofa...The French TV News program was showing a report from her distant homeland: The trial of the former dictators. "Oh, I know all these people...I met them a few years ago, when I was there for a concert...especially I remember this shorty with the moustache and the funny voice...oh and that bold guy ...I know what they've done to my country, ...a week before they did the coup d'etat, I was at Vienna at the Eurovision Song Contest......I hope the situation now is better for my country, especially this difficult moment..."...
That moment the telephone rang.."Oh they've already connected it"...She rushed to the phone and answered the call.."Alo?...Oh it's you...Oh my God, how did you know that number...Yes I want so much to see you"....."I know that curiosity killed the cat, but who was on the phone?" asked the photographer...The Hamburg Girl, whose face was lighted by a sudden light of happiness, just gave him a sly smile "I can't tell you now...it's my little sweet secret..."
The song Hamburg Girl covered is that we listening to now, the "Between the lines", written and performed by the American singer/songwriter Janis Ian. It was a big hit in 1975, included in her same titled album of that year (Cat. No. Columbia PC 33394).
The equipment used for the transfer is the Pro-Ject Debut III turntable fitted with an Ortofon OM20 cartirdge/stylus, aligned according to the Baerwald method with a protractor, a home made phono stage using Burr Brown OPA2134 dual op-amp and WIMA polypropylene caps, carefully hand-picked for best accuracy of the RIAA curve, and the internal AC-97 soundcard of my desktop PC with Audacity as the recording software. Between line-in of the PC and the output of the phono preamp, I used a single vacuum tube home made line preamplifier. It was made with a single double-triode vintage RCA 12AU7 (ECC82) tube from the 50's and IRF610A MOSFET's.
The sound quality of the American recording and pressing is very good, with excellent balance between the high and lows and a well rendered sound stage. The vinyl condition is remarkably good, considering that was bought only for a 1,50 euros at a Second Hand records store in Athens.

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  Music

[John O'Donnell]

enormous talent, only one of many deep and moving songs.

[rindcorp1]

Cool song!!

[Ernesto Dávila González]

Beautiful

[thereshouldbepeace]

thanks for uploading!