A few years ago my kids watched a TV show called Shining Time Station which featured a train conductor then played by Ringo Starr. I decided to give them the details of Ringo's other career. Within weeks we would purchase the videos A Hard Days Night and Help, locate all our Beatles LP's, and dig out whatever other memorabilia we could find.

Considering the relative ease with which Beatlemania could be revived with a new generation, I decided to expose the kids to a selection of old favorites from late sixties classic British rock. These results were more mixed.

The kids liked being able to hear the uncut versions of songs they recognize from TV commercials and seeing the easily legible words and artistically pleasing effects of what to them are "oversized" album covers. They didn't like the tinny sound of the music and limitations placed on their tendency to stomp around just because the record might skip. Worst of all, even within the privacy of our home, they were embarrassed by the need for one of their parents to break out in song and play air guitar.

Not all the music held up. Free from memories of high school dances, concerts, and in depth knowledge of the bands (including who is and who isn't still with us), the kids were in a better position to judge the music purely on its own merits. They liked about half of what they heard.

I admit that not everything sounds as good I remembered it. Some songs are timeless; others are too much of their time. Some bands should not have ventured out the garage, much less to the recording studio. Also, dust doesn't lie. If an album is found in a dusty corner of the basement, having first been dusty years ago at a store's ninety-nine cents bin, there's a reason for it.

The charm of spinning long playing records can wear off rather quickly in these high tech times. I can't listen to them while jogging, or anywhere else other than the prime real estate of the much fought over living room. I have a number of friends who have convinced themselves that there is nothing better than the purity of the needle touching vinyl. This sounds suspiciously that they, like me, have an extensive collection of LP's that they can't or won't update to CD's.

I am changing over, but very slowly and selectively. I may need a magnifying glass to read the CD liner notes. But the music sounds fine, right here on my computer, even without scratches to give it "character." But some old groups, for the record, are not destined to be anything other than on LP's.

Still, I'll l take the worst of what my era had to offer musically over the best of what is out now. Groups had an original, primal, quality about them. Whatever the talent level, they wrote and played their own music without the costume changes and dance routines of today's shamelessly fabricated ersatz bands.

Perhaps it would be best to lay off exposing the kids to the old music for a while. They are entitled to listen to what they like, whatever I think of it.

But then again, I have this pile of 45's that they've never heard.

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