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 March 15, 2009 Collecting: A Music Memoir (Sort Of) A couple of weeks ago, my friend Jeff and I were talking on the phone about some records we’d just purchased. Jeff said, "You know, you can just pick up an LP and memories come back to you. You don’t even have to play it. Just holding the cover is enough. You don’t have that with CDs." Most of my friends and I own large music collections on LP, CD, even cassette tape. All three formats can evoke memories, to some extent, but LPs do seem to have a unique ability to take you back to a specific time or place. In a recent online review, one writer remembered buying an LP when he was in Boston for a hockey game. He wondered if kids would remember where they were when they downloaded music. I always tell my friends that I don’t know anything in the news, but I can pull an LP from my collection and tell you when I bought it, where, and about how much I paid for it. I’m joking about the first half of that statement, but I’m serious about the second. Part of the appeal of LPs can probably be attributed to album-cover art, which reached its apex in the 1960s and ’70s, when single LPs routinely had gatefold covers. Since I was a kid, one of my favorite pastimes has been wandering through record stores and picking up an LP that caught my eye and buying it, sometimes without knowing anything about it. Album-cover art told you a lot about a band and about the music within. I wish I’d known about putting records in plastic sleeves to protect them, but even the wear earned by an album cover over the years becomes part of its history. The first LP I ever bought was Return of the Red Baron, by the Royal Guardsmen, a 1967 collection that contained the title track (the band’s second Top 40 hit) and a batch of covers. I picked it up in a budget bin at the Woolworth’s a few blocks from my house, and I don’t think it was flying off the shelves, because it was still 1967 when I bought it. It would be a couple more years before I realized that "So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star" and "Gimme Some Lovin’" weren’t Royal Guardsmen originals. The album was released by Laurie, the same label that pressed Dion’s "Abraham, Martin, and John." About the same time, I won a copy of Moby Grape’s Truly Fine Citizen at a dance held in the basement of a nearby church. I disliked it so much I threw it out. Stupid move. I have it on disc now, and while it’s not the Grape’s best, it’s a worthwhile record. I should have kept that promo copy. I don’t have the Royal Guardsmen album anymore, either, but I don’t really miss it. Over the years I’ve occasionally felt embarrassed about the number of records I owned, and cleared out some I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep. With a few exceptions, I’ve always regretted it. I sold a copy of Soft Machine’s Third to a used-record shop, only to turn around and buy it again, along with four or five other LPs by the band, a number of years later. The store where I originally bought it, Music Scene, was part of an East Coast chain. Located in the first big, enclosed shopping mall in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Music Scene also sold posters and a few other items popular in the ’70s, but that later could cause a record shop to be closed down by the authorities. Music Scene was one of two well-stocked record stores in central Pennsylvania. The other was the record department in the Korvette’s in Camp Hill, across the Susquehanna River. I would browse those stores for hours, pulling records out, reading the liner notes, or looking at each cover and seeing what caught my eye. If I went to the sections dedicated to the Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, or the Beatles, I could be sure to find any of their records that were still in print. Even records by somewhat obscure musicians -- Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Tom Waits -- were easy to find, and Korvette’s had an acceptable imports section. A good shop in New York City would probably carry more of the English and Japanese pressings I craved, but as a young rock’n’roll lover growing up in a city of about 100,000 (including suburbs), I was lucky to have a good source for music.
When I got At Fillmore East home, I played all four sides twice through. I had an old Silvertone guitar amp that a friend’s older brother had given me, along with an even older Garrard turntable with a 1/4" jack that I plugged into that old 100W tube amp. The turntable wasn’t audiophile -- it had a ceramic cartridge and a huge, white plastic tonearm -- but 100W of tube power pumped through two 12" speakers pushes a lot of air, and I was transported to the center of the Fillmore’s 12th row. I soon knew every note on that album, and when Duane Allman died in a motorcycle accident three months later, I mourned as I would have the death of a close friend.
Other records contain similar memories. I didn’t have any money to buy the Allmans’ Eat a Peach, so my sister’s boyfriend let me borrow his copy. Duane Allman’s solos in "Mountain Jam" nearly brought me to tears, and still do. I bought that copy from Jeff as soon as I could scrape the money together.
I don’t remember the cars I went through during those years (though quite a few were Ford Pintos), and I can’t even recall the stereos I listened to some of my favorite records on. (I cringe at the memory of the turntables to which I subjected them.) But I can remember buying those records, and I can remember the difficult times in my life that they pulled me through. When CDs came to dominate the marketplace, I was happy to finally own jazz, soul, and pop recordings that had long been out of print. But riffling through CD shelves has never been as enjoyable or engaging as searching LP stacks. Harrisburg no longer has a local music store, and the chains often don’t carry what I’m looking for. As a consequence, I buy most of my music online. With the advent of the Internet, music is so much easier to find than it was when I was younger -- I can find CDs and LPs I want with very little effort, and without leaving my house. It’s convenient and I like it, but when I go to a record shop in Albany or Scranton, or New York City, or when I get the chance to wade through boxes of used LPs at a flea market, I get a warm, familiar feeling. It feels like home. . . . Joseph Taylor
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A few years earlier, my family had
lived in Selinsgrove, a small town 50 miles north of Harrisburg, where I had to work
harder to find records. Just outside of town was a big store, the Plaza Shopping Center,
which was similar to a present-day Walmart. The record section was small, but occasionally
the New Releases bin contained a surprise. I worked at a driving range the summer I turned
15, and the Plaza was on my way home. I stopped frequently after work to see if there was
any music worth picking up, and during one visit I noticed the Allman Brothers Band’s
At Fillmore East. I’d read about the Allmans in Rolling Stone, but
hadn’t heard them yet. The cover, with the stacks of equipment piled up behind the
musicians, transfixed me. But I didn’t get paid till Friday, and until then I was a
wreck -- I was sure someone else would grab the album first. It didn’t occur to me
that I could order another copy.
Soon after I bought the Allman
Brothers album, while in a department store with my mom, I saw Who’s Next. The
cover of that record was designed to stand out, and I wanted it right way. Next payday, I
rode my bike to that store and picked up the LP. On the ride home, the Shorepak cover got
a slight bend in its front right corner -- the record didn’t quite fit in my
bike’s wire basket. I was crushed -- even before I’d slit the shrink-wrap,
I’d damaged my new purchase. When I got home, I set up the turntable and amp and, as
the opening synthesizer arpeggios of "Baba O’Riley" filled my room, I knew
I was listening to one of the very best albums I would ever hear. Who’s Next has
since become an overplayed classic, but for years I could count on it to lift my spirits
when I felt low. Because of its popularity, I often pass it by when I’m choosing a
Who record, but when I see that bend in the cover, I’m carried back to the day I
brought the record home on my bike. I put it on, and its power comes back to me
undiminished.
I got a job as a busboy when I was in
10th grade, and my dad let me buy one LP a week from the tips the waitresses shared with
us. (The rest of my tips and my paycheck went to my college savings.) I bought Todd
Rundgren’s Something/Anything? with my first week’s money and, soon
after, his first two albums. After college, my first job was near a record store, where I
spent many lunch hours. One middle-aged woman I worked with wondered why I wasted my money
on such foolishness. (The LP in question was a two-record reissue by Stan Getz and Dizzy
Gillespie.)