Going on the Record about Music

Once in a while somebody makes a remark along the lines of -- imagine the young Bob Dylan trying out for one of those singer competition shows on TV. He’d be gone in a minute – this guy who has generated an album every year for 50 years. Same for Mick Jagger, Diana Ross, James Brown, Chris Montez, Domingo Samudio – the Sam of Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. (Woolly Bully was the top selling song of 1965.)

That always gets me thinking about my love for music and the music I especially love.

In 1964, Mom handed me a glossy insert from the Reader’s Digest. Opened up, it became one big poster with pictures of record albums. It said they would send me six for free if I joined the Columbia Record Club.

It was pretty enticing, because finding and buying the music you wanted wasn’t easy back then.

There were no music stores. Records were sold in a back corner of the same stores that sold Davy Crocket underwear, Royal Family t-towels, Flash Gordon pyjamas, moosehead knickknacks, cartoon-cat wall clocks, cone bras and hair spray for beehive hairdos. Those five and dime stores – S. S. Kresge, Woolworth and Metropolitan – also had long counters with stools where men could eat a hot breakfast or lunch while making crude remarks to the waitress. Music wasn’t the specialty at those stores.

At least two other record clubs were similar, but I went with the Columbia Club because it had The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night and all three of Bob Dylan’s albums. The deal was: you selected six records to buy, then picked six more that they would send to you free. You only had to buy six more over the next year.

Six records at about $3.50 each plus shipping was about $25. I only made $5 a week at my after-school job. It was a hard decision but I went for it.

Bobby Vinton’s Blue Velvet, a Jan and Dean and The New Christy Minstrels were part of my free choices. Not my style, but they were free, so what the hay. A Peter Paul and Mary album that had Blowin’ in the Wind on it turned out to be a great choice. And, of course, I got the first three Dylan albums and A Hard Day’s Night.

Things turned sour from there. The club only offered albums from the Columbia record label. Columbia did not produce other Beatle albums, just that one movie track. So, no more Beatles choices. And the price of the monthly album was higher than the price in stores. Worse yet, Columbia was an established label with older artists and hadn’t signed many rock and rollers. Columbia would send an album that I didn’t want with a big poster full of more lame choices. If I didn’t want that month’s album, I had to figure out how to send it back quickly at my cost. If I missed the deadline, I had to buy the album. I think that’s how I got stuck with Andy Williams’ Days of Wine and Roses.

Every month, some junky album would come in the mail and I would have to pay to send it back. I also had to buy something until I made the six-more quota. Another Side of Bob Dylan came out later that year. I grabbed that one. I think I got the Tim Rose album with Morning Dew because the year was up and I had to buy something. Luckily, that turned out to be a good one.

Here in my old age, music is everywhere. My computer came with at least two ways to listen to music, not counting hundreds of iTunes stations. In the USA they also have Pandora. My car has satellite radio with over a hundred stations. People have music in their phones. My iPod has 5,000 songs, which I can just shuffle without choosing.

I know there are popular artists these days. The skinny blond on talk shows who just moved from Nashville to New York, Taylor Swift. A lot of people with made up names like Drake and 50 Cent. Maroon 5 or 6. The Perry woman who did half-time at the last superbowl. So, maybe some young people today have a special bond with their favourite music. I don’t know. Music seems so transitory today, the downloading and freeloading, but where is it, where’s the music? In the anti-tactile cloud.

I sound like my parents’ generation. “I can’t understand the words in that rock and roll music,” they’d say. I guess old is old, but then again, maybe old is as old does.

One thing for sure, my music is part of who I am. It’s me as much as my accent or the way I walk or my big rosy nose.

Over the years I have lent and lost some of my records, and my brothers have some of the records that we played in our basement in the 60s, but I still have three milk crates of old albums and about a dozen 45s.

My records are a reflection of me. I like being able to look at them, read their liner notes; it’s like looking in a retro-mirror at myself. I’ve got a couple of Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks; Thunderclap Newman; the David Bromberg with the King Kong cover; three Siegal Schwall Blues Band; High Tide and Green Grass and Let Your Ya-Yas Out; Time Has Come by the Chambers Brothers; Tauhid by Pharoah Sanders; Mothermania; Asylum Choir; Doug Sahm and Band; a couple of Aretha albums; collections of obscure blues; The Kinks’ Soap Opera; Grant Smith and the Power; a John Mayall reunion with some great songs with Eric and Sugarcane Harris; plus sundry other reflections of my eclectic taste.

Of course, I have most of the mandatory records appropriate to my age. All the Beatles. The Stones from Beggar’s Banquet through Goat’s Head Soup; Frampton Comes Alive. All Dylan’s up to the motorcycle accident plus a bunch after the come back. Bob Seger’s first live album plus Night Moves. Hendrix first. Traffic’s first. Velvet Underground’s too. Live at Leeds. Big Brother and the Holding Company. Tapestry. The list, if not the beat, goes on.