Record Albums

The memory is a wonderful thing. We all remember the awesome albums, the "Help!" and the "Easy Come Easy Go".

We overlook the fact that we spent countless dollars throughout our lives on albums that were essentially worthless.When I was around thirteen and finally had $4.99 to purchase a record album now and then, my modus operandi was hampered by the fact that one of the only stores that was traversible by city bus was JC Penney. Penney's basement not only housed their booming catalog department but also bins of record albums. Unfortunately, the store management didn't want to take space away from the fiberglass drapery displays and shiny aluminum percolators, so the record racks were skinny. We had Loretta Lynn and George Jones, Melba Montgomery and, of course, Johnny Cash. If Alice and I showed up at just the opportune moment, we might snag a Merle Haggard. I had the damnedest time locating Waylon Jennings' RCA debut. So I bought a lot of stuff I didn't even want because I just wanted to buy something. If someone were to look at my record collection, they'd think, wow, she must be a big fan of this "Carl and Pearl Butler". No. This was what the store had.

I eventually amassed a decent collection of albums by artists I actually liked -- Merle, of course, Lynn Anderson, Faron Young. However, the records released by some artists I truly admired were awful. Tammy Wynette would stick two hits on an album, the first track on Side A and B, and fill the remainder with dreck; cover songs or vanity songs written by a distant relative or friend of the producer. Country albums weren't viewed so much as "artistic" as they were regarded as "$$". Rock fans wanted albums; country fans wanted the hits. It took Merle to change all that.

In the seventies, I bought Barbara Mandrell albums and a lot of Statler Brothers, some Gatlin Brothers; one by a new group called the Oak Ridge Boys; some gems like Gene Watson and a brand new girl named Emmylou. I was in love with Eddie Rabbitt. Albums got better, but I mostly dropped the phonograph needle on the hits, with a couple of deep tracks thrown in. Barbara Mandrell's albums, for instance, could be counted on to feature crisp clear renditions of her latest hits and a bunch of forgettable stuffing. There were artists who never quite garnered a lasting career, but should have, like LaWanda Lindsey. I also remember purchasing a disc by someone called La Costa. It turned out she was Tanya Tucker's sister. I was enamored of her album for a while. She had a track called "Best of My Love" that I really liked. The credits beneath the title read, Frey and Henley. No clue.

By the eighties, I knew what I wanted and what I wanted to buy. By then, at least, I had Musicland, which was one quick zip away from my house to the local mall. My sister sent me a gift certificate for a CD. I didn't own a CD player. So I bought one. The very first CD (free, thanks to my sister) I bought was "Keys To The Highway" by Rodney Crowell. I took it home, scraped off the shrink-wrap with my fingernail, pried open the hard plastic clasp with a kitchen knife, inserted the flat circle into my new player and stood back and let the crisp music caress my ears. The CD wasn't even that good, but that sound!

Thus began my collecting phase. I determined to buy every single George Strait CD and I did. But as much as I love George, every album wasn't a gem. Every once in a while George released one that made my heart soar, but frankly, I granted George a whole lot of leeway. Dwight was more dependable. Dwight was my "other collectable". The eighties for me can be summed up by the names George and Dwight.

By the nineties I had Mark Chesnutt and Diamond Rio and Restless Heart. One cannot go wrong buying an album by Mark Chesnutt.

And then I stopped.

I now have lots of digital albums that will dissolve like ether once my current computer dies. Now people buy "songs", which isn't a bad bet. Albums, aside from the Beatles and Merle, are money suckers.

My work is done.

Making Life Simpler

Well, that's rather a misnomer, isn't it? Life is never simple.

I am of a mind, though, that life would be simpler without so much "stuff" to clutter it up.

I'm not certain, but the evidence tells me that, when I was in my twenties, I pretty much saved everything. That was brought home to me recently when my oldest son delivered about six or seven boxes of junk, once belonging to me, that he had been storing in his garage. Yes, junk.

I've been on a remodeling kick of late, so in conjunction with that, I needed to go through those boxes, to see if per chance there might be something I'd actually want.

Well, here's what was in those boxes of "treasures". About 50 picture frames of various sizes (I've always been a sucker for picture frames; don't ask me why); some random photos of people I couldn't pick out of a lineup if my life depended on it; a copy of Life Magazine, "The Year In Pictures, 1986"; three sizes of embroidery hoops, along with a couple packages of unfinished cross-stitch projects; a few of those cheesy CD's ~ you know, "The Best Of...", which were actually re-recordings of songs that you really loved in their original form, but you don't so much love the re-doing of them, twenty years after the fact. A copy of National Geographic from March, 1987; the cover story titled, "North Dakota ~ Tough Times on the Prairie". Guess we can't say that now, can we??

A microphone that I think was part of my reel-to-reel tape recorder, which I haven't a clue where that is, but I would kind of like to have that. A super-8 movie camera and projector. That's cool and all, but what I am really searching for are the actual super-8 films that I shot of my kids when they were little. A movie projector without movies is sort of worthless. I will find those movies; I think they're in the back of our closet somewhere. I'll be transferring those to DVD, just as soon as I can pinpoint their location; I'm thinking in two to three years, at the most.

An instamatic camera inside its very own faux-leather carrying case with the initials CJL pasted on the back of it. AND with a film still inside it! I'm giving that back to my son, and I hope he gets the film developed. That sort of mystery is just the kind of thing that I find ultimately cool.

Some sleeves of baseball cards, all from the Minnesota Twins, circa 1987 (their championship year). I'm sincerely hoping that these belong to my son, because I don't remember being dorky enough to collect baseball cards back then, even though I was sort of a Twins fanatic in those years.

Record albums. A whole lot of record albums. I thought my son had given me all of them awhile back. Apparently not.

That's the one thing that brought a lump to my throat. Why? Well, the thing is, when I was about 16 or 17 years old, I couldn't just buy a record album on my Visa card (cuz, you know, I didn't have one, and frankly, in 1971 - 1972, Visa cards didn't actually exist).

No, I had to save up my pennies to buy an album, and I was only making seventy-five cents an hour, so you do the math.

So, I pretty much wore out those albums. I'd study the covers. In fact, I drew facsimiles of some of them (I was into drawing back then; a hobby I abandoned shortly thereafter).

So, those albums, when I saw them again, brought back a ton of memories for me. They took me back to that room, that component stereo system that I saved and saved to buy. The fact that I couldn't really sing along with the songs on those albums without disturbing whoever might be lodging in the room next door. But I really, really wanted to sing along, so it was a conundrum.

It wasn't even so much the songs on those albums. It was the albums themselves.

So, I thought I would post some pictures of those albums. Just because. The flash sort of obscures some of the pictures, but I still like them. And these, by the way, are Part II. I got the first box of albums awhile back, and I think I will post pictures of those later.

These are some that hold a whole bunch of memories for me..

It seems from these photos that I was a huge Dolly Parton fan. Not necessarily. But it was the late sixties/early seventies, and you couldn't turn around without bumping into Porter and Dolly. Seriously. Porter by himself. Dolly on her own. Porter and Dolly, singing some of Dolly's scribbles. We were all sort of relieved, frankly, in 1973, when Conway and Loretta decided to get together, just for the variety, if nothing else.

It was basically Porter & Dolly, or the Statler Brothers. That was 1970 through 1972, in a nutshell.

I can't explain it, but seeing those album covers kind of stabs at my heart. I guess you had to be there.

So, simplifying my life involves purging superfluous stuff, and stuff that at one time meant something to me, but just doesn't anymore.

The things I have on display in my computer room now are, pictures of family, my dad's AA book and his watch, a letter from my mom, pictures of people and things that hold a special place in my heart, and some funny stuff ~ cartoons ~ because we need to remember that life, and we, are sort of ridiculous.

And what do we need, other than the people we love, and the music we love?

I think that's about it.