Memories of Record Players / Turntables and how they have come back into vogue with the younger generation!
What Goes Around, Comes Around – and is round: an LP!
Recently, JP, our 17 y/o chanced upon a beautiful wood stained Crosley record player that someone was throwing away in the neighborhood! Also, the LP player had a CD and Cassette player with it – no 8 Track Player; now that was truly a fad! I had fun telling JP what the “33 1/3” and “45” rpm meant.
When I got home, JP told me the neighbors told him that the needle didn't work, but that it was practically new. Since his generation is mainly familiar with ipods and digital oriented music, it was neat to see his interest in something that I had grown up with: big albums!
And then I recalled how most old fashioned record players had those switch-around needle heads on them, so if a needle got bad or needed replacement, all you had to do was flip it around. So voila, we were in business!
JP certainly didn't have any LPs around to give this beauty a try, although he indicated that some of his friends were getting into album music like it was almost avant-garde again! But I was able to unearth an old LP I still had: “The Greatest Hits of Peter, Paul & Mary!”
I had to wonder to myself, “Why did I ever give away all of my Beatles and Monkee's LPs around 15 years ago?” They are surely prized collector's items!
At that moment, I had a flashback to my own 17 y/o days in New Orleans when I used to go The Mushroom on Broadway near Tulane University to get all my LPs. My buddies, Scott and Marshall, also helped me find this cool LP store in the Big Easy area, The Gold Mine, where one could get “bootleg LPs” sometimes, like the Masked Marauders!
My buddy Marshall, whom I visited last March in Canada, has all of his LPs safely in those neat clear and large zip-lock containers to protect LPs from water and humidity.
So back to JP's wonderful find in the neighborhood, when I put the Peter, Paul & Mary LP on it, I felt like I was a teenager again – while I love the crispiness of a cd or digital types of sound, there is nothing like an LP sound, as many a music aficionado have noted! JP and Cookie, my wife, got tired of me singing “Puff, The Magic Dragon” over and over again that day!
To borrow from Sonny and Cher, “The Beat Goes On,” and dem LPs also go on and on to “My (Younger) Generation,” JP and his friends, as “The Who” once noted; I got to hear the latter once in a concert at the PMAC; I also had gotten to see “Genesis” at the old Centroplex!
Keith John Paul Horcasitas, LCSW, MHA, 1133 Knollhaven Drive, BRLA 70810, khorcasitas.yahoo.com, 2/8/15.
Great memories. While my younger sister got a 45 player, my twin brother and I never owned any records or players. We considered it wasting money because we could listen to those tunes on our 1930s model console radio, watch them on TV every night or our car radios and they changed all the time. A lot of classmates had records and players so we learned all the new dances at parties and hops.
I remember buying that Peter Paul and Mary album for a second cousin's three girls where I stayed briefly when my car was broken down. I overstayed my welcome that Christmas school break, and the album was an appeasement. The owner of the house wasn't pleased with my gift because he thought that music like that corrupted his girls who became hippies shortly after. Doesn't Puff the Magic Dragon refer to smoking marijuana?
Finally, my two young nieces and I were in a store and I decided to buy a birthday present for the both of them… They wanted me to buy the latest hit, Saturday Night, by the Bay City Rollers (I'm sure you remember that forgettable tune and forgettable band, the downfall of Howard Cosell's spectacular debut variety show, Saturday Night). I objected and bought them an album by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young with some of the sweetest harmony ever recorded. They didn't speak to me for two years, but my brother sure enjoyed the album. BTW, both girls got back on my side very soon.
What Goes Around, Comes Around – and is round: an LP!
