I certainly don’t need to collect more things. In fact, I’m at that point in my life where I’m planning my “collection exit strategy”. How do I get rid of all these comics and books? Let’s face it, none of the kids or grandchildren are interested in this collection, and I don’t want to burden anyone else with selling it all off.
So with that all in mind, I find it peculiar that I’m enjoying a new collection. “What a hypocrite, right?” I like the little record player my wife recently gifted me SO MUCH.
Back in the day, I always envious of my friends with high end audio systems. They had just the right needles and the impressive speakers that would squeeze out every subtlety from vinyl. I couldn’t quite understand it. I’d strain my ears to listen for it all, but couldn’t quite get it. I’d be pondering the lyrics or pretending to play air guitar, I guess.
This little record player is compact. In fact it is like an old-timey suitcase. I love to take it on the front porch or in the back yard and plug it in it. When I’m done, it just folds up and I put it away.
This spurred me on to purchasing old vinyl albums. Usually from the bargain bins. Unlike comics or books, where there’s so much that I already have, the world of vinyl is wide open to me. I only had a meager LP collection back in the day. (And boy, did I play that first Boston album a lot!) For example I recently rescued a Searchers album and then a Mama Cass (Cass Elliot) album and then a Nick Lowe album Each was fascinating. You never heard the less popular songs on each album on the radio or Spotify. They are all new to me and full of musical rabbit holes to fall into.
Father’s Day
And this brings us to the curious case of Father’s Day. The Catto Girls were all very kind to me – maybe I should write about the embroidered T-shirt or the customized Batman key chain they gifted me? Instead, let me talk about the Father’s Day present my wife gave me.
At the local music store, Speno’s, she found two Beatles albums for me. One – Meet the Beatles (1964)– is a classic. It’s the band’s first official US album. And you know every beat of every song by heart. That makes sense, as this release re-presented the best songs from several different UK releases.
The other album, The Beatles’ Story, released later that same year, is something entirely different. It’s wonderful double, fold-out album. The back cover copy says it all:
IT’S LIKE SPENDING A VERY SPECIAL EVENING IN THE COMPANY OF THE BEATLES THEMSELVES!
THE BEATLES’ STORY
a narrative and musical biography of Beatlemania
This album is kind of like a filmed documentary, but on vinyl. It’s very Hollywood-y and bombastic. It seems to me like the PR team, rather than an historian, wrote it. There are wonderful interview clips. There are also snippets from the Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl, from just a few months before – August of 1964. Evidently, the audio was not up to snuff—I think the crowd was screaming too much—that Capital decided not to release that concert as a live album.
One surprising element, they are candid about; John’s first marriage. They speak about how John needed to get back home from Hamburg, Germany. He was eager to get back to his wife Cynthia. They were married in 1962 but generally, this wasn’t celebrated in the media for fear it would dimmish the Beatle’s reputation with young fans. By the way, Cynthia and John had their first child, Julian, in 1963, but he wasn’t mentioned. A bridge too far, I imagine.
I love marketing, and that’s really what this album is all about. I’m thinking of this as a prelude to those annual (and hilarious) Christmas messages the Beatles did for their fan clubs. And playing it on vinyl, on my porch, on a little record player, is where it’s at.
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If you want to hear this and don’t want to go searching for the vinyl, snippets are available on YouTube. Or just come to my house and we’ll listen to it on the porch together.
