yeah, I was one of those kids... pt. 2

click here for pt. 1

Anyway, my love affair with music through the medium of vinyl just intensified with age. By the time I was 12 I owned the original box set of Jesus Christ Superstar. (Look, this was a pretty big deal... at least I thought so when I was 12.) Now you have to understand that the edgiest musical I had heard up till this point was West Side Story... so this was pretty damn radical... WTF - a rock opera? Yeah, I totally devoured it. Played it over and over again. I have on occasion boasted that I can do the entire thing all by my lonesome ... orchestrations and all... and proved it at least twice. Of course, this was when I had a bed with a roll-away underneath... that was my stage. (Sidebar: I did see the original London stage production when I was 15... yet another blow away moment in my life.)

So, my teen years were the "record exchange" years. Friends like Kien, Vert and I exchanged albums. Yeah, a lot of them were pirated albums. But within a very short while we graduated from top forty bubblegum like Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep (swear it's a real song... just click the link!) to the "heavier stuff"... you know, what back then was referred to as "underground music". Stuff like Deep Purple . Coincidentally Ian Gillan sang the Jesus part in JCS so this was especially potent heady stuff for me personally. BTW... I like Machine Head (Gawd, every guitarist I knew would play the riff from Smoke On The Water)... but In Rock has always been my favorite. Later it was Black Sabbath, Yes, King Crimson and Led Zep. We would sit around listening to the riffs... oohing and ahhing over the solos. Which is when we decided to form a rock group called KISMANTAB... we got as far as the album cover design, I think.

The one funny thing I distinctly remember about buying records back then was walking out of the store and making sure to keep it out of direct sunlight so it wouldn't warp by the time you got it home. Plus the album designs got fancier and fancier that one was always tempted to buy something just because the cover and the fold-outs looked so damn cool.

Even when I moved here in 1980... one of the first things I bought was a stereo system and obsessively was on the look out for record sales. I do have to say that my taste in music was always and still is very eclectic. Yeah burned through the natural (and limiting) music chauvinism of my teen years pretty quickly actually. Now, if it sounds good to me... I like it.

So, I have to thank the record player for this. Especially the early years of playing every record in the house. I'm not as obsessed about owning cd's or mp3's these days but if something strikes my fancy... I just may plonk down the 99 cents for the download.

EDIT: So I've had pizza for lunch... completed it with an ice-cream drumstick (yeah, I got mum one too... she is happier than a clam now.) While rereading this post I suddenly had the urge to hear this song. lol... beats me why... but here it is.



Anyway, I am taking the rest of the afternoon off and indulge in some DVD watching... cut cold watermelon by my side and an iced cold drink. Cheers to lazy Sunday afternoons!