At 14, after collecting a sizable collection consisting of Grand Funk Live, Cheech and Chong, and a lot of Alice Cooper - as well as receiving my first 8-track tape player/am-fm stereo deck with speakers, headphones and a homemade turntable (from Mom's friend Joe, who fancied himself the technician), I abandoned cassettes almost entirely. It's funny, when reading the history of audio formats, to read that cassettes replaced the unwieldy and low end audio quality 8-tracks, when my personal history was just the opposite. Cassette tapes were very popular in the early 70's. Apparently their ascent was a long one, finally defeating those fat fucking tapes. For me, there were 4 more years of those awful, clicking devices to go.
This is also the year that I bought Circus Magazine's Yearbook paperback, containing a collection of articles from the past year. The article that I remember most clearly was about heavy metal, and was written by Lester Bangs. He described the primal, raw, amplified and distorted sound of Hendrix, The Who, early Kinks, Blue Cheer and the like. Lester's flights of meth-fueled prose resonated with my budding musical sensibilities. The first two LP's that I purchased after reading it were "Kiss" and "Hotter Than Hell", the first two albums by Kiss. I remember referring to them as "full albums of heavy metal" to my buddy Paul Beattie in class at Parkview Junior High in Cranston, Rhode Island. My favorite musical genre now had a name and 70's-era Kiss has remained a guilty pleasure ever since.
My first music machine was a large portable radio given to me by my Mom's boyfriend, Joe. It didn't work. He told me that if I fixed it, I could have it. The only thing wrong was a loose wire connection to the battery compartment, but I think Joe knew that, since he was one of the original stereophiles. I listened to a shitload of top forty radio on that radio - 77 WABC, New York, NY. I was 10 years old and in love with music.
Some of the songs that I remember from those days are "Hitching a Ride", "Everything is Beautiful", "Don't Get Hooked On Me" and "Lean On Me". The music was interrupted occasionally by an annoying man with a weird speech cadence named Howard Cosell, who was "Speaking of Sports", not a favorite subject of mine. Dan Ingram and Harry Harrison were WABC dj's at the time (there were lots more but memory fails -- anyone?). At the end of the year, my Dad bought me my first cassette recorder/player along with a copy of The Partridge Family's "Family Album". What the hell, I was 10 going on 11 - what did I know? I loved it. "I Think I Love You", "Point Me In The Direction Of Albuquerque", "Can You Feel My Heart Beat?" - all great stuff to a budding sound junkie!
Around this time, my mom revealed that the old Hi-Fi in her bedroom actually still worked. It was one of those boxy jobs with 2 foot legs all around, built-in speakers and a slider that revealed the turntable. My first vinyl purchase was With Love From Bobby Sherman. The less said about that the better, but let it be known that I adored the songs "Jam Up and Jelly Tight" and Julie, Do You Love Me?". Who knew, right? My second was a K-Tel rock hits collection that I purchased at Pathmark supermarket in Bloomingdale, NJ. Holy shit! "All The Young Dudes" by Mott The Hoople, ""Come And Get Your Love" by Redbone, "Handbags and Gladrags" by Rod Stewart - I was ecstatic! Rockin' all over my mom's room. I simply had to have more of this glorious noise!
In 1971, at 11 years old, I was sitting on my friend Jay Wehrer's front porch. His older brother Carey was a drummer who practiced constantly. Through the window came a sound akin to what purple fire might sound like if it had a down-tuned bass player. Bah-wah, wa,wa,wa, bah-wa,wa,wa. I asked, "what is that?!" Turned out to be "Electric Funeral", from Black Sabbath's third album, "Master of Reality". Thus began a long and life-enhancing love affair with what Lester Bangs would later dub Heavy Metal, borrowing a phrase from William Burroughs' novel, "The Soft Machine", who apparently borrowed it from a physics text. Whatever, I had to hear more!
As soon as I had enough cash (I made about 5 bucks a week delivering the Paterson Evening News after school) I walked to the appliance store down the street and purchased the first tape that looked like it might contain the same aural hellfire that I'd heard at Jay's house. It was "Survival" by The Grand Funk Railroad. It didn't disappoint, but the cassette had a defect that caused heavy static. I loved what I'd heard, and although it wasn't Sabbath, it remains one of Grand Funk's heaviest. Alas, it was the only copy in the store. I exchanged it for "Workingman's Dead", by, well, you know. Sounded good, but not what I wanted at all. In fact, chasing this particular genre became an obsession that lasted many years. At 11, my musical education was sorely lacking. Soon I'd have a primer for guidance.
It will never be the same again -- ever. Those precious times in my early teens, perusing the racks of Ann and Hope's music department in Warwick, Rhode Island, looking for that elemental combination of music and magic that brought paroxysms of absolute joy upon initial listening, will always be treasured memories. Reading record reviews in Circus, Hit Parader, and Creem magazines, getting enough money together to buy an LP, finding the album, purchasing the album, anxiously waiting until Mom finished shopping so we could drive home and I could drop the stylus gently onto the LP and finally listen to the album. Pure fucking magic! Life, indeed!
