Vinyl Days

Monday night

I was in my room downstairs at my parents' house in Arlington, and had decided to cull a large amount of albums and picture-sleeve 45s from my record collection, in order to turn them in for credit at the Record and Tape Exchange. I put an LP on the record player so I could listen to some tunes as I sorted through it all.

Some of the albums belonged to my wife, so I had to be careful not to put any of her records in the "discard" pile; the ABBA album was definitely hers. All of the singles were mine, and there were thousands of them, kept in poly bags and neatly lined up in a wooden cabinet. I proceeded to sort the 45s into two piles; the keepers were on the left; the trade-ins, including some by STYX and other 80s groups, were on the right. The keepers included an extremely rare early solo single by Stevie Nicks, taken from the pre-Fleetwood Mac album "Buckingham Nicks." It featured a cover photo of Nicks with her pre-dyed brown hair.

Later, I brought the large stack of albums and singles to the used record store, and browsed around as they tallied up my credit. Before long, I came across a mid-'60s album by The Everly Brothers. I studied the back cover first, and saw the titles of two of their last hits, "The Price of Love" and "Gone, Gone, Gone." I flipped it over and stared at the photo on the front of the LP; it was a dense jungle scene, focusing on one central tree which was filled with monkeys. Phil and Don were in the tree, too, poking through the foliage on the left and right in the upper part of the tree. They were apparently naked, but all the observer could see through the canopy were their heads and shoulders. Suddenly, as I continued to stare at the album, it morphed into an early, color promotional video for the record, shown in a continuous loop. The camera panned through the jungle, and the only sound that was heard were natural sounds made by the birds and animals. The camera panned up the tree and stopped on the album cover photo, followed by a loud drumbeat; then the video started over again.

*****

I did bunk in my parents' basement playroom during the last few years I lived at their house, and kept a pretty large record collection down there. My wife and I didn't get together until over 10 years later, so her records were never there. For the record, we both like ABBA.

The two Everly Brothers songs mentioned in the dream are real, and were featured on some of my Christmas compilation CDs in the past, but the Everlys album and the Stevie Nicks single are purely fictional. No Everly Brothers album cover features a "jungle" motif, and Stevie Nicks never released a single prior to joining Fleetwood Mac. I did own the "Buckingham Nicks" album, which is now considered a rarity, and gave it to a former girlfriend long ago. (I'm sorry that I got rid of the album, but glad that I got rid of the girlfriend.)

Not long ago I was reminiscing through e-mail with my friends Gordon and Preston about record collecting, and how I miss picture sleeves. I think I told Preston that if I had money to burn, I'd probably get on e-bay and buy every old picture sleeve single that I ever wanted, and proceed to frame them. I've got a start on that project, having bought up every Elvis sleeve I ever wanted already...