Get Happy!!

I remember, as a boy, the joy of riding home on my bike with a new LP hanging from my handle bars in a yellow Fay's Drugs bag. The new Queen album, "A Day at the Races" or perhaps "News of the World". I'd rush home, the excitement building, wondering what wonderful sounds I would hear emanating from the vinyl platter. I would know the single already, from endless airings on the local radio station (the one that 25 years later seems to play the same songs that they did then), but as for the rest, it was unknown territory --- what would Freddie and the boys have for me this year?

And it was a yearly ritual; back then an artist released an album a year. This would be Queen's statement for 1976 or 1977. They'd support the LP with a tour and then, lo and behold, the following November, another 12" inch platter of delight. Would they use another Marx Brothers title? Would they put the bands picture on the front? How would they top the last LP?

When my sister, two years my senior, got her license, the ritual changed a little - we had access to a car and so access to real record stores: Gerber Music and Record Town in the malls; Discount Records and Record Theatre and Spectrum, best of all, on the hill near Syracuse University. No longer limited to the minor selection at Fay's and Grant's, this confluence of access and age (we were in our teens) saw our musical horizons expand.

It was summer 1978, the first Cars album came along and opened my eyes. Sure, it was Queen producer Roy Thomas Baker behind the board, and the songs were beyond radio friendly; even in Syracuse they were played on the air, but they had enough New Wave edginess to show me a different direction, further vistas. They were my gateway drug, from them I would expand out into a harsher and heavier musical world, and in the process they would further mold my personality into the outsider-type that I remain today.

Not that I wasn't predisposed to be an outsider --- any boy that spends his time reading DC comics and "The Lord of the Rings", growing Venus Flytraps and rearing Sea Monkeys, sea horses and starfish, and who owns an Uncle Milton's ant farm (all dead, I'm afraid), had best give up his dreams of prom king and football hero glory.

But I digress...

Spectrum was the student run record store on University Avenue. It was in an old residential house, since torn down for either a parking lot or a hotel. It was a joy to behold. Cramped spaces, racks and racks of strange record albums, each marked with a colored dot to signify the price. We'd only get up there once every 3 or 4 months, so the new release wall was one of the great wonders of the record world --- look at all those cool, new albums. Most were 5.99 each, a good one or two dollars below list. The place had such atmosphere - lighted incense; pretty college girls shopping for Velvet Underground LP's (probably James Taylor albums); the clerks, so cool and hip, friendly but utterly alien ("when I grow up, I wanna work in a place just like this..."). Ah, sweet youth. When a record store in Syracuse was really a Record Store.

And 5 minutes away, there was the Marshall Street Record Theatre, no slouch itself (where I bought "Double Fantasy" in November 1980 and the first B-52's album in 1979, and the "Sid Sings" LP, I'd almost forgotten about that) . And Discount Records just down the street (where I got Devo's "Freedom of Choice" in May 1980, a month before I graduated from Liverpool High School). I'm starting to sound like Scrooge --- "why, there's old Fezziwig..."

Well, to quote Stan Francis, "They're all gone, Rudolph".

And with them went a lot of the joy of music. I know, nostalgia colors my memories and maybe the 80's stores weren't that bad; hell, I worked for 2.5 years in one of those stores, and that was really the experience that changed my life and finds me working, at the age of 44, in an online record store. But the personality began to vanish with the end of the 70's, the stores had less and less leeway to present themselves as unique. And I'd take an 80's Cavage's now, over what we have, but I suppose nothing can save modern music, not even dressing it up like the old record stores, giving it some head shop ambiance --- it's not the stores now, it's the society, stupid!

Anyhow, I was scanning pictures of some old Elvis LP's yesterday (you know, the real Elvis, the one with the glasses), and I took an extra long look at a French copy of "Get Happy!!", and remembered bringing that 20 song platter home and sitting down in the cellar, where the stereo was, and just leaning back and saying to myself "what's he got this time?" And I remembered that on my copy, on the back of the jacket, where The Attractions were pictured, that the ink in Pete's picture had smeared, and created a kind of cool effect, and that for years, I didn't know if that was the way the LP was supposed to look (maybe Pete had died and been replaced by a lookalike named William Campbell). Being young, I just never thought about turning another copy over in the record store to see if it was the same. But with so many other LP's to look at ("holy cow, look at these strange import albums! I didn't know the Fabulous Poodles had an album with this title!"), why bother?

TM