Day 84 - Records (Throw)

I found about twenty record albums in a crate.  When I pulled one out of its sleeve and showed it to the kids, their eyes got wide and they asked, "What is THAT?"  So I explained how - years and years ago - CDs were not shiny, but black, and they laid flat on a revolving table.  When I got to the part about the arm and the needle, they started looking at me with that expression they get before they ask, "Are you teasing us?"  (Or, as The Princess (age 4) says, "For REAL?")

I'm sure some of you are thinking, wow, a couple of dozen thirty-year-old records ... those have to be worth something.  He should Sell those!  First of all, they got wet somewhere along the way so the covers are ruined and they smell like mold.  Second, this is MY record collection, so there's nothing remotely "cool" or valuable in the entire stack.  There's no Pink Floyd or vintage Led Zeppelin here.  (Heck, I don't even know if I spelled "Zeppelin" right.)

Only THIS:

Which I believe is the diametric opposite of Pink Floyd...

And THIS:

Which epitomizes my musical tastes with the song "Happy Boy":

I was walkin' down the street on a sunny day
hubba hubba hubba hubba hubba
A feelin' in my bones says I'll have my way
hubba hubba hubba hubba hubba

Chorus:
Well, I'm a happy boy (happy boy)
Well, I'm a happy boy (happy boy)
Oh, ain't it good when things are goin' your way? Hey hey

My little dog, Spot got hit by a car
hubba hubba hubba hubba hubba
Put his guts in a box and put him in a drawer
hubba hubba hubba hubba hubba

(chorus)

I forgot all about it for a month and a half
hubba hubba hubba hubba hubba
I looked in the drawer and started to laugh
hubba hubba hubba hubba hubba

So, as you can see, my musical preferences were a bit ... off the beaten path.  Somewhere along the way - around Jr High School - my brothers and I discovered the Dr. Demento Show.  His show aired on an Indy station on Sunday nights from 8 to 10.  That meant I had to take a radio to bed with me and listen to pressed against my ear with the volume low if I wanted to hear the show all the way up to "The Funny Five" - the five most requested novelty songs of the week. 

We actually recorded the show on cassettes whenever we could and then compiled our own "best of" cassettes.  I saved up some money finally and bought an actual album:

This album includes such hits as:  Short People, Junk Food Junkie, My Bologna, Fish Heads, The Cockroach that Ate Cincinnati, King Tut, Dead Skunk, and the classic Dead Puppies (whose chorus contains the indisputable truth "Dead puppies aren't much fun").

And, of course, Dr. Demento was the one who introduced me (and the whole world) to the genius of 'Weird Al' Yankovic.

Albums by 'Weird Al' Yankovic, Steve Martin, National Lampoon and Ray Stevens...

I also discovered Ray Stevens - who had been around for quite a while already and is still going strong today.

So there you go... more fodder for the landfill.  I hesitated over tossing many of these albums (and I do plan to take a couple of the Weird Al records to school, cuz I bet I can find a kid who would want them), but in the end it started to sink in to me:  with the advances in technology, if I really want to listen to any of these albums again (and that's a big IF for many of these), I am sure I can find them on-line any time I want.

And probably sounding much better than I could get with my records on a turntable - if I could even find one that still works.