My First Record

It was one of those cheap-ass carnival-of-the-stars, parade-of-hits, loss leader compilations. And it was freakin’ awesome.

I started actively collecting vinyl when I was 15. It was 1995 and wax was dead as Kentucky Fried Chicken (the chicken, not the chain).

The first time I spent my own meager funds on music was in a South Jersey joint called Final Vinyl. The name was apt, and not just because it rhymed. It was the last place you could find LPs at that point. Most stores around us had moved exclusively to CDs, which could be yours at a formidable $25 a pop. (Not saying that was a lot of money back then. Just saying I didn’t have it.)

But for $12 at Final Vinyl, I snagged pristine copies of Tom Petty’s Damn the Torpedoes, Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms, and The Cars' self-titled debut. All killer, no filler.

That was the beginning of a consumer addiction that rages uncured today. I’m nearing my 7000th slice of vinyl and wondering whether I should just knock out the wall between my record room and the kitchen to make more space.

But I digress…

Those first three classic rock staples—they were the first records I ever bought. But they aren’t the first records I ever stole from my parents.

I was raised in a fairly traditional Boomer household. Beatles, Billy Joel, Simon & Garfunkel. It was all a good primer, but the collection didn’t cut too deeply.

They had Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. I wore that one out pretty good. And it gave me an appreciation for how weird you were allowed to be when it came to Rock and Roll. That was a happy learning experience.

But there was one record that truly blew open my doors of perception. It’s not what you think. It wasn’t of the incense, peppermints, and herbal sacraments variety. It was a far more squarish round platter than that. 

1978 Fisher Price Record Player Model 825

If you grew up in the 80s, there’s a pretty good chance you had some variation on the Fisher Price series of “turntables”.

They usually came with these small, hard plastic discs containing traditional nursery rhymes.

But if you weren’t worried about destroying them, you could also play actual records on your Fisher Price Model 825.

24 Groovy Greats

So that’s exactly what I did with the very first real record I ever got my hands on—24 Groovy Greats. It was a cheap throwaway, a scarcely considered compilation of radio hits from Columbia Records.

It’s what they call a “loss leader” in the business—an LP sold at a deep discount, designed to promote the record company’s stable of acts, and generally expected to lose money in service of boosting sales for said acts.

At the age of 8, I played 24 Groovy Greats until the giant, rectangular tonearm on my Fisher Price bore a canyon into the grooves.

But until that happened, spinning this record was a formative experience. Its collection of songs bonded with my DNA. I had the sense that maybe I was just born knowing these songs. I held on to them as a basic part of my identity. I still do.

The Coasters’ “Poison Ivy”; Little Eva’s “Locomotion”; The Dixie Cups’ “Chapel of Love”; The Drifters’ “Under the Boardwalk”…I can’t picture a time when these songs weren’t simply a part of me.

But the selections weren’t all as obvious as that. There are some bangers on this compilation that veered hard into soul (“Rescue Me” by Fontella Bass), funk (an instrumental cut of “Hang on Sloopy" from jazz great Ramsey Lewis) , and salsa (Ray Baretto’s “El Watusi”).

If you saw this album in the bargain bin, you’d flip right past it. I have no idea who the sad Dickensian orphans are on the cover or why anybody would have selected this shabby bit of illustration to rep the songs within.

Moreover, according to Discogs, this LP has a ratio of 673 “Haves” to 21 “Wants”. That means nobody is looking for this thing. At the time of writing, it has a median sale price of $2.99 (which is higher than I assumed).

I’m not suggesting you need to run out and grab this album. I guess I’m just saying, take a chance on the occasional bargain bin compilation. You never know what pleasures lay hidden within.

This cheap little loss leader helped set the course of my existence.

*Spotify was missing one tune from the original compilation—”Spanish Lace” by the Four Seasons. So…here it is.