School Of Rock Part 3: Twelve Full Inches Of Throbbing Beats

45s were/are cool, but even when I was 9 I got tired of having to flip over and change records. Lucky for me, K-Tel invented the mix tape in vinyl form, allowing me to own a bunch of songs I liked (with a few stinkers included) on one convenient platter!



What's more, the shit was free since the records belonged to my sister. I just had to wait until she wasn't around in order to listen to the damned things, usually when she was out of the apartment with her friends or distracted by the Tony Orlando show. I wasn't allowed to put my little grubby fucking hands on them even though she had already defaced the back covers with clever handwritten alterations that made almost every song title about weed.

But those were just pop throwaways--the pristine shit was contained in her small but growing collection of real, full-length rock albums. This was just before the folks had been fully briefed by their fellow born-again brothers and sisters that rock music could very damned well lead to homosexuality, drug use, witchcraft, Satanism and all-around weirdness. A few glaring examples from her stash were:


Yes, "Going For The One"



Rush, "2112"



Led Zeppelin, "Led Zeppelin IV"



Jethro Tull, "Aqualung"

She also had tamer stuff mixed in like the Eagles, Steve Miller, the Monkees, Stevie Wonder and Wings that probably provided cover for the "harder" shit--which as a side note reminds me of my friend Steve who grew up with parents that already had the evil rock music radar, forcing him to conceal his Bob Seger "Live Bullet" records inside of a Chuck Mangione sleeve.

But I digress. Unfortunately for Queen and Elton John, they began to fall by the wayside as I began to notice the harder sounds of Jimmy Page and Geddy Lee--unfortunately for me it was short-lived as my sister would soon "re-dedicate" her life to Christ after a brief period of normal teenage rebellion, and those records (as well as any potential ones that might have followed) were no more. I still had a few records of my own and the radio to draw from, but the classic older sibling musical influence dried up in one prayer. Worse yet, it was my mother who then took it upon herself to step into that role.

So, let us hear something that rocks. Because things will definitely not rock for quite some time.



Episode next: Darkness. The Carpenters, Bread, John Denver and the genre of Christian Contemporary.