So I had to switch it up a bit. As I mentioned, Let it Be was half the inspiration for starting to write about my records, but this album was kind of the start of it all.
When I was young, I had terrible taste in music. I don't mind admitting it. I did have a few records, and later some tapes. Corey Hart figured prominently. As I got older, more and more of my friends openly mocked my music selections, and thank god for that! One of my best friends told me I should listen to "the good stuff" and told me to get this tape in particular. So, being 12, I asked my dad for money and for a ride to the record store (a Sam the Record Man outlet that tragically and suspiciously would burn down a few years later, leaving an empty lot in downtown Barrie that remains without a building). My dad, naturally, asked me what I wanted to buy, and laughed when I said "Sergeant Pepper" because it was in his record collection that was stored right next to my Corey Hart albums (yes, albums). So to make a long story slightly shorter, I was able to jump right into this album and OH MY GOD. It redefined what was possible, and showed me what music could sound like, what every band shoots for and only a few come close to attaining. Genius.
Maybe the most surprising and yet natural thing for me was that I had heard so many of these songs before without even trying. The title track, A Little Help From My Friends, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, Getting Better, A Day In The Life, all were already familiar. Not that I had known any as Beatles songs, I didn't know anything as a Beatles song except for possibly Twist and Shout, and only because my 5th grade class had, as a reading option, a combination biography on Elvis and the Beatles that, for the Beatles' part, ended as they got off the plane just before their first North American tour. Certainly, an incomplete history to say the least!
Anyway, I made a tape from my dad's record and listened and listened and listened. Well actually, I only listened a few times. I can't pretend to have gotten it all but I came back to it, and only sometimes was the purpose of that revisit to impress a girl with my sophistication (a largely successful tactic, by the way). And then I left it behind when I got enough CDs to feel justified in putting my old tapes in a shoebox.
It stayed that way for too long. I'm not sure what the connection is between vinyl and experiencing, really sitting back and absorbing, music but there is an undeniable fit there. As soon as I got the record player, my wife asked me which albums I might like next, and the Beatles were an automatic request. A request that was more than satisfied shortly thereafter when on our anniversary I was presented with the compete Beatles box set - every album and every single!
So here I am, with all of this amazing music, still sorting through it all, often distracted from putting on something "new" from the set by some pretty amazing non-Beatles music (which I'll get to). But I'd still be distracted even if I just had the box set, as I keep listening to some of those albums over and over and over (Abbey Road, I'm looking at you, and I'll get to that too). And I have a feeling I'm not alone in that. Albums like this one never get old, and I bet
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