“My first vinyl purchase. Well… I should really talk about my second. If I dare mention my first it could possibly strip me away of all street cred I thought I once had. It may be so embarrassing that you could possibly have deep regret asking me to do this interview. It may be so bad, that you may think, how could this girl really have come from Rock and Roll royalty?”
“It’s that embarrassing. Oh god, I’m doing it… Wait, ok, in my defense I was late into my 6th year of life on this planet. I was in total and complete awe over what I had just witnessed. The greatest movie of my life to date! Eyes wide, completely mesmerized. I must have watched this movie over 100 times. I learned every dance move. Every song. I want to be her! I need to be her! I need leg warmers, I need a bandana around my forehead, wait, I need a flowing chiffon Ice Castles dress, I need rollers skates!! I NEED to be her!! But wait, there’s more! She could be a throw back jazz singer in the perfect cigarette girl outfit, a cowgirl, and ’80s electric goddess, a work out queen…she was everything. A muse. My muse. Here it goes…
Xanadu. Yes. That Xanadu. The ridiculous movie soundtrack featuring Olivia Newton John on the cover looking as glorious as ever. I will never forget this experience. It was quite emotional and traumatic.
I had saved up months of allowance to get this album. It was all I could think about. If only I could get the album, then I could read the lyrics in the liner notes, I could learn who she really was, and then I could figure out how to get to Xanadu. I could get the address to that art deco building in the photo and be free from the shackles of my crazy hippy life as I knew it. Xanadu. That’s where I needed to be. And I could only get there through the pertinent information located in the secrets of this particular vinyl.
My dad reluctantly took me to Tower Records on Sunset when I had saved up enough. I say reluctantly because he was from this old band called Blood Sweat and Tears and his choice in music couldn’t have been more different at that time. He tried desperately to get me to love all the great jazz legends (which naturally I do now, not to mention Stevie Nicks was jamming with him in my house on more than one occasion), but as a nearly 7-year-old little girl, that was not the greatness I was looking for at the time.
So, off we went. We were standing in the X aisle. I was literally shaking I was so excited. I sift through the X’s in the record bin and there is the divider thingy, you know the thing that says Xanadu. Where Xanadu SHOULD’VE been.
It’s Empty. Empty! I gasp and we find a salesperson to help us. “Where is Xanadu? I need Xanadu!” I can barely breathe. He says “Sorry miss, it’s sold out”. OMG. And that’s not where it ends. Tears are streaming down my face and my dad is feeling really nervous now. “There’s another record store across the street,” he says rocking a bit. Licorice Pizza.
Licorice Pizza was the indie alternative to Tower Records. Where the even “cooler” kids shopped. NO chance they will have Xanadu. Or would they?
We dash over there and I literally run to the X aisle once again. As I’m trying to nudge my way in, a grown man is standing right in front of the X’s holding the fucking LAST Xanadu album. He’s reading the back cover, just taking his time, looking at other records while holding my beloved Xanadu. What was a grown man doing with that record anyways?
I look at my dad and the man, back and forth, back and forth, and I lose it. I’m bawling now. Totally, completely, heartbroken.
We start to walk out of the store and the man holding my treasure apparently saw the drama I insisted he inflicted upon me. He hands me the album and says, “Go ahead, you can have it.”
I don’t even remember if I said thank you or what happened after that. I was just so completely over the moon and still recovering from the possibility that I may not ever get Xanadu in my arms, never know Olivia Newton John, she will not get my fan mail, and I’ll never get to Xanadu.
So there it is. My first album.
Don’t get me wrong, I was no stranger to vinyl in the house. We had a nice stereo. Incredible speakers. My brother was always playing The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. My dad had loads of Billie Holiday, Ella, Sarah Vaughn, classical music, Fleetwood Mac, his own band members jamming away on vinyl. And then I went on to buy Madonna and my life changed forever as I knew it.
To say this all influenced my current music’s electronic, throwback, sultry vibes would be an understatement.”
—Shana Halligan
“Hurricane,” the current single from Shana Halligan, is in stores now in advance of a collaboration with Thievery Corporation to arrive later in 2018.
