“I wish I had more of my early life’s moments at such clear and instant recall as this one: standing in the record section of Nichol’s department store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, happily holding onto my first album purchase, The Beatles’ double ‘red album’ of early singles.”
“This was not a purchase made lightly, (and where would the money have even come from? Maybe from cards I received for my Confirmation), but with it, I joined the privileged world of my older brothers and sisters and other People Who Owned Music. More importantly of course, I gained a soundtrack for my middle school years, a thrilling and understanding companion that echoed and sometimes intensified, sometimes calmed all of the emotions of eighth grade and beyond.
When I say I was holding my first album in the store, what I picture is holding on with both arms—besides containing music I loved, the red album was physically substantial. I liked that it opened to that wonderful black and white, Linda McCartney photo of John, Paul, George, and Ringo amongst a crowd of friendly looking people of all ages, in what I imagined to be Liverpool. The photo spanned both sides of the album’s interior. I also loved the white and green Apple labels which were such a visual connection to great music since I was very young.
My brothers and sisters kept stacks of 45s beside the record player in our basement which my parents allowed them to turn into a room of their own, mostly devoted to listening to music, and crowned with a gigantic, charcoal-like mural portrait of Paul McCartney, painted by a friend of one of my sisters, that greeted anyone who opened the door to the basement steps.
The labels of all those 45s were a thing of fascination for me and I enjoyed looking through them. The pale blue grey one contained The Turtles’ Eleanor, which I loved. The orange and yellow swirl ones were good too, often holding Beach Boys songs, and there were the red and white, somewhat flag-ish ones for The Monkees. But the Apple labels were the most beautiful.
It took a while to save up for a second album, another double Beatles album bought at the same store. This one, called Love Songs, was maybe not an Apple release—I can’t remember—and with a brown and gold cover, was not much to look at, but it held such wonderful songs. My favorite, the John Lennon song “I’ll Be Back,” had these shifts from minor to major to minor, that were so thrilling and emotional—where had these songs been before now? How had I never even heard of many of them before? This is part of the wonder of listening to a whole album, I suppose—the possibility of the best kind of surprise.
—Karen Peris
The Innocence Mission’s new release Sun on the Square is in stores now via Badman Recording Co—on vinyl.
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