“I grew up in a home with records—LPs. I didn’t own any; I was far too young, but my oldest sister did, and both my parents did. They had one of those huge stereo systems that took up half our living room.”
“I remember that room not only because that’s where the records were played, but also because it was the same room where I made a fort out of a refrigerator box which I lived in for weeks. And then there was my pet gerbil who ran between the books on the bookshelf—and when I grabbed him by the tail it broke off in my little hand—I had never been so horrified. But I digress… The RECORDS. I remember the first I ever heard, one played by my mother, the others by my father, both playing them over and over, seemingly on endless loop.
My mother’s record? Dionne Warwick’s Greatest Hits! Boy did I love that music! Her voice, her delivery, and of course her beautiful photo on the cover. My mother could never play it too often for me! And just yesterday I had to get in the car to run an errand, where the radio must be on at all times, and I have a policy of constantly switching between stations so as to never have to listen to a commercial. And what song came on when I switched to the oldies station? Dionne Warwick, “Walk on By!” And was that the perfect song for me to hear at that moment! But I’ll keep that aspect of it private. What’s important is that her music is just as great today as it was then. No matter the format.
My father was a different story. His passion wasn’t for recorded music, it was for comedy. So his records were comedy records—namely Bob Newhart records. Even as a child those telephone bits made me laugh out loud, no matter how many times I heard them.
As for my much older sister, she had a collection of records, and her room was strictly off-limits. But ha, that didn’t stop me from sneaking into her room whenever she left the house and listening to THEM ALL. So imagine my surprise when she came home one day and said to me ‘(nickname withheld to avoid embarrassment) why don’t you go into my room and pick out whichever record you’d like, and you can have it.’
The record I picked? Well, I’ll leave that one a secret…”
—Elizabeth McCullough
Alpha Cat’s 2001 release Pearl Harbor is in stores now as an expanded edition as pearl harbor 2020 via Aquamarine Records.
