“From my earliest memories that I can recall, my family had a stereo in our home. It was a modest console compared to other Hi-Fi consoles on our block. It had an illuminated AM/FM radio, 8-track slot, a turntable with multiple speeds, and marvelous chrome and wood grain effects. The word “Electra-phonic” was pressed into the chrome. It was the kind of turntable with an automatic arm and a record changer. All you needed to do was just place a record on the turntable, press a lever, and watch in amazement as the turntable would begin to rotate and the arm would start its motion and drop the needle at the beginning of the record.”
“My young mind was fascinated by the mechanics. The record changer function of the stereo was an engineering marvel to my young mind. I would place the first record I wanted to listen to directly on the turntable and then stack other selections on the center post. Those records would be suspended above the record currently playing and when that record had reached its end, the next record in the stack would drop down, so I didn’t have to interrupt whatever I was doing to put another record on.
My earliest memories of interacting with this marvelous machine were listening to G.I. Joe book and record sets from Peter Pan Records. I would amuse myself for countless afternoons looking at the illustrations in the book and being guided by the pings in the recording to go to the next page, learning to read by trying to follow every word spoken.
I remember waiting my turn one day as my older brother was listening to a record and forgot to switch the speed to the correct setting for me. I was amazed when the needle dropped on the 45 that accompanied the book and it played at 33 RPM, fascinated that by changing the speed you could alter the sound. From then on, I would spend hours listening to records at the incorrect speed. I would frighten my sister by playing LPs at 16 RPM close to bedtime or irritate my parents playing Elvis at 78 RPM at any time of day.
My parents did not have much of a record collection. There weren’t more than a dozen LPs—of the artists I can recall: Paul Anka, the Mamas and the Papas, the Ventures, and Elvis Presley. They had two albums by the Ventures, The Ventures Play Telstar and the Lonely Bull and The Ventures’ Christmas Album. I would play the Ventures records a lot. One day I asked my mother to take me to Sam Goody to get a new record to listen to. After that fateful trip my family would then suffer many days of being subjected to KISS Alive. It was chosen strictly because of the cover art, but it was love at first listen.
By my 8th birthday I had quite a collection of KISS records and I demanded that KISS be the only records played during my party. Stacking all the KISS albums I had on the record changer so we would have as much uninterrupted KISS as possible, and when the last side one dropped, I removed the whole stack, flipped it, and listened to every side 2. That particular birthday would be the turning point for me as a listener, as it was that day that I received my first copy of The Wall, Pink Floyd…”
—Gregory James Elroy McMullen
Bonsai’s self-titled EP is available now.
