“There ain’t nothing like the sound of a record.”
Even the battered, skippy and cracked ones.”
It baffles me to this day how the sound can travel from the turntable,
through a wire…and be heard through the speaker.
I’ve been told many times how it does that but I still don’t get it.
Maybe I don’t want to know.
I just want it to remain a mystery forever…
and I like the sound of a record in every shape they come in
and whatever they are made of.
I have been fascinated by them since I was very small.
My Parents had some, but not many.
They listened to quite a bit of Radio though.
Radio I think inspired me to actually buy and hold
what I was hearing on Detroit radio in the 1950s.
I of course was given children’s records at the time –
Mickey Mouse Club, Peter and the Wolf, and Captain Kangaroo.
But then one day I sauntered into my local drug store and I saw it –
(yes, I purchased many records in Michigan from drug stores
right through the British Invasion)
Let’s all sing with the Chipmunks…
I bought it and I was hooked for life.
Then 45s caught my eye…they were inexpensive and had a hole in the middle.
I still have those plastic and metal centers from my youth that came
in many styles and colors…that was half the fun…
getting the record ready to play by inserting the center…
and then rocking out.
A few of the first ones I purchased were
“The Lion Sleeps Tonight”
“I’m a Mummy”
“Kookie, Kookie, Lend me Your Comb”
and a Sing Along with Mitch record.
I used to stand in front of my second grade class with
a black construction paper Goatee on and have the class
sing along with Kim…my teacher loved it.
Then something happened that changed my life forever…
while sitting on the porch with my buddies listening to my transistor radio
they suddenly cut into a live feed from New York of a musical group
from England getting off an airplane.
I would never be the same….
my life changed instantly, much to my parents’ chagrin.
Then us kids used to race to the drug store on our Schwinns to buy a new record we had just heard
and bring it back and play it right away so we could have bragging rights
as to who was the first kid on the block to own the record.
That made you cool.
I have thousands of records now…
Flexi ones, clear ones, shaped like stars, red, blue, and yellow ones,
cylinders, ones attached to books or the back of a cereal box, and some this thick.
I still have all the records I have ever owned…seems impossible but true.
I once even hitch hiked in the ’70s from Marquette to Ann Arbor with
twenty boxes of them.
A friendly trucker in a 16 wheeler picked me up, and when it was time to jump out,
he opened up the back doors and they were all out of the boxes and scattered throughout.
He helped me put them back in the boxes and then he was on his way…
leaving me on the side of the road with my records in the freezing cold.
I played one the other day and there was still dirt in the sleeve from inside his truck.
I remember his name was Jake.
He told me he picked me up because he missed his son…
who had died in Viet Nam earlier that year.
He said he wished he could take me home so that he could give me his.”
—Kim Rancourt
Kim Rancourt’s plum, plum is in stores now via Clown Heroes Records—on vinyl. Our review of plum, plum is here.
