Tangents Along the River Styx

All hail, all things 70s.

Or is it, ‘Oh hell, more things 70s’? While I think about that, read this.

I’m sitting here listening to nothing other than a damned fly buzzing around the room rather than Spotify’ing songs from the very first album I ever bought.

I’m not listening to anything because 1: I doubt the Spotify library includes Vin Scully’s 9th inning broadcast of Sandy Koufax’s last no-hitter, and 2: I’m still trying to decide what counts as the first album I bought.

All this babble has been because a friend mentioned the first album he bought: the post-Monkees Monkee band — “Dolenz, Jones, Boyce, and Hart”. A spin-off group of The Monkees that should have been more popular than they were.

I was a fan of the Monkees re-runs and later had a cassette tape of their greatest hits, which I wore out. But I don’t remember hearing anything about this band. I must have been too busy watching the Brady Bunch Variety Hour (1976) and wondering, ‘Where’s Jan?’. Or maybe I was busy deciding* if I was more rock’ n’ roll or country while watching Donnie and Marie (also 1976). (*note: definitely R’n’R.)

But let me drag the needle back to the start.

The first album I got, I think it was more mommy money than my own, was a mail-ordered 45. The record was only 4–5 minutes long. Or at least that’s what it said on the label. The label that was snapped in half, along with the record itself, because the mailman — in his infinite genius — folded the record in half so it would fit in our mailbox.

The record was a recording of the sweet dulcet tones of Vin Scully calling the 9th inning of Sandy Koufax’s 4th, and last, no-hitter (1965). I don’t think it was my money, and the record arrived broken so, it doesn’t count.

Second Record Album

Second attempt was a joint purchase with a friend of mine down the street. We each put in half and the album would spend one week at my house and then a week at his house. The ol’ buddy system. Why we picked this album, I don’t really know, probably wooed by some K-tel TV commercial. The album was a compilation of trucker songs, “Convoy!” featuring C.W. McCall, Merle Haggard, and I don’t remember who else.

The thing is, at my house, music wasn’t so much a thing or an appreciated art. It was more of a religion. Mom was an exceptional choir singer and enjoyed her gospel music. Gospel was the only music we had in the house. Dad was never musical in any sense of the word (though he did later join the church choir, but that was only to keep an eye on mom — probably a creepy story for another time…).

There was one other record, a talking record supposedly to teach people how to teach their parrot how to talk. We never had a parrot, and no one ever understood why we had it. But I digress.

My buddy and I brought our new ‘Convoy!’ record to my house and cranked up the tunes. Mom heard the line “… seven long-haired friends of Jesus…” and the record went home to my friend’s place. Forever. So it doesn’t count.

Back to listening to gospel and The Carpenter’s Christmas album (‘Christmas Portrait’ 1978).

‘Pieces of Eight’, Styx (1 Sept 1978)

On my birthday in 1978, a buddy of mine from our church thought of giving me one of his ELO albums. He didn’t, he wasn’t sure it would be allowed in my house. The beat went on.

But in September 1978, I used my own pocket money and bought the newest Styx album. Cost me more than a few Pieces of Eight, but it was mine, and it was my first bought album.

How a band named after a river in hell made it through the front door I’ll never know. But it stayed and got played and it didn’t move out of the house until I did.

‘Pieces of Eight’, Styx / Spotify