Do you remember your first album purchase? The first album you snuck into the house? How about your first concert? The time you were stupid enough to buy concert tickets up close, dead on in front of Ted Nugent's Marshall speaker stack?
In the summer of 1974, George Blowfish became serious about rock n roll. Now nearly 30 years later, George has more than 10,000 selections on LPs, tapes and CDs in a wide variety of genres. It all started with three selections, all bought with the proceeds of birthday money gleaned from my festive family:
The
Beatles White Album was the very first album I bought with
my own money. It was big, white, and had a cool poster and individual
pictures of all four Beatles on
the inside. Back then, you'd get huge posters inside albums. Another
cool LP poster was the big green pyramid poster inside Pink
Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" LP. Anyways, this
was square one for Blowfish Boy.
The second
album I bought was Lou Reed's Rock N Roll Animal. I'm not
even sure why I bought it, except I remember thinking the picture
of Lou on the front was so weird and wild, it would have to make
my parents crazy. Turns out it was a monster guitar album with
Dick Wagner on lead (who also played guitar for Alice
Cooper), making his guitar howl, growl and chainsaw like the
dickens. It was a live album, an accidental choice, but as fate
would have it a really good one. After listening to Lou Reed I
started checking out David Bowie,
Mott the Hoople and T
Rex. Suddenly, Blowfish Boy was a glam rocker!
The third
album I bought was Todd Rundgren's Something? Anything? It's
also a double album, and I love this one because of the variety
of musical styles it showcases. Todd does synth rock, Philly-style
blue eyed white boy soul, power pop, ballads and guitar
hero stuff. It was also innovative because it has three polished
studio sides and one side that was free form "turn the tape
machine on and let it roll." Album includes "Hello It's
Me," which is still one of my favorite songs.
