About an Old Friend

There's a pretty cool article in today's New York Times, written by Aimee Mann, about "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." This weekend is the 40th anniversary of the release of the album; It came out about five years before I was released.

The interesting thing about the article is that she reminded me of what I thought of the album as a kid. At 35, I have lots of other ideas about the album that I've picked up here and there throughout the years, but she reminded me of the sheer curiosity with which a child picked that album up out of all of her parents' other albums.

I am a lucky girl - My parents listened to some pretty cool stuff. Mom liked folk and rock and roll: She was a card-carrying member of the Elvis Presley Fan Club, but also listened to The Everly Brothers, Ricky Nelson, The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Jan and Dean, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and Peter, Paul, and Mary. I still remember wondering what "Virgin" meant - One of her friends had written it on her Bob Dylan album cover. (Her name is Virginia.)

Dad listened to rock and roll, too, but his tastes leaned more towards Jerry Lee Lewis and lots of 60's soul. I still to this day think Otis Redding is the best "cleaning up the house on Saturday" music ever. I wore out all of the Otis discs and that Stax/Volt Review album he had. My sister and I put on clown makeup and danced around the playroom to the Everly Bros.' "Kathy's Clown." To be fair to my parents, they also listened to some great classic country and 70's honky-tonk Country and Western, too. People, we had a dog named "Waylon." I shit you not.

Nothing, however, could compare to the magic a kid felt looking at that Sgt. Pepper's album, and then finding that what was on the inside was just as other-worldly. In later years, Sgt. Pepper's was the album I listened to (on endless repeat, all night long) the first time I did LSD. In fact, that experience made me not want to listen to if for years and years after.

But after reading Aimee Mann's article this morning, I decided it was time to pull it out and listen to it again. Okay, i don't have the album anymore, but Todd has a Beatles problem, and we own 22 Beatles albums; We could listen to The Beatles for 17 hours straight, according to ITunes. So, here I am, listening to "Good Morning, Good Morning" and thinking that it has been too long since I listened to this old friend.

Gotta go. The dog is barking. Oh wait. That's just Sgt. Pepper's.