Vinyl

[mellicious]

Before I go on with the story about my musical career (so to speak), a digression. I've had music on the brain a bit, ever since I started talking about this, and I started thinking about records. (Talking about Waterloo and vinyl records the other day may have had something to do with this tangent, too.) I started trying to remember what records we had at this time, and especially if I had any classical music. I'm not at all sure that I did - at least, not until I was in high school, maybe. We didn't really have easy access to a lot of records other than the pretty limited selection at the local discount store - I can't remember the name of it right now, but it was sort of a proto-WalMart kind of place. My hometown didn't get a Wal-Mart until considerably later. That's the place I remember buying the first records I really picked out myself. If you look up the hit songs of those years - 1971 or 1972 - the ones I was buying were pretty high on the list, probably. I had "Joy to the World" on a single (the Three Dog Night song, I mean, not the Christmas one) and I know that some of the first albums I bought were an America album - "Horse With No Name" was really big that year - and the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack. I can't remember having any classical music until later. I bet if that store had any it was of the "Beethoven's Greatest Hits" ilk; it seems like there was a series of albums like that that used to always be around, anybody else remember those? I think maybe the first classical albums I bought came from Austin, actually - we used to always go up to UT for State Solo & Ensemble contest when I was in high school, and there was a store at Dobie Mall that we used to buy records at. (That one was Record Town, I'm pretty sure - because it was still there when I lived at Dobie in the late 70s.) I had a Rachmaninoff album, I know, although I don't remember when I got that. Remember I said that Van Cliburn had big hands? I'd recognize the cover of this album if I saw it, because the pianist - a woman - was sitting in a chair with her hands hanging down, and hers were huge, too. Not big all over, but really long. I believe I found that slightly depressing, because I have pretty small hands, and I figured this didn't bode well.

(A cursory search of Rachmaninoff albums on Amazon didn't find that one, but it did find Rachmaninoff: Greatest Hits, which appears to be part of the series I was thinking of.)

And here's Van Cliburn and his enormous hands:

Although I can't say they really look all that huge, there.

(Hmm, for some reason those Amazon store links never seem to work right on LJ, but that blank space you're probably seeing is supposed to be this: Van Cliburn in Moscow - Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2 / Rachmaninoff: Paganini Rhapsody)