{"id":4008,"date":"2011-02-03T18:26:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-03T18:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4008"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:36:25","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:36:25","slug":"day-84-records-throw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4008","title":{"rendered":"Day 84 – Records (Throw)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I found about twenty record albums in a crate.\u00a0 When I pulled one out of its sleeve and showed it to the kids, their eyes got wide and they asked, “What is THAT?”\u00a0 So I explained how – years and years ago – CDs were not shiny, but black, and they laid flat on a revolving table.\u00a0 When I got to the part about the arm and the needle, they started looking at me with that expression they get before they ask, “Are you teasing us?”\u00a0 (Or, as The Princess (age 4) says, “For REAL?”) I’m sure some of you are thinking, wow, a couple of dozen thirty-year-old records … those have to be worth something.\u00a0 He should\u00a0Sell those! \u00a0First of all, they got wet somewhere along the way so the covers\u00a0are ruined and they smell like mold.\u00a0 Second, this is MY record collection, so there’s nothing remotely “cool” or valuable\u00a0in the entire stack.\u00a0 There’s no Pink Floyd or vintage Led Zeppelin here.\u00a0 (Heck, I don’t even know if I spelled “Zeppelin” right.) Only THIS:<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"\/
Which I believe is the diametric opposite of Pink Floyd…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

And THIS:<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"\/
Which epitomizes my musical tastes with the song "Happy Boy": \n\nI was walkin' down the street on a sunny day\nhubba hubba hubba hubba hubba\nA feelin' in my bones says I'll have my way\nhubba hubba hubba hubba hubba\n\nChorus:\nWell, I'm a happy boy (happy boy)\nWell, I'm a happy boy (happy boy)\nOh, ain't it good when things are goin' your way? Hey hey\n\nMy little dog, Spot got hit by a car\nhubba hubba hubba hubba hubba\nPut his guts in a box and put him in a drawer\nhubba hubba hubba hubba hubba\n\n(chorus)\n\nI forgot all about it for a month and a half\nhubba hubba hubba hubba hubba\nI looked in the drawer and started to laugh\nhubba hubba hubba hubba hubba<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

So, as you can see, my musical\u00a0preferences were a bit … off the beaten path.\u00a0 Somewhere along the way – around Jr High School – my brothers and I discovered the Dr. Demento Show.\u00a0 His show aired on an Indy station on Sunday nights from 8 to 10.\u00a0 That meant I had to take a radio to bed with me and listen to\u00a0pressed against my\u00a0ear with the volume low\u00a0if I wanted to hear the show all the way up to “The Funny Five” – the five most requested novelty songs of the week.\u00a0 We actually recorded the show on cassettes whenever we could and then compiled our own “best of” cassettes.\u00a0 I saved up some money finally and bought an actual album:<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"\/
This album includes such hits as:\u00a0 Short People, Junk Food Junkie, My Bologna, Fish Heads, The Cockroach that Ate Cincinnati, King Tut, Dead Skunk, and the classic Dead Puppies (whose chorus contains the indisputable truth "Dead puppies aren't much fun").<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

And, of course, Dr. Demento was the one who introduced me (and the whole world) to the genius of ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"\/
Albums by 'Weird Al' Yankovic, Steve Martin, National Lampoon and Ray Stevens…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

I also discovered Ray Stevens – who had been around for quite a while already and is still going strong today.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n

So there you go… more fodder for the landfill.\u00a0 I hesitated over tossing many of these albums (and I do plan to take a couple of the Weird Al records to school, cuz I bet I can find a kid who would want them), but in the end it started to sink in to me:\u00a0 with the advances in technology, if I really want to listen to any of these albums again (and that’s a big IF for many of these), I am sure I can find them on-line any time I want. And probably sounding much better than I could get with my records on a turntable – if I could even find one that still works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I found about twenty record albums in a crate.\u00a0 When I pulled one out of its sleeve and showed it to the kids, their eyes got wide and they asked, “What is THAT?”\u00a0 So I explained how – years and years ago – CDs were not shiny, but black, and they laid flat on a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4009,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4008"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4014,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4008\/revisions\/4014"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}