“Where I grew up, record players weren’t really a thing.”
“I came of age in South Texas in a town where and Top-20 Radio ruled. The first tape I ever bought was Britney Spears’s breakout single, “Hit Me Baby.” The only music my parents we listened to at home was classical music on the local Catholic radio station or, on special occasions, the Gypsy Kings. My family’s music taste was, in short, tragically uncool. Outside of the occasional odd reference on Nick at Night, I never really understand the purpose of a record players. Weren’t CDs the wave of the future?
The first record I ever listened to was Tom Waits’ Blood Money, camped out in a my buddy’s apartment in downtown San Antonio, Texas. “There is NO other way to listen to this album. The fidelity is incomparable,” he told me; but to be honest I couldn’t really tell if it was the vinyl that intensified the croon in Tom’s voice in “Everything Goes to Hell,” or the massive amount of pot we had just smoked. I just didn’t get what the big deal was.
Then I moved to Brooklyn.
By the time I got to New York City I was in my late 20’s, and had been playing music full-time for several years. As I stepped further and further into the world of songwriting, I also longed for breaks from my genre. I couldn’t listen to the radio without picking apart metaphors or rhyme schemes, and then comparing them to my own. I’d stumbled over Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mississippi John Hurt and found what I was looking for in the Delta Blues. I loved the low-fi live recordings and longed for the crackly, gritty sound of breaks in the groove of a record. Voices drifting out of tune. The metal twang of a slide guitar skating across guitar frets.
I fell in love with live recordings. I largely preferred the raw honesty of a live track over the overproduced bubble gum pop of the late ’90s (even though, admittedly, I did love the shit out of that first Sisqo record).
A few months after moving into the belly of Crown Heights, NY, I bought my first record.
I had just finished my morning babysitting gig, and was cutting through Astor Place, cash in hand. It was a sunny August afternoon, the first of many I’d spend hopping between playrooms, elementary schools, and guitar lessons. There was a street vendor with milk carton crates parked right in front of Chase Bank. His cart was packed to the brim with old records. I didn’t even own a record player, but I stopped to browse anyway.
That’s when I saw it: Copulatin’ Blues. A mish-mash sketch of two bodies melded together on the cover. It was exactly what the title suggests: a collection of songs from the ’30s and ’40s about sex. The record was $20, a third of what I’d made that morning—but I bought it anyway.
Weeks later, I got my first record player: a $100 Crosley as a birthday present from my mom. It did me in. Nothing soothed after a long day of work in the city like that old familiar scratch of the needle finding it’s way onto the vinyl’s groove.
I have always been a sucker for a bad pun. The songs on this record were packed with sexual innuendo, with titles like “Do Your Duty,” “You Stole My Cherry,” and “Keep Your Hands Off My Mojo.” I learned every song by heart and discovered that the only thing better than a dad joke is a dirty dad joke. In this record, I’d found the motherload of smutty double-entendre.
I listened cleaning my room on Saturday afternoons and making breakfast tacos Sunday mornings. My absolute favorite was playing the record when I had a friend over, without saying a thing. I took pleasure in the long silences in our conversation, waiting for the moment a phrase from the record caught my friend by surprise. Inevitably Lil Johnson would come on, and they’d stop mid-sentence, with a quizzical look on their face and ask, “Did she just say…?”
“Put your hotdog in my bun. Yes. Yes she did.”
So, my music taste might still be a little campy, but that’s okay. That’s one thing I love about records—unlike popping on the radio, it requires me to slow down and take it in. It took me a few years to catch onto vinyl, but once I did, it was well worth the wait.”
—Aly Tadros
Aly Tadros’ third full length release, Hungry Ghost arrives in stores today, December 2, 2016.
