“The first piece of vinyl I ever purchased was the best record ever made, at least to me it was and still is.”
“I was 8 years old. My birthday is in January and I had some Christmas money saved up, plus I got a few extra dollars for my birthday so I was flush with cash for a kid that age. There was lots of music going on in my house. My mother was a musician and I had 2 older brothers who were very into music too.
I always liked listening and playing the stereo. It was always on but I didn’t actually own a piece of vinyl myself. It was always somebody else’s music playing on the record player. My dad worked for General Electric as a salesman so we always had a great stereo for the time. I remember hearing stereo effects records as a kid—a train would sound its horn from the right speaker then the sound would move over to the left speaker, etc. Lots of fun.
So back to my first record.
I knew what I wanted. It had to be mine too. I didn’t want to share it with anyone else. It was like a rite of passage. My own LP. So, off to the store I went with my dad. The place was called “Dee’s” and they sold appliances like TVs and washing machines.
And there was the rack of LPs. I saw it right away. It was there staring right back at me. Those 4 faces in silhouette. Then I looked and saw that this band had another LP too. I was confused. Which one do I buy? I looked at the back and front of the covers and then I saw this one song that I really loved so it was an easy choice to make.
The song was “All My Loving” and boy, did I love that song. I went home that night sitting in the front seat of my dads Ford Galaxy 500 holding on to that LP like it was a piece of gold. It was in a sense.
Meet the Beatles still is to me the best record ever made, and every time I hear it, I smile from ear to ear.”
—Steve Butler
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Smash Palace’s new release Do It Again is out now on Zip Records!
