My first bootleg record, purchased in 1978. As a teenaged Beatles fan in the '70s, I was fascinated by the idea of unreleased Beatles tracks. Even though there were a handful of legit Beatles LPs I hadn't quite gotten 'round to scarfin' up yet--The Beatles Again, Magical Mystery Tour, A Hard Day's Night, and Yellow Submarine-- I wanted more, more than standard-variety Fab Four fare, more, MORE! I saw ads for this enticing, illicit more in The Buyer's Guide For Comics Fandom, and swooned at the prospect of all this secret bonus Beatles material. I passed up a chance to buy my first Beatleg at a Cleveland shopping mall record store over the '77/'78 Christmas break, then finally grabbed my copy of The Deccagone Sessions at Syracuse's Desert Shore Records a few months later. The Deccagone Sessions offered a hodgepodge collection of BBC performances and 1962 Decca Records demos, plus the horribly distorted live-at-The Cavern Club "Some Other Guy," the promo video version of "Revolution," and an uncredited snippet from the Get Back sessions. The radio cover of Buddy Holly's "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" was my immediate favorite (a skip in the track notwithstanding), with that definitive shooby-doo-wop rendition of "Revolution" a close second. All these decades later, that version of "Revolution" is still without official release.
Funnyman was Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's attempt to create another super-sensation after their ugly, ugly split from DC Comics in the late '40s. (I was going to say "after DC unceremoniously kicked 'em both to the curb, penniless, as the company went on to make millions off their creation," but no one likes negativity). By 1976, although it would be a stretch to say that all was forgiven, DC had made some amends with Siegel and Shuster, at least enough that Jerry 'n' Joe agreed to appear as guests of honor at the Super-DC Con in New York that February. I met Siegel and Shuster at the convention, and I also picked up my copy of 1948's Funnyman # 5 in the dealers' room. Funnyman, which comes across as a superhero Danny Kaye, was not a successful title, and it's not remembered with much fondness by fandom. But I liked it, and I wish I'd had the presence of mind to have Jerry and Joe autograph my copy.
I was introduced to Chuck Berry's irresistible "Johnny B. Goode" via AM radio in the early '70s, and I don't think I even realized it was a record from the '50s. Berrymania kicked into full-tilt earnest for me in the early '80s, driven by a need to own "Johnny B. Goode" and my new fave, "Sweet Little Sixteen." I began with a used copy of Chuck Berry's Greatest Hits from Brockport's wonderful Main Street Records. This was soon replaced by the two-LP Chuck Berry's Golden Decade, also from the used bin at Main Street. That was my go-to Berry collection for years, supplemented by a couple of individual album reissues, until I ultimately switched to the two-CD set The Anthology. All of my Chuck Berry vinyl was sold in collection purges over the years; when Berry died earlier this year, I purchased another used copy of Chuck Berry's Golden Decade, because it seems like I really oughtta have at least one Chuck Berry record on vinyl. (Even if it doesn't included my favorite Chuck Berry track, "Promised Land.")
Although I didn't own a copy of this 1965 reprint comic book until years later, I cite a house ad for the book (seen well after the fact, in '66) as the first time I ever saw Superman and Batman together. Stupid li'l kid that I was, it was also the first time I noticed that Batman's cape was scalloped, like a bat's wings. Duh. Decades before Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns or director Zack Snyder's Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice, this cover's miniature images of the Man of Steel and the Caped Crusader at odds with each other in "Battle Of The Super-Heroes!" and "The Day Superman Betrayed Batman!" convinced me that Superman and Batman were adversaries, not friends.
Lesley Gore's "California Nights" was my favorite song in 1967, and I was quite pleased to receive the California Nights album as a gift that year. Lesley lip-synced the song on an episode of Batman (while playing the role of Catwoman's sidekick Pussycat), and if I didn't fall in love with her right then and there, I should have. About a decade later, I developed a keen interest in her 1963 anthem "You Don't Own Me," and a reissue 45 of that became my second Lesley Gore record. As a teenager, I belatedly came to love a lot of Gore's 1960s hits, especially "She's A Fool" and "Maybe I Know," but "California Nights" was the only one I remembered from its original chart reign. It's still my favorite.
My discovery of Marvel Comics in 1966 came far too late for me to know scientist Hank Pym's original heroic identity as Ant-Man. By the time I read my first issue of The Avengers (a back issue from '65), he'd already grown into the role of Giant-Man, and then Goliath. (I didn't even realize Giant-Man and Goliath were the same guy until having it spelled out for me in a king-sized Avengers special in 1968.) I did learn the Ant-Man/Giant-Man connection from watching the Marvel Super-Heroes TV cartoons. In the late '60s, Pym shrunk back into a new role as Yellowjacket, and also became Ant-Man again in the early '70s. Busy guy! I liked him best as Ant-Man, and I loved the character's seven-issue run as the star of Marvel Feature in 1972-73. It took me some doing to track down the entire run in those days of sporadic distribution before the rise of the direct market. I really should re-read these to see if the serial still holds my interest.
Flamin' Groovies Now was my first Groovies LP, a promo album purchase in 1979. I was dyin' to track down the Groovies' previous album, the then-elusive Shake Some Action, but I sure liked this one, too. My focus was on a track called "Don't Put Me On," which borrowed quite a bit of its arrangement and vibe from "Shake Some Action," and which I listened to obsessively every evening after coming home from work that summer.
I can't remember where I got this 1950 issue of The Marvel Family. I know I bought a bunch of '40s and '50s comics from a friend at my high school, but those were mostly coverless, and this was complete and intact. I do know I had to sell it for rent money in 1980. We will speak no more of this.
The same Christmas break '77/'78 Cleveland trip mentioned in our Beatles entry above netted me my first Beau Brummels record. I had heard "Laugh, Laugh" on an oldies radio show (on Utica's WOUR-FM) early in 1977, and I thought it was The Greatest Record Ever Made. Good luck finding a copy of it, though! I couldn't track down a reissue 45, nor an original 45, nor an album track of the damned song anywhere I looked. It was to weep. Finally, at either Record Revolution or The Record Exchange in Cleveland Heights, I saw a copy of The Beau Brummels Sing, a crappy budget compilation that was nonetheless like a gift from Heaven as far as I was concerned. SCORE!! The clerk tried to warn me about the dreaded "electronically re-recorded to simulate stereo," but I just pointed to "Laugh, Laugh" on the LP and said, "I don't care--it's got THAT SONG!" He laughed, and said, "Okay collector, here ya go!" And sure, I would eventually replace this with something that sounded a hell of a lot better, but this was where my Beau Brummels library began. And it's where I first learned that "Laugh, Laugh" wasn't the only great song they did.
Cover-dated January 1976, I think The Phantom # 74 might have been one of the comic books I picked up during my vacation in Florida in the summer of '75. Maybe? I was a DC Comics guy who also read Marvel Comics, but really I just loved comics. Still do. So if I could find a superhero comic book from Gold Key, or the short-lived Atlas line, or anyone. I was interested. That certainly included Charlton Comics, the Derby, Connecticut company that had given us Blue Beetle and Judo Master and Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt in the '60s, and which still held the license for Lee Falk's Ghost Who Walks in 1975. A relative unknown named Don Newton was handling the art chores on The Phantom at the time, and his work was simply gorgeous. He would go on to work for DC and Marvel, including some lovely work on the Shazam! feature in World's Finest Comics (a run that is way overdue for a reprint collection) and on Batman. Newton's death at the age of 49 in 1984 robbed the comics world of a great, great talent.
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