POP-A-LOOZA: My First LP

Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. The latest shared post is a look back at my first LP.

My mania for music started at a very young age. A piece called "Five Songs I've Loved (Nearly) My Entire Life" told the tale of some of my earliest pop obsessions. I've written elsewhere about my favorite record store Main Street Records, I've penned a love letter to radio, and I've done two all-vinyl editions of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio (described here and here, with annotation for the first one here). My ongoing series (and long-threatened book) The Greatest Record Ever Made! displays my passion for individual songs, and my 1960s memoir Singers, Superheroes, And Songs On The Radio chronicles my childhood immersed in pop songs and comic books. My 1970s musical tastes were recalled in "Teenage Wasteland," my inability to make music described in "I've Got The Music In Me (And That's Where It's Gonna Stay)," and my path to writing professionally about pop music was detailed in my '80s memoir The Road To GOLDMINE.

I also tried to recreate lists of what may have been my all-time favorite songs when I was in my teens and early twenties: "Imagining/Remembering The Music That Played." Repeating links from a previous Boppin' Pop-A-Looza, I've written LP appreciations of Beatles VI/Beatles '65, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the White Album, the Monkees' Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. and both Headquarters and The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees (and the compilation Monkeemania), the Byrds' Mr. Tambourine Man, the Ramones' Rocket To Russia and Subterranean Jungle, the Barracudas' Drop Out With The Barracudas, Fools Face's Tell America, the [Bay City] Rollers' Elevator, best-of sets by the Hollies, the Bobby Fuller Four, and the Dave Clark Five, and a nifty (if schizophrenic) various-artists set called Heavy Metal. Hell, this blog started with an open letter to the late David Bowie in January of 2016. I love music. I can't make it, but I can tell you what it means to me.

This doesn't even scratch the surface of the sheer volume (HAR!) of what I've written on behalf of the music I love. It all started when I was a little kid. "My First LP" is the subject of the latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.

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This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

The many fine This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation albums are still available, each full of that rockin' pop sound you crave. A portion of all sales benefit our perpetually cash-strapped community radio project:

Volume 1: download
Volume 2: CD or download
Volume 3: download
Volume 4: CD or download
Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio:  CD or download

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl.