With Jordan’s recent revelation about his love of Roosevelt Franklin and the record he listened to repetedly as a kid, I started to think about non-music albums that I played endlessly. The one that came to mind immediately was this awesome Alfred Hitchcock album,
Hear a sample of my beloved album,
In a way it's sad that today's kids will never know the simple pleasure of listening to stories on an LP (not that I begrudge them their iPods, etc). So what did the rest of you listen to?
20 comments:
i just recently became obsessed with (and tracked down on cd) boris karloff reading kipling's "just so stories." still holds up.
I had a Disney record called "Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House," which was this weird-sounding chick describing generic scary environments over wall-to-wall sound effects from Disney's famous SFX library.
It was, like, worth listening to, I guess. My younger sister was a little bit more into it than I was. But the funny side effect was that the record made me so damn familiar with the Disney sound effects library that for years I kept recognizing the same damn effects (pack of barking dogs; tree falling; big storm) over and over in all these TV shows and movies. (Obliquely, part of my education about how everything has to be deliberately put there in the arts, and how cool that is.)
when i was very young we had cassette tape and LP recordings of Star Wars, Spider-Man, Incredible Hulk, and Transformers stories -- there were probably others, but i remember clearly looking at the album covers for all of these.
but the best non-music listening experiences i had when i was edging into my early teens were OTR dramas on KNX 1070.
i used to play at a monday night hockey clinic in Pasadena, and the clinics would let out at 9. from 9 to ten, my mom and i would drive back home and listen to whatever was on that night -- i think mondays were X-Minus One and the Shadow.
i started tuning in nightly just before bed -- a different pair of shows every night: Dragnet, Green Hornet, Gangbusters, the Lives of Harry Lime, Sgt. Preston of the Yukon.
later on, in college, i'd buy the tape collections at Barnes & Noble, and even later, i found the complete set of Harry Lime recordings on eBay -- it was my love of this show, incidentally, that later led me to move to Vienna in 2004.
now there's iTunes and Podcasts, and you can get frikkin *everything* for free.
The Third Man!
My sister and I listed to late night radio shows on WAAF. The Shadow & The Green Hornet. They were on just before Dr. Demento.
the writing for Green Hornet was weak sauce -- it commonly fell into what i refer to as the "This gun will take care of you!" Quagmire
There's a station on Sirius satellite radio that plays these old radio shows 24-hours/day without commercials, here's the blurb,
"Relive the magic with dramas like The Shadow, Dragnet, and War of the Worlds, comedy from Burns and Allen, Jack Benny, and W.C. Fields; and radio versions of classic movies like Key Largo and Casablanca featuring Bogart, Bacall, and all of the original cast members."
I have a collection of those old shows like Burns & Allen, Amos & Andy and Little Orphan Annie. When I worked at Wally World they clearanced them out at 15 cents a piece so I picked up the whole lot.
Somewhere along the line, a radio station (probably AM) did nightly installments of the entire Lord of the RIngs trilogy. Sound effects, narrator, the whole shebang. I think I was 6 or 7, my brother was 3 or 4, and we'd literally lay there on our stomachs, staring at the speakers, as if it was the 1950s all over again. Or 40s, for that matter.
My dad taped them and we'd revisit it every couple of months. I remember being absolutely mesmerized, and the mental picture I conjured up of what a Nazgul looked like was on par with what Jackson came up with. To this day, I can't remember a story being more captivating, in any medium.
I also have vague memories of something called "Free To Be, You and Me" but I can't for the life of me remember what was on it. Some quasi-post-hippie 70s stuff. It was my mom's.
Free to Be: You and Me is a ubiquitous recording amongst those of us whose parents were "in the know" back then. Marlo Thomas created it with a whole bunch of guest stars. Mel Brooks plays a baby. Rosy Greer sings a song called "It's All Right to Cry." Gene Wilder and Joan Rivers are on it, too.
I was just quoting FTBYAM a few weeks ago. "Dudley Pippins!" "I didn't do it!"
That's such a great testament to Tolkien. I love that story!
I agree with Jordan, that's a great story Stan. You made me wish I had listened to it as well.
You can find lot of these recordings on You Tube. Whirlygirl gave me a Star Wars 45 ("turn the page when R2D2 beeps"). I don't have a record player but I find it on You Tube and turned my pages as I listened.
Bread & Jam for Francis. That was a big one for me. When I was in college I put it on the backside of a mixed tape for a friend. She didn't really get it.
I still am a huge listener. I listen to audiobooks and podcasts all the time. I cannot get onto the 405 without some podcasts lined up. I listen to The Moth--stories told for a live audience with no notes. Love that one. I was sorta in it once, if you know anything about that show, doing an improvised story which truly sucked. But it was still fun. The American Life. Radiolab--oh, my very favorite. And then I like Skeptics Guide to the Universe, but the other shows are more produced and more fun.
FTBYAM--we got it for Zack and were hugely disappointed. While I remember loving it as a kid, now it comes off as really preachy and heavy handed. It just didn't hold up for me, even though I tried to imagine myself as a kid, listening to it with fresh ears. But I just couldn't do it. The overplayed-ness was so annoying that we couldn't even let Zack hear it, because that meant we would have to hear it. Very disappointing. Octo didn't grow up with that album, had only heard it as an adult, and therefore had already dismissed it as irritating, so he wasn't disillusioned like I was.
THIS American Life. Sorry.
I was at a party with Jordan which hit a huge speed bump because somebody was all "we have to play FTBYAM!" It was probably the only time I'd ever heard it besides seeing the ACB Afterschool Special as a kid. The party kind of stopped while people listened to it, and by the time Carol Channing was repeating her list of products they hawk in commercials ("because that woman is an actress"), I wanted out.
We had some generic haunted house record that was the size of a 45 but it played at 33 and had a normal-sized spindle hole. It had the totally freaky story about the woman who always wore a black velvet ribbon around her neck.
"I toooold you you'd be sorrrrrreeeeeee!!" Brrr.
I'm not sure I remember that party. I'm disappointed that FTBYAM doesn't hold up! "It's all right to CRY..." I love that shit.
I've been to the Moth a couple times, and a couple friends of mine have done it. It's cool that you're into it, Julie!
i'm still fond of ftbyam, dated and heavy-handed as it is.
audiobooks are great. i love listening to old mystery authors like rex stout and dorothy l. sayers.
i wonder if handsomestan's tolkien audio is trackdownable? sounds like a must-listen.
"Feelings are such real things / And they change and change and change..."
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