Should Have beena rock star... more on Jerry!- record collecting

Record Collecting



A few weeks ago I made contact with an old buddy, Jerry Reale. I had written about Jerry in an earlier blog. He was in the same grade as my high school girl friend and we met because of a similar taste and obsession with music collecting. In fact, it was at Jerry’s house where I first heard “Dark Side of t Moon” through his cushy headphones. I also first heard the whole “Close to the Edge” Lp the same way….buried in a bean bag chair, progressive rock organs and guitars weaving an epicurean feast for my ears.

Jerry and I reconnected on Facebook through his daughter. Tonya suggested us as friends. I had her as a student a couple years ago, and got some news of Jerry through her. Strange to see him now, clean cut and all respectable –like. I remember the young guy, chattering about his records, his Iron Butterfly, Yes and growing LP piles. Jerry sported glasses and a bushy head of hair reminiscent of Joey Ramone. .

One thing that has not changed about Jerry is his passion for collecting. His Facebook is filled with the pics of collectibles, including the Beatles Butcher cover, the music made with Tony Sheridan and various 45 rpm covers from across the Beatles era. The picture of the prodigious shelves of LP after Lp from ceiling to floor tells me that the vinyl disc is a thing Jerry never left. It is an impressive work of collection!

Jerry and I became LP hunters. We scoured the record stores for the pearls among the swine. In Tulsa, the record collecting was at first limited to the actual stores that sold new releases/ W hunted for best price and best selection. There were several GReers Record and Tape stores we frequented. The old hippie record store and head shop, Starship usually had one of the best selections of LPs and sometimes even a bootleg or two intersperses among the legit copies. A few of the other existing stores of the time catered mostly to a different crowd, such as Bill’s T records.

It was then a store from the heavens opened up to us. In a small cubby, a used record store, primarily vinyl, began to advertise. Jerry and I spent hours there, digging through the LPs. We were soon o a first name basis with Paul, who always knew we were good for a purchase or two. He soon had competition from a store run by a grey haired hipster, called Wizards. We bounced from store to store, locating boots, foreign discs, collector’s items and paraphernalia.

Jerry and I even traded among ourselves. He knew I was Badfinger fan and traded me a German copy of the then out of print Badfinger “Straight Up” Lp. At one time, I even traded to him my copy of the rare bootleg Beatles Christmas recordings. Funny, before jerry posted that Lp on facebook, he wrote me a note making sure I wasn’t mad that he ‘begged’ me out of that Lp years ago. I am not. Never was. I must admit, I do enjoy finding little gems and rarities, but as the years went on, Jerry became a much better collector than I.

My music became much more based on listening rather than the collection. This led to one of my great mistakes in collecting. Somehow in the late 70s I found a copy fo John and Yoko’s “Two Virgins” in a brown wrapper for only 42.98 at Starship. I kept it for a few years as an oddity. The music is useless and not worth much except for a Lennon collector. It was a collection of Lennon and Ono first love musical rambling ad experimental noise. So in June of 1980, I parted with the LP for what is aw as a good profit at $40.

Lennon was killed in December of the same year. Guess what the value of that Lp rose to??? Made me ill. Makes a guy want to hang on to everything, huh?

Over the years, I still searched out rarities and gems, especially in the form of rare Beatle music. I found live cuts unreleased, studio cuts, and unreleased SONGS LIKE THE ACOUSTIC VERSION OF “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” long before it was released as a part of the mid 1990’s Beatles Anthology. I fact, I still have a few songs that have never seen the light of day from the Beatles archives… legitimately. Now, those tunes play on my IPOD and rest in my CD collection.

Over the years, my obsession for the Lp died hard. I had several thousand vinyl LPs and continued to buy my music that way despite the market shift to, first, the cassette and then to the CD. I had a cassette player in my car and house, but usually it was found playing mixes made from my LPs or others. I rarely ever bought a pre-recorded cassette. If it was a musician I loved, I bought the LP, to have, to hold, to peruse over and over.

I won my first CD, “The Iron Giant “by Pete Townshend, which eventually was turned into the Iron Giant” animated movie. Then, Ash and Mom bought me a CD player for Christmas… eventually making CD’s of music became my mix obsession. It was only a small skip then from the CD to digital music and an IPOD. Meanwhile, my LPs sit, stored in Fletch’s now vacant room. A couple years ago, when I had the then, sometimes played LPs stored in a down stairs closet, I opened it one day6 to find we had a leak in the upstairs air conditioning unit that accused backed up water to cascade through the middle of my collection. It warped and glued together a collection of LPs from the alphabetically stored artists whose cruel order in that 26 letters placed them under the leak; Bowie, Cheap Trick and Cream on one George Harrison on another and through the letters on the lower shelves. Despite the fact they rarely saw the light of day; it was as if someone had just slashed my personal Picasso.

The LPs were moved first to the garage and then to the upstairs. Ash eventually bought a couple of frames so that I could rotate them for view like things a fine art. But, mostly, the hard won collection sits, like ancient gods waiting for someone to believe once again. Ash and I, at some time when money is a little more available, plan on having another turntable and freeing the discs from their inactivity.

As I look at the LP collection on his Facebook, I still long for that vinyl LP, the artwork, the foldout and anticipation of discovery inside the cardboard sleeve.
And a few funny things and ironic...on Facebook, after all these years of knowing Jerry, I found out a couple of new connections for us. I posted a question...
"your first concert" and found that before jerry and I were record hunting allies, we were both actually at our first concert the same night and venue. We both listed Grand Funk Railroad. And then, a couple years ago when what was left of GFR came to the Tulsa State Fair, I found that Jerry was also in that crowd again, unbeknownst to me.
45m 33, 78........Jerry is still spinning those discs!