Spin the Black Circle: A Lifetime of Vinyl Obsession

I suspect that most OCD-addled, music-worshipping fans can point to one particular influence—pusher, “The Man,” gateway princess—who enabled their rock ’n’ roll addiction. For me, it was my mom’s sister Diane, or “Auntie Dee”—seven years Mom’s junior, just different and cool enough to bend my young will to her ways.

Auntie Dee grew up as the youngest of three in a strict Irish-Catholic clan, and was the first of the kids to bag Catholic education in favor of the relative freedom of the local public high school. She paraded a never-ending lineup of Shaun Cassidy look-a-likes through the family’s big Thanksgiving get-togethers, and she played a mean piano, having adapted her third-grade lessons at St. Monica’s into more of a boogie-woogie style later in her teens. Auntie Dee’s basic parlor trick was to blast out versions of Queen’s “Seaside Rendezvous” and Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say?” within earshot of my grandparents, who visibly cringed, remembering the classical training of her youth. Auntie Dee took the business of rebelling pretty seriously. Which made her, in my eyes, a badass. She eventually married a guy named Mike, whose sleek street rod, matching flyaway Camaro hair and pseudo-bachelor-pad residence marked them as the coolest couple I knew.
   
On my 11th birthday, Auntie Dee gave me a $10 gift certificate to our local music emporium, Licorice Pizza, and a ride to downtown Long Beach, thus indoctrinating me into the wide world of music ownership. This was November of 1977, and my choices reflected the times: 10cc’s Deceptive Bends (which sported the Beatlesque pastiche hit single “The Things We Do For Love”), Queen’s News of the World (home of the immortal “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions” medley) and Elvis Costello’s debut, featuring what remains my favorite Costello song, “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes.” As we strolled around the shop, her comments indicated that these records met her approval in a way future selections (Aerosmith’s Draw the Line, Kiss’ Alive II) would not (“Well, Corey, if you like them, that’s all that really matters”). 
   
My first sleepovers away from home were at Auntie Dee’s. Her house had a rec room complete with a pool table, entertainment center and record collection unlike anything I’d seen before: piles and piles of vinyl, sitting in crates, beckoning me like a lighthouse through the fog. Bowie, Mott the Hoople, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Thin Lizzy—these records represented musical terrain way riskier than my parents’ James Taylor, Stevie Wonder and Beatles albums. If it made my folks uncomfortable, Mike and Diane owned it. They allowed me to borrow albums that eventually found their way into my collection and shaped my ideas about what rock music was supposed to be, even as the two of them divorced and eventually had to split the mighty collection (Mike kept the Bowie, Diane got the Supertramp).  
   
Years passed and a lot changed. Diane gave up the piano. She remarried (to a much better guy, but one who didn’t do nearly as much for her record collection), and became something of a Buffett-following Parrothead. Meanwhile, my record buying became cassette buying, which evolved into CD purchasing and eventually file downloading, eroding the fidelity of the listening experience but becoming more convenient. I bought a guitar, formed a couple of lousy bands and declared war on much of my previous record collection (goodbye AC/DC) in favor of “difficult” artists like Captain Beefheart, Nick Drake and Sonic Youth.
   
What hasn’t changed is my love of vinyl. In these impoverished times, 10 bucks will buy you just as many used records as it did new ones back when I was 11, and I’ve been able to buy back most of what I shed over the years, also scarfing up albums I previously sneered at as “old fart music” (CCR’s Bayou Country, the Allmans’ Brothers and Sisters, Little Feat’s Sailin’ Shoes) because, frankly, how big a mistake can you make for three dollars? 
   
Lately, my renewed vinyl obsession has created something of a storage challenge. It’s an old-school problem in this, the MP3 era. And for my trouble, I can blame—and thank—my Auntie Dee.