In Waterloo Records last fall, I pulled a CD out of the $5.99 sale case: Electric Light Orchestra’s A New World Record…
I have it on vinyl. My original copy was a cassette. When we got home, I frantically unwrapped the CD. I was anxious to listen to the whole album again.
I put it into the computer, turned up the volume knob on my stereo and leaned back in my chair. The music filled the study.
My mother peered around the doorway.
“What is that wonderful music?” she asked with wide eyes, hearing it for the first time.
I smiled.
I am transported back in time.
Oglesby Hall Room 810 at the end of the hall. Farm fields out the window. The drafting board that I did my engineering drawings on. The texture of my Chemistry textbook. The green and yellow cover of Halliday and Resnick Physics. The tunnel sound of my clock radio playing the three cassettes that made up my entire music collection.
I am there.
Standing in the record store on Green Street in Campus Town looking thru albums that I can’t play, because I don’t have a turntable. I can feel the amaze sweep over me as I heard Tightrope for the first time and looked over to my brother (who was there with my parents dropping me off at college) and asking him, “Who is that?”
The music in the study spilled out into the hall and into the living room, and the memory of Telephone Line lured Trudy. She came walking slowly around the corner and caught me with tears in my eyes and memories of 1977 rushing back so fast I couldn’t process them.
She knew what was happening. She walked up and pulled me out of the chair and held me tightly as the music swirled around us.
Doowop dooby doo doowop doowah doolang
Blue days black nights doowah doolang