I Saw It Sitting There

Joe loves vinyl records. When we moved here to Pennsylvania, we found a couple of great record stores - one in Doylestown and one in Phoenixville - and boom. 

The store in Phoenixville closed, but apparently when God closes one record store, he opens another one. So we had to go and check it out.

Now, Joe is the one who usually buys the records, but I do flip through the offerings and occasionally pick out a gem or two. This time, while Joe searched the Jazz section, I flipped through the rock and roll section and found this:

I think I gasped. 

"Why did you gasp?" I hear you cry.

I gasped because this album was the very first long-playing album that I ever bought in my whole entire life. (My very first record was a 45 rpm - Bernadette by the Four Tops.)

I was 12, in sixth grade, and Beatlemania was in full swing. I went to the Kresge's specifically to look for Meet the Beatles, the Fab Four's second US album and first massive hit. Being a five-and-dime store, Kresge's had a pretty limited selection of records, especially rock and roll records. They were sold out of Meet the Beatles, but they had The Beatles' Second Album.

I was a little disappointed, but it was The Beatles! And it had She Loves You on it! Yeah, yeah, yeah!

Why I didn't think to go a few stores down to the Variety Records store I'll never know. (I may have thought I was too young to shop there. I was a strange kid with rigid ideas about age appropriateness.)

Anyway, the memory hit me like a brick and I snapped it up.

There are certainly better known albums in the Beatles discography, but I loved it then and I love it now. (For the record, my favorite Beatles album is Rubber Soul.)

What was your first record album? Or was it an 8-track tape, cassette tape, or CD? Tell me all about it!