"The Lost Art of Album Release Parties" - Boomer magazine

At late-1970s, album-release parties, you see, the drop of the record needle was our church bell, and today’s tolling was for the band that could do hard-rock no wrong, at least in my fanboy heart.

Before my stereo blasted out Led Zeppelin’s hotly awaited LP, its first in forever, we’d obliged tradition, fortifying ourselves for the music roundtable afterwards with frosted Pop Tarts and thinking-man’s soda, Dr. Pepper. Then we positioned ourselves around the speakers we expected to blow our socks off, me leaning back on my bed, while a pal we’ll tab Carl sat in my worn recliner and another bud, RG, in the pudding-brown bean bag that’d miraculously survived my adolescence so far.

Song after song, seven in all, rang out that summer day in Jimmy Carter’s America. Seven mostly disappointing songs, that left me feeling gloomy and gyped.

“They’re done,” I remember huffing. “A country western song called ‘Hot Dog’? Sappy ballads. All that keyboard. I think I might puke.” Now that the Gods had fallen in a vinyl thunderclap, I fantasized about Frisbee-ing the “Casa-Blanca” style album cover for “In Through the Out Door” off our deck.

Carl, natty in tie-dye and flipflops, shot me a sympathetic glance. I’d been at an album-release party last year when Queen, his Numero Uno group, rolled out the record with “We Will Rock You” and other radio-friendly hits on it, straying from the band’s avant-garde roots. Cross-legged in his clothes-landfill of a room, all of us lightly buzzed from mediocre, junior-year Sinsemilla, Carl hadn’t moped like me now. He acted betrayed, like E tu, Freddie Mercury?

“They all do this,” he said consolingly, sensing my letdown. “These innovative groups forget who they are once the record companies wave a big bag of cash under their noses.”

Click here to read the rest of my essay connected to Later Days

#chipjacobs #laterdays #fiction #comingofage #lifecomingapart #rarebirdbooks #boomer #magazine #albumreleaseparties #ledzeppelin #queen #pinkfloyd #clash #sexpistols #beatles #lateseventies #lordoftheflies #prepschool #brotherhood #debates #classicrock #newwave #punk #growingup #socal #losangeles #rollingstone