Remember when a CD was called a record

I remember an Easter -- probably 1979 -- that I received a very special present from the Easter Bunny. After looking high and low and all over the place, I found my "stuff" atop some moving boxes in our house in Clarkston. The prize was Foreigner's album Double Vision.

I had asked for the album because the song "Hot Blooded" was burning up the charts. And, in trying to find it (this is way before the commercially available Internet), my Mom inadvertently introduced me to another rock 'n' roll band of the '70s, KISS. At K-Mart in Drayton Plains one day, we looked at several albums, trying to find a song that sounded like the one on the radio -- the one the neighbor kid played almost constantly while skateboarding.

Anyway, the song "Burning Up With Fever" was featured on the solo album Gene Simmons -- the bassist for the band KISS. The album was pretty okay, but the idea that the band members were not "real people" was intriguing to a first grader! I became a KISS fan at that point -- maybe the only first grader introduced to KISS by his mother!

I wore out the Gene Simmons album, then in '81, I traded it to a neighbor kid in Kingsley, Mich., for an Emergency 51 defilibrator kit! I also wore out the Foreigner album. Of course, in subsequent years, I purchased both albums once again on vinyl, Double Vision also on cassette and two different compact disc versions (the latter with special versions of "Hot Blooded.")

I'll never forget that Easter when I got my first record album. I had some 45 rpms, but no albums. I mean, yeah, my parents had some Neil Diamond and Jimmy Buffett, but I didn't have my own! Now, something like 800 CDs and 600 cassettes and 200 vinyl albums later, I can't wait for new material to arrive in the stores! I just have to admit, I LOVE ROCK 'N' ROLL!