A HUGE Mistake

I threw all my albums out.

Are you fucking kidding me?

I got caught up in the frenzy of cleaning this house out to get it off our backs. 

I looked at the albums sitting on the bottom shelf of a bookcase - a bookcase my father made out of my crib - I might as well have thrown the fucking bookcase out too - I got stupid.

The spines of most of the albums were in tough shape - The Cats used them for scratching posts over the years. But still................a thinking man would have at least separated out the truly meaningful albums to keep.

I have settled on a non-sentimental approach to cleaning house - throw shit out - don't think about it - don't get lost in the details.

The albums were the wrong objects for that approach.

It has bothered me off and on since then but not in a crippling sense.

Until now. I am reading Stevie Van Zandt's autobiography. He is perfectly plugged into the meaning of music - the spirituality, the history, the bliss - the effect it has on your life. Now my emotions are roaring.

I threw out a piece of my life I can never get back. 

Music means everything to me. When I was a kid I used to take the train into Boston to visit the record department of Jordan Marsh - a department store, believe it or not. But they had a fantastic record department. Fanfuckingtastic. The trip in was my thing - I went alone to a place that was church to me.

I knew what day a Beatle album would be released - I would be in Jordan Marsh on that day. But even though I knew exactly what I was going to buy, I would spend a lot of time browsing the bins - picking up the albums, digging the cover art, reading the liner notes - dreaming about the day I would come back to buy these albums.

That is what sat on the bottom shelf of my crib that my father turned into a bookcase.

Some of those albums were close to 60 years old. I could hold them in my hands and touch my youth, my inspiration, my joy - my reason for living. Connect Old Joe to Young Joe.

Of course I never did that.

Fortunately I do have a few albums that got saved. 

Clapton put out an album with Delaney and Bonnie - Delaney & Bonnie & Friends - On Tour - with Eric Clapton - that had a picture of a Rolls Royce parked in a desert with a pair of booted feet sticking out the window. I always loved that cover - and the album - and I have it in a frame.

I have The Allman Brothers Band's first album framed - thank god.

I have McCartney's first solo album, which blew my mind because he played every instrument on it and sang every vocal on it. Love it.

And I have Let It Bleed by the Rolling Stones, which has these infamous words printed on the inner sleeve - THIS RECORD SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD - all caps. I just took the album out of the sleeve and held it in my hands. What a mind blowing tactile memory.

I touched only the edges of my albums, and I had a cylindrical duster kind of thingy to wipe my albums down - which I did religiously. I handled my albums in the reverent way they deserved.

So here's where I come down on this.

I blew it - but not 100%. And the albums I still have were huge in my life. I have not completely severed the connection from Old Joe to Young Joe.

I suspect from now on these albums will hold a mystical, magical aura for me. For the rest of my life.

As they should - they represent the birth in me of a love of music that has saved my life over and over again since I was 9 or 10 years old.

That is significant, amazing and meaningful.

And beautiful.