{"id":324,"date":"2007-02-27T22:34:41","date_gmt":"2007-02-28T03:34:41","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2008-12-11T09:55:56","modified_gmt":"2008-12-11T09:55:56","slug":"albums-you-let-your-friends-buy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/albums-you-let-your-friends-buy\/","title":{"rendered":"Albums You Let Your Friends Buy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Are there albums you let your friends buy?<\/strong><br \/>\nWhen you&#8217;re young and short on money, when you&#8217;ve got plenty of free time to hang out with friends and tape (as we did) or burn\/load (as The Kids do) stuff from your friends&#8217; collections, <strong>there are some albums you let your friends buy<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/users\/frankenslade\/almost_blue.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"398\" \/><\/div>\n<p>From my own experience &#8211; <strong>I&#8217;m sure you have your own and are chomping at the bit to share<\/strong> &#8211; let&#8217;s start with 3 albums by artists I loved and had been loyal to&#8230;<em>to a point<\/em>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Elvis Costello &amp; the Attractions, <em>Almost Blue<\/em><\/li>\n<li>The Jam, <em>The Gift<\/em><\/li>\n<li>The Rolling Stones, <em>Tattoo You<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I had to bypass <em>Almost Blue<\/em>. I was afraid of country music, and I was afraid of hearing my favorite band waste their time and mine playing cowboys. My friend Andy, who liked country music less than I did couldn&#8217;t resist and bought <em>Almost Blue<\/em>. I appreciated his friendship and the money I saved on an album I would never love.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nBased on the A-side of the first single from <em>The Gift<\/em>, &#8220;A Town Called Malice&#8221;, which I bought as soon as it came to the US, I was prepared for a killer new Jam album. Based on the B-side of that same single, one of those white funk workouts, I began talking up the forthcoming album to my friends. Then the album came out: the cover was in a style I&#8217;m a sucker for! It was tempting &#8211; tempting, but the thought of that white funk workout was in the back of my mind. Before I spent what few dollars I could spare, my friend Karl bought the album, and I appreciated his friendship. I still haven&#8217;t bought <em>The Gift<\/em>. I taped the few songs I liked; that&#8217;s what friends are for.<\/p>\n<p>As I mentioned in response to <strong>Citizen Mom<\/strong>&#8216;s great defense of <em>Tattoo You<\/em>, the release of this album was exactly the time when I became &#8220;too cool for school.&#8221; <em>Tattoo You<\/em> was wrong on so many levels &#8211; levels that I can&#8217;t and won&#8217;t begin to justify. There was no way I would buy this album (and I still haven&#8217;t). To this day I&#8217;m not sure I have a friend who owns it, but when it was released, almost every guy in my frat owned a copy. I spent many a night hearing that album in various college friends&#8217; rooms, plus the album was getting played all over the radio. I&#8217;m a friendly guy. I could do without a close friend owning the album for me.<\/p>\n<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/users\/frankenslade\/getback2.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"320\" height=\"321\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Another category of albums I was happy to let my friends buy was <strong>bootleg releases<\/strong>, particularly the many bootleg versions of The Beatles&#8217; &#8220;Get Back&#8221; sessions and The Beach Boys&#8217; aborted &#8220;Smile&#8221; sessions. The issue of whether to spend a relatively outrageous (for a college kid) sum of money on an album of questionable quality isn&#8217;t one we face these days. With a few mouse clicks we&#8217;re minutes away from downloading some holy grail of outtakes or a shelved album. Back then, dropping $15 for an album of your favorite band fiddling around while the drum mics were being put in place was not an easy pill to swallow. Again, I was fortunate to have a couple of friends who&#8217;d take the occasional plunge on a Beatles boot. The day another friend finally dropped $30 (!!!) on a <em>Smile<\/em> bootleg&#8230;well, I knew I had a great friend, and I comforted him for weeks as he kicked himself for laying out that kind of money for a crap, aborted, would-be masterpiece.<\/p>\n<p>Over the years, I hope I was a good enough friend to have purchased some albums on my friends&#8217; behalf. I will say one thing: <em>There are some albums friends don&#8217;t let friends buy<\/em>. The one example that best comes to mind &#8211; and I learned this lesson too late, after my aforementioned friend Andy came home with a brand-spanking-new copy &#8211; is Elvis Costello &amp; the Attractions&#8217; <em>Goodbye Cruel World<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>So how &#8217;bout you? Are there albums you were all-too-happy to let your friends buy?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are there albums you let your friends buy? When you&#8217;re young and short on money, when you&#8217;ve got plenty of free time to hang out with friends and tape (as we did) or burn\/load (as The Kids do) stuff from your friends&#8217; collections, there are some albums you let your friends buy. From my own <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/albums-you-let-your-friends-buy\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[10,15,45],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}