The First One

Over at Popdose, Dave Steed is collecting first-music-purchase stories. Sitting on the desk next to me right now is the first album I ever bought: the 1973 K-Tel sampler Bright Side of Music. I bought it sometime in late ‘73 or early ‘74, after about three years of buying exclusively singles. I forget where I got it—probably at one of the discount stores in town, maybe Gibson’s. It wasn’t the thing they would have carried at S&O TV, the place where I bought most of my singles.

There are 22 songs on it, all but one of which have been edited down to about three minutes or less. (I know how long they are because I timed ‘em myself, using my stopwatch. It doesn’t work anymore, but it’s in this office somewhere right now.) I’m not going to go through all of the K-Tel samplers I own to find out for sure, but my sense is that Bright Side of Music was particularly brutal in hacking down the songs. Of the legitimate hits on the album, only a few are presented in a form close to their original lengths: “Motorcycle Mama” by Sailcat (which ran only about two minutes anyhow), “Let’s Pretend” and “I Wanna Be With You” by the Raspberries, “Daisy a Day” by Jud Strunk, and “Down by the Lazy River” by the Osmonds. The others have introductions hacked off, are missing verses, or are faded early. It’s always amazed me that the original labels on which these songs are released would permit this, although it’s possible they didn’t care as long as they got paid.

I use the term “legitimate hits” deliberately, because like all K-Tel samplers of the early 70s, Bright Side of Music contains a few songs that nicked the lower reaches of the charts or missed them entirely. It includes “Step by Step” by Joe Simon, which reached Number 37, “What Am I Crying For” by Dennis Yost and the Classics IV, which reached Number 39, and “Boogie Woogie Man” by Paul Davis, which reached Number 68. It also has a minor hit single that has become a rock classic, “Bell Bottom Blues.” It’s the Derek and the Dominoes recording, which had reached Number 91 in 1971; two years later it would reach Number 73, rereleased under Clapton’s name. It’s also victimized by the worst edit on the album, mercilessly slashed from 5:00 to 2:12.

There’s no need for me to keep Bright Side of Music anymore; I’ve long since replaced all of the hits with pristine, full-length digital versions (even “Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast”), and I don’t care about most of the marginal stuff. But I am not one of those people who easily gets rid of his old records. (I put a few of my singles on a garage sale about 10 years ago, and I’ve regretted it ever since.) I’ve had it for nearly 35 years. What’s a few more?

I’m going to post the one song on Bright Side of Music that never made the Hot 100 at all: “It’s Lonely Out There” by the Sweet. As best I can reconstruct the history, it was the B-side of the group’s first single, “Slow Motion,” which stiffed in the summer of 1968. The garage/glam hybrid sound of “It’s Lonely Out There” isn’t exactly the bubblegum Sweet that would score a few years later with “Little Willy,” and it’s sure not the rockin’ Sweet of “Ballroom Blitz.” But in 1968, it should have been an A-side.

“It’s Lonely Out There”/The Sweet
“Slow Motion”/The Sweet (buy ‘em here)

New at WNEW.com: This Week in Rock History. Coming tomorrow: the second album I ever bought.