But twelve songs? All by the same group? One after another? Isn't that overkill? Is this just some ploy to get my money?!?!?!? Surely you can pass on such a dubious offer. Keep that money. Spend it on candy, comic books and slingshots. You can scrounge up the change for those in the couch cushions and when you buy one of them you'll be sure you're getting the song you WANT, not a bunch of songs by the same artist thrown together around the one or two you may recognize, or heck, already have on singles you bought months before. What's the point of this anyway? To get an album cover with a picture of the artist on it?!? Half the time they don't even have their own picture on the cover anyway, they'll put some sappy looking girl on it, or a bland shot of something unrelated to the music altogether. I suppose if you're a girl and you want a picture of Elvis Presley or Ricky Nelson then spending almost four bucks on an LP might be more understandable, but not for you! All you care about is the music! The sounds on that record. Rock music is about singles. One song, if you're lucky two good ones, on a 45 RPM disc for less than a buck. Albums are for listening to Frank Sinatra, Nat "King" Cole and Harry Belafonte. They're for Broadway shows and Christmas carols. They aren't for kids and they SURE aren't for rock 'n' roll! They're what old people listen to when they finally put the kids to bed and are doing all the fun parenting things the color brochures rave about, like washing dishes, reading newspapers and arguing over the children's behavior. Your allowance is just 25 cents a week. That's four months of allowances, kid. If you keep spending money that recklessly then at the end of the year all you'll have to show for 1958 are three long playing records that you never listen to anymore and an empty wallet. Besides, LP's are for adults.
at least until you get your driver's license a few months later and leave such childlike diversions behind. So given that your passing interests pass at such a astonishing rate do you really think spending a good chunk of the money you earned in hours of arduous labor mowing lawns or shoveling sidewalks over the past twelve months on a long playing record is a sound investment? Is this LP destined to become another monument to impulse buying that will be cluttering the floor of your bedroom closet alongside your coonskin cap, glow-in-the-dark yo-yo and old issues of MAD magazines? Don't forget, you'll need to save room in there for the hula hoop soon anyway. And God help us all when next year the hula-hoop becomes a national craze and your hips join the rest of the hips in your class in learning the challenging skill of keeping that silly plastic tube rotating endlessly around your midsection.
But next week she'll be history too, as some yet to be determined beauty in English class will catch your eye and be proclaimed as the future Mrs. That Charles Atlas workout routine you sent away for last month so you can be muscle bound by the summer to look good on the beach lasted all of a weekend before you became resigned to being a scrawny kid who looks no different than everyone else your age. The girl you had the crush on in Algebra class this past fall, the one you plotted to talk to for weeks on end before finally getting the courage to even say hello, has been replaced in your heart by a girl in your History class who you now swear will be your future wife and the mother of your children by 1964.
For a teenager in 1958 $3.98 is not a trifling amount of money to spend on a single purchase. Your tastes in most things, movies, magazines, cars and girls, seemingly change by the minute. What you liked yesterday you're likely to forget by tomorrow, or at least that's what your mother is constantly saying. You can't stick with anything for very long.