Life through Vinyl

We have the good people at Parade magazine to thank for telling readers that April 18 is National Record Store Day.  Those seeking to make money from the music business have designated this day to bring attention to the resurgence of vinyl records.   Many popular music artists are releasing special songs on vinyl . Once thought lost forever with the advent of compact discs and eventually digital music delivery, vinyl is enjoying sort of a comeback among those who prefer their music played with a needle and a turntable.

I made the move to compact discs about ten years after that format started back in the 1980s.  But I’ve always held on to a few vinyl records because they bring back memories of my younger years when it was the best way to listen to music on your own terms.

The Monkees

The very first record I owned was this one from the Monkees.  There was a time when I could tell you the exact order of songs on that album.  I actually got both the first and second Monkees albums on the same day (my birthday), but I opened and played this one first.  I would eventually acquire every record the group released in their short career, which lasted two years (the length of their television series) with several reunions over the past few decades.

Elvis Presley, the NBC-TV Special Soundtrack

While the Monkees represent the first music I would actually own, it was Elvis Presley who would instill my appreciation for popular music.  I watched his NBC television special in late 1968 and became a fan instantly.  I bought it from the closest thing we had to a music store in my hometown: a rack of records at a dry goods store.  The soundtrack album propelled him into the third and final phase of his performing career, eventually clearing the way for his iconic jumpsuits and the hard living lifestyle that many suggest ended his life way too early at the age of forty-two in 1977.  It begins with the song Trouble (“you lookin for trouble, you came to the right place…”) that he first popularized in the movie Kid Galahad.  It ends with the inspiring If I Can Dream.  I just found out this spring that If I Can Dream is my daughter Colleen’s favorite Elvis song.  Good choice.  The song has been covered over the years by such artists as Barry Manilow and Della Reese, but Elvis made it his own.

Goodyear/Columbia Great Songs of Christmas

I experience most of the holiday seasons through the lens of Christmas music.  The Goodyear Tire company, through an arrangement with Columbia Records, released a compilation album of holiday music annually in the 1960s and 1970s.  My mom bought this one from the local Goodyear dealer in hometown (Sylvester Burkhart’s Garage on Main Street in Port Leyden).  This particular album has the distinction of being the first album my mother purchased when our family bought a record player in the early 1960s.  I connect right back to the family living room in my hometown when I play this album.

These are three of the long playing albums that helped define my life in vinyl.  We always had records playing in the house.  My fascination with recorded music fed a desire to work as a disc jockey for a few years while I was in college.  To this day, I occasionally put on an old vinyl record and listen to it with all the scratches that come from playing them over and over when I was much younger.

Long playing albums from my era generally had about ten to twelve songs, split between the two sides.  Some record players allowed you to stack up to six so that the music could continue for well over an hour.

New York, New York by Frank Sinatra

I can’t forget the singles: the forty-five RPM (revolutions per minute) discs that so many of us from that generation had.  I still have mine, but I don’t play them as much as the LPs (long-playing) albums that spun at thirty-three-and-a-third RPM.  My friends and I would play them in the jukebox at the Leyden Elm diner (better known as Hazel’s) in my hometown.

But this one forty-five has special meaning to me.  It’s Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York.  It was recorded in 1980 and remained Sinatra’s signature show stopper in the remaining years of his public performances.  It was also the last brand new single I ever bought from a music store.  It would take a few more years before I’d consider myself a Sinatra fan, but there’s no doubt this single was the starting point.

And if that’s not enough to drive home how significant this record is to me, I can add that it was released in the same year I got married.   A husband better not forget the year he got married.  I have this single to remind me.

Records have a way of doing that for me.  They bring back a memory of when I first received a particular album or single, they connect me to my hometown, and they help me remember important times in my life.

Steve Newvine lives in Merced

For more on Record Store Day, go to www.recordstoreday.com

Completing the Apollo 13 Circle in Colorado

April 11 is the forty-fifth anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission to the moon.  Apollo 13 was the mission that never landed on the lunar surface, but it became a legendary story of a true test of courage and ingenuity from the US space program. I had the recent good fortune to visit family living in Colorado.  As I was preparing to leave at the Denver Airport, I encountered a statute that in many ways has completed a circle I started with Apollo 13 some forty-plus years ago.

The statue is of Apollo 13 astronaut Jack Swigert.  The bronze cast shows Swigert in his astronaut suit.  The plaque refers to Swigert as “Astronaut and Congressman Elect.”   He was about to begin his first elected term in the US House of Representatives when he died from cancer in the early 1980s.  I asked a fellow Californian who was viewing the statue with me to take this picture.

In my youth, I followed the space program with great interest.  As a young boy, I was in front of the television set many times for rocket launches.  My family circled around the set in July of 1969 when Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

I was a hardened space fan, but even I was becoming disinterested in moon landings after the second one (Apollo 12).  I recall seeing Apollo 13 lift off on April 11, 1970, but my life was beginning to be occupied with all the things teenagers encounter.

My interest level changed two days later when we learned there was a problem aboard Apollo 13.  News reporters on television tried to explain something about an explosion aboard the spacecraft, and how the astronauts were moved to the lunar module as plans were made to bring them back to Earth.  I recall feeling concerned, but confident that the crew would make it home safely.

The now familiar story ends with a successful return to Earth for the three astronauts.

Commander Jim Lovell wrote a book called Lost Moon about the mission.  Fred Haise worked in private industry after retiring from NASA.  Jack Swigert lived in Colorado and was elected to the US House of Representatives.  He died before taking office in 1982.

I never realized just how serious the effort to return the astronauts to Earth was until many years later when I started reporting on the space program as a television reporter for WAAY in Huntsville, Alabama.  NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center was in Huntsville, so anything about the space program was a local news story in northern Alabama.  During my short time in Huntsville in the early 1980s, I learned more about how dangerous the Apollo 13 mission was as the ground crew worked the problem to bring the crew home safely.

1981, Steve Newvine at the Marshall Spaceflight Center, Huntsville, Alabama

A few years later, the Ron Howard film Apollo 13 introduced a new generation to the story behind the story of that mission.  For many years, watching the movie was a family tradition in my house.  During the time when I was working as an adjunct college lecturer, I used clips from the movie to demonstrate leadership principles.  The movie remains one of my all-time favorites.

I met astronauts Jim Lovell and Fred Haise in 1996 when both appeared at a business conference I was attending.   I was told at that event that this was the first time the two appeared together in public since the end of the mission.

Seeing the statue of Jack Swigert in Denver brought back many of those memories.  From childhood passing on through my teen years, I experienced the excitement of the space program transition to a less intense interest as I grew older.  I saw that passing interest reinvigorate as a journalist working in a town where space exploration defined the community,   I re-lived, if only for a few moments, the thrill of reporting on the first three Space Shuttle missions.  As a slightly bit older adult, I reconnected with my passion for the space program thanks to the movie Apollo 13 and the opportunity to meet the two surviving members of the crew.

And now a bronze statue of the astronaut who survived that ordeal only to be taken much too early brings it back full circle.

Apollo 13 showed us that bravery isn’t just about knowing the risks and acting anyway.  The forty-fifth anniversary of that historic mission gives all of us an opportunity to spend a few moments reflecting on the successes we have experienced and the obstacles we have overcome.

Apollo 13 has also shown us that leadership comes in all shapes and sizes.  From the crew’s courage under fire, to the steady seriousness demonstrated by flight director Gene Kranz , to the short-sleeved NASA technicians who offered solutions that kept the astronauts alive as the spaceship was being brought back home, Apollo 13 has proven the very best we all can do by working together.

Steve Newvine lives in Merced.  He worked as a Space and Science reporter for WAAY-TV in Huntsville, Alabama from 1980 to 1982.  

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