You Say It's Your Birthday

I was organizing some family pictures on our home network server this morning and stumbled on some old image files I had forgotten about.

On my birthday several years ago I arrived at the office to find my staff had plastered doctored photos of me throughout the building- walls, elevators, stairway halls, even the backs of the doors in the men’s room stalls.

Anyone who knows me knows I am a Beatles Fan to the 9th power. I got hooked, long after anyone really should have got hooked, when I was 8 years old in 1974- many years after Beatlemania subsided.

The birth and the zenith of the group happened before I was born, but when I was 8, my parents bought me my own personal record player (remember those bright plastic kiddie-players with the big plastic stubby arm and “Real Diamond Needle?”).

The player came with a starter set of records and one of them was “Yellow Submarine” by some group of no-name studio musicians that made kiddie versions of big songs.

It was my favorite recording of the set, and not long after that I remember walking into a Sears store with a buck burning a hole in my pocket. I went over to the record section (yes, Sears used to sell records) and found a Beatles record cheap. I looked and sure enough “Yellow Submarine” was on the tune stack. My mother warned me I wouldn’t like it- it didn’t sound anything like the songs I listened to on my record player, but I insisted. The challenge made me determined to “like” the Beatles.

Years and countless tapes, LPs, compact discs, posters and books later, I am a true fan.

I thought I would share the images I saw this morning that reminded me of my first record, a great birthday with old friends and co-workers, and the dare that set me on the path to collecting music.

Click here if you would like to subscribe to the DigitalRichDaily
E-mail update. Place 'subscribe' in the subject line.