Dave's Side One

In 1979-1980, Dave spent time in the basement of his friend Wendy's house, where her father had a B&O stereo, JBL speakers, and an estimated 2,500 to 3,000 LPs. Beatles, Rolling Stones, Cream, Eric Clapton, Frank Zappa - if Dave and his friends could think of it, there was a good chance it was on the shelf.

Wendy's dad supervised because they were kids, but otherwise he let them explore. They sat among the records, chose what interested them, played air guitar and drums, and sang along at raucous volume - especially to "Cocaine" from the Eric Clapton live album. He didn't turn the collection into a lesson. Access was the lesson.

This episode closes Stories Week with the memory of encountering a collection large enough to suggest a lifetime of listening still ahead.

Side One Spin: Who first opened a record collection to you, and what did you discover there?

On April 3, 1978, 15-year-old Dave headed to the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City with friends to see Foghat. Dave J. was old enough to drive. Brian was a tobacco chewer - and on the trip down, he swallowed the tobacco. During the opening act, No Dice, Brian became sick, ran outside, and then wasn't allowed back into the venue.

His ride home, unfortunately, was still inside enjoying the concert. Brian spent more than two hours outside waiting for everyone else, and the story followed him through the remaining two and a half years of high school.

This episode is about the strange truth of concert memories: sometimes the detail that survives for decades isn't the solo, the set list, or even the headliner. It's what happened to the people who went with you.

Side One Spin: What's the concert story you still tell that has almost nothing to do with the band?

Teenage Dave wanted records faster than his budget could provide them, and Columbia House and RCA Record Club offered a tempting solution. One legitimate account became two or three additional accounts under other names, all in pursuit of those famous introductory offers. The strategy helped build a collection that included BTO's greatest hits, Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak, Styx's The Serpent Is Rising, Styx I, and possibly Man of Miracles.

Years later, while choosing a name for his first child, Dave and his wife landed on one that somehow sounded familiar. Eventually Dave realized why: it had also been one of his record-club aliases. Thus the family joke that his oldest child was born with Columbia House debt.

Today’s episode is a story about teenage collecting economics, questionable ingenuity, and the lengths music fans once went to when the want list was much larger than the wallet.

Side One Spin: What was your best record-club score - or your most creative scheme for building a collection?

For years, Elton John's Blue Moves felt dark to Dave in a way he couldn't quite connect with. He no longer remembers exactly how the album entered his collection, but he remembers that it never fully made sense to him.

Then Dave read an interview in which George Michael discussed the album's musical influence on him. That sent Dave back for another listen. This time he caught the emotional arc of the record. Another spin followed, then another, and Blue Moves gradually became an album he now returns to throughout the year.

This episode is about second chances in listening - and the possibility that a record can remain exactly the same while the listener becomes ready for it.

Side One Spin: What album did you have to grow into, and what finally unlocked it for you?

During his junior year in 1978-79, Dave wanted to impress a girl in his friend group. When he learned that she was a serious Billy Joel fan, he borrowed a cassette of 52nd Street and listened closely even though Billy Joel had never been a particular favorite. Then Dave came up with a plan: learn “Stiletto” on piano and see whether the extra effort might get her attention.

The playing was, by Dave's own account, pretty poor. The strategy worked anyway - for about four dates. Eventually they both realized they were better off as friends.

This episode is about one of music's less-discussed uses: the things we listen to, learn, and occasionally study a little harder because somebody else matters to us. It is also about the odd doors that can lead us into a record - and why the reason we first listen does not make the listening any less real.

Side One Spin: What song or record did you learn to impress somebody, and did it work?

Dave's relationship with the Carpenters goes back to fifth-grade choir in 1972, when the class sang "We've Only Just Begun." While the other boys supplied the expected "ecchhh," Dave sided with the girls: he thought it was a great song. He even knew the Carpenters' version of "Help!" before he knew the Beatles' version.

As Dave later became interested in composition and arrangement, Close to You and the rest of the Carpenters catalog opened up in a different way. Richard Carpenter's craft became part of the attraction, and footage of Karen Carpenter singing while playing drums made the case even stronger.

This episode is about trusting your ears before you have the vocabulary - or the social permission - to defend what you like.

Side One Spin: What artist did you defend when your friends thought you shouldn't like them?

In 1979, on a high-school band and orchestra trip to Arizona, Dave walked into a record store near the ASU campus with a very limited budget and one purchase already decided: Journey's Infinity. Then his friend John - orchestra friend, weekend D&D companion, and devoted ELO fan - convinced him to spend more of that budget on Electric Light Orchestra's A New World Record. Dave remembers the price as somewhere around seven dollars, but the real cost was fewer tourist souvenirs for his younger siblings.

This episode is about the records that enter our lives because we trusted somebody else's ears. Sometimes the recommendation becomes inseparable from the person who made it.

Side One Spin: What record did a friend convince you to buy? Give me the friend, the album, and whether they were right.

Dave uses Standing Hampton to explore perceived momentum versus measured tempo.

Choose two tracks that feel different in speed.

Before checking any BPM, describe what creates the sensation: attack, subdivision, vocal phrasing, rhythmic density, accents, sustained versus clipped notes.

Only afterward compare actual tempo if you want to.

Dave uses Love Over Gold as a listening laboratory.

The question is not whether the album deserves a higher ranking; it is whether changing where we place our attention changes what we hear.

Today's test: Listen to 'Telegraph Road' without watching the clock.

At each major transition ask: could the piece end here? If not, what musical or narrative question remains unresolved?

Dave uses If You Want Blood You've Got It to explore the audience as part of a live musical event.

Choose one track and listen once for the band.

Then replay it listening only for the audience: where it anticipates, answers, swells, waits or changes the energy.

Finally hear both together and ask whether the performance would mean the same thing without that room.