s t r a n g e cousin susan

Olivia!

Newton!

John!

My love for the one and only ONJ can be traced to (blamed on?) me mum. I remember being an eight year old lass in northeastern Pennsylvania when she bought me a Shaun Cassidy album and splurged and bought “Greatest Hits Volume 1″ at the local Sears (this is the way my memory tells the story, at any rate). I can still see the Shaun Cassidy album in my mind’s eye, but couldn’t tell you a thing about any of the songs. The ONJ album? I own it on vinyl and CD and know every song by heart.

“Greatest Hits Volume 1″ was a definite obsession for quite some time; we had this big old stereo-cum-piece of furniture in our family room (which now resides in me mum’s garage, where it waits for me to take possession of it) with a record player and radio. And goddamn, that thing is huge. So, at any rate, there was a time I borrowed me mum’s tape recorder, found a blank tape, placed the tape recorder as close to the right-hand speaker as I could, started the record and hit the RECORD button. That tape recorder was always in reach when I was at home and I would even perch it on the sink and play the tape so I could sing along to it in the shower. My DIY ONJ tape was not too long before I got a walkman, and I’m sure I listened to it with foam-covered headphones, though I can’t say for sure.

I remember choosing “Totally Hot” for a birthday present for a girl in my class when I was in third grade. It was released in November, 1978 which would have been two months into third grade, though it’s doubtful I would have been invited to the party, since we’d only moved to the area two months prior (I do believe we got in on a Sunday and school started the next day). So I’ll declare it was fourth grade and have done with the discussion. I didn’t own the album until years later, as a CD and it was the soundtrack to which I listened driving cross country with my da in 1998 when I moved to California. He drove. I listened to ONJ and played Tetris on my wee Gameboy. We smoked like fiends.

“Greatest Hits Volume 2″ was The Very First Tape I Heard Through Headphones. This was in 1983. I still recall how blown away I was by having ONJ singing from the middle of my head and wouldn’t relinquish the walkman to the sister when my turn was up. It was my cousin’s walkman I wasn’t sharing. I think it was the next Christmas the sister and I finally got our very own walkmen. You know, the big, old-school models?

These were so cool when they first came out.

This isn’t the exact model the sister and I received, but it’s pretty damn close. And would you believe I had that bad boy until college and had to replace it only because I dropped it and it fell down a flight of stairs? Replace it, I did, for I could not live without a walkman in those days, but was never as fond of any of the original’s replacements as I was of this one.

I meant for this post to be a bit more chronological than it is, though it’s the bits of how these three albums fit into the life of a young (and later, a not-so-young) Mickey Glitter that’s out of sync. I’m battling my natural desire to break up what I’ve written about each and make the pieces flow more logically right now and the natural desire is losing pretty soundly.

(post title from Go Fug Yourself)