Penny for Your Music

For many people, this time of year signals a new beginning – a time to look back at their perceived mistakes of the previous year and make life changes for the upcoming year.  Personally, I have never been one for New Year’s resolutions.  If I discover a way to make my life better, I normally implement the change regardless of the calendar date.

However, in the spirit of the occasion, I’ve decided to partake in the tradition this year.  Actually, that’s not completely true.  To be perfectly honest, I made a startling discovery while I was doing research for this very blog.  I was looking at a list of the top albums of 2015 when I realized that I didn’t own any of them.  That discovery prompted the question, “Just what did I buy this past year?”  Turns out, every CD I bought in 2015 was a so-called “catalog album” – an album that has already charted and then fallen off the charts.  I didn’t buy a single “new” album in 2015.  That hasn’t happened since 1981.  My streak began when I purchased Queen’s “Hot Space” in 1982.  The flood gates didn’t truly open until 1983, though.  That’s when I joined the Columbia Record & Tape Club.

For those of you who don’t remember, Columbia House (as it was called) was a mail-order music service that offered an insane number of albums or tapes for a penny with the signed agreement that you would purchase a specified number at “regular club price” within a certain period of time (usually 3 years).  The deal I signed with Columbia House was what they called a “trial membership”.  I got eight albums for a penny and only had to buy 3 more at regular club prices within the next 3 years.  The problem was that I entered into this agreement without my mom’s consent…and she was not happy about it.  She told me horror stories of how her sister had signed a similar deal years earlier and was then forced to purchase merchandise she had not ordered.  She was convinced I was about to share the same fate.  Actually, when I think back on it, there’s probably very little chance they could have held me to the terms of the agreement anyway.  I’m pretty certain that no company is legally permitted to enter into any kind of signed agreement with a little kid. 

Nevertheless, I fulfilled my end of the deal and, in retrospect, cannot even imagine how my aunt wound up in such a living nightmare with these guys.  I mean, all you had to do was return the cards on time to avoid receiving unwanted albums.  She must have been a real moron to screw that up.  Actually, she WAS a real moron…but I digress.

The Columbia deal came along at a time when I was just starting my music collection.      I had discovered a lot of new music in a short period of time and was able to acquire a large number of albums (cassettes, actually) virtually overnight.  I can still remember the eight tapes that I received:

Michael Jackson – Thriller

Men At Work – Business As Usual

Def Leppard - Pyromania

Toto IV

Van Halen – Diver Down

Hank Williams, Jr. – Greatest Hits

Billy Squier – Emotions In Motion
Devo – Oh No, It’s Devo

Looking back, I had pretty good taste in music for a little kid.  I still have seven of those in my current CD collection.  Boy, did that Devo album suck, though.  What the hell was I thinking there?  But again, I digress.

A few days ago, a good friend of mine (thanks, Paul) posted a link to an exciting story on my Facebook wall.  It seems that a half decade after closing its doors, Columbia House is again dipping its feet into the mail-order music business.

Columbia House Relaunches

While their initial business plan is geared toward the resurgence in vinyl records, one can only hope that CD’s won’t be far behind if all goes well.  If so, I think it’s safe to say that I will not only be updating my music collection with a number of new releases in 2016 (my resolution), I will be doing so under a number of aliases from a number of addresses.  I will also be hitting YOU up to join in order to get the four free selections for the referral.  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

NOTE:  The original account of this story was taken from:  "Michael Jackson Got Me on Coke"