Re: Bleedin' Quadrophenic!

[Anna Mormack <carrieanne79@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jim wrote:

<<But seriously folks...  I'm surprised that there
aren't more responses to this Quad question, honestly.
 Quad has so much depth and I'm sure meaning on many
different levels for many different people here.  Kind
of surprising that this topic wasn't jumped on.>>

I discovered Quad at age 13 but didn't listen to it
till I was almost 21.  It was one of the albums in my
parents' rather meagre vinyl collection, and we dumped
our record player when it had broken a few years
before that.  (Along with The Beatles' 'Red Album' and
'Sounds of Silence' and 'Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and
Thyme,' Quad was the only record in their collection
I'd always had my eye on and pounced on as soon as I
got my own record player in December of 2001!  Those
records are mine now and I seriously doubt my parents
care enough to ask for them back!)

Anyway, at 13 I was too young to really understand
what it was all about, but I was drawn to it, reading
the lyrics and Jimmy's 'autobiography.'  I was very
confused about what the word 'quadrophenia' meant, and
really didn't understand the meaning.  I also didn't
know it was a rock opera about a fictional character,
which added to my confusion about taking it literally.
 And I was horrified by the lyrics to 'Dr. Jimmy,'
about raping a virgin.  I had to be lying down the
first time I listened to that song on 18 November
2000, the day I bought 'Quad' for $16 at the local
used music store and was so taken I played it twice
that day.  A few months before getting my own copy of
Quad (since this was before I had a record player and
needed everything on CD), I went down to the basement,
pulled my father's vinyl copy out of the box of
records in storage, and read Jimmy's autobiography for
the first time since early 1994 and was very
emotionally moved.  I finally understood Quad.  I was
able to appreciate and relate to it at age 20 the way
I wasn't ready or mature enough to at age 13 or 14,
when I really could have benefitted from it, given the
nightmare I lived through in junior high.  I was the
one who packed my parents' thirty or so records in
that box when we left NY in 1996, so I had it
memorised where I'd put Quad and the Red Album.  I
knew exactly where to grab them from without even
looking, they meant that much to me.  I'm glad I
didn't rush my first time, so to speak, with Quad.

=====
Anna U. Mormack
Welcome to My World:
Main Page:  http://www.angelfire.com/retro/purple_vinyl  
Updates:  http://www.angelfire.com/retro/purple_vinyl/update.html  
Index of Album Reviews:  http://www.angelfire.com/retro/purple_vinyl/albumreviews.html (find out why I dare think 'Sgt. Pepper' and BOTW are overrated!)

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