An ultrasonic bargain

The first album I ever bought with my own money-cash earned mowing neighbors' lawns-was a British plum-label pressing of Led Zeppelin II.

- MICHAEL TREI

It was 1971. I rode my prized Raleigh Chopper bike from our home on the coast of Denmark down the road a couple of miles to the local record store in a small town called Hørsholm.

Fifty-four years ago, this kind of unsupervised activity was considered pretty normal for a 9-year-old kid in Denmark, even with no cellphones or other tethers that allowed your parents to keep tabs on you. It was also a time when smaller record stores would let you listen to records over headphones before buying them. A few days earlier, I had heard a few tantalizing snippets from LZ-2 courtesy of a friend's older brother; I knew instantly that I needed to hear more.

After entering the store and browsing for a few minutes, I mustered up sufficient courage to head to the counter with the Zeppelin and ask to listen to it. All was musical bliss for a few minutes. Then just as I was really getting into it, about halfway through What Is and What Should Never Be, the clerk decided I'd heard enough and rudely interrupted my listening session with a "get lost kid" look on his face. I surprised him by pulling out my lawn-mowing cash and buying the album. I pedaled home furiously, as fast as I could, and slapped my first LP onto the family Garrard Autoslim, which I wrote about in Spin Doctor #11.¹

Already at age 9, I was a budding audiophile. I constantly cleaned and cared for my new treasure, using a brush and a clear cylindrical plastic bottle of blue record cleaner fluid I got from somewhere. As I cleaned, I got a few whiffs of that freshsmelling blue cleaning fluid, which was probably about a quarter pure alcohol and was likely giving my 9-year-old kid brain a bit of a buzz. Fifty-four years later, I still own that record, but when I play it today, it kind of sounds like I'm listening through a bowl of Rice Krispies. So much for 9-yearold kids and their record-care skills.