January 31, 2021:
That was an acquisition I'd set out deliberately to attain.
Instead of school I'd spent a day reading liner notes. There was a pattern: the songs I loved the most were authored by a mysterious someone called "C. Berry". These were "Roll Over Beethoven" and "Rock and Roll Music" on Beatles albums; plus now recently "Carol" and "Little Queenie" on Get Yer Ya Yas Out, the record a friend had suggested and which I'd practically worn out through obsessive re-listenings. I had no idea who that writer was, but the pattern seemed meaningful.
So I rode my bike down to Tower Records on Sports Arena Boulevard. Where parental gifts ordinarily came from Fed Mart, this was where I went for pilgrimage. Later that became Tower on Sunset in L.A., but at this time transport meant bicycle. Locked it outside, chatted up the much older sales dude, with his hippie hair and trendy early '70s mustache and complete disdain for middle schoolers like yours truly.
He looked at me like he thought me an ignoramus, which I suppose was literally true in that instance. How could you not know who Chuck Berry is?. Well — I didn't. Which is why I was there.
He recommended the perfect choices, bless his heart. Chuck Berry's Golden Decade, Volumes I and II. I rode home with them bungied to the little rack on the back of my 10-speed.
Opening of a new continent.