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Henry Schneider writes for the expose.org website and has been buying and listening to records for a long, long time!
In 'Letter From America', Henry shares his musical journey...

I was born in 1950. My earliest memories of music are my parents’ old RCA Victrola used to play those heavy and fragile 78 rpm records. My mom had records like Slim Gaillard’s 1946 Cement Mixer Put-Ti Put-Ti and his 1951 song Yip Roc Heresy that I found endlessly fascinating.



The Soviet Union launched Sputnik on October 4, 1957. I was two months shy of turning 7, but I remember us and our neighbors gathering in the street in front of our house to watch Sputnik fly across the night sky and thus began the Space Race and my love for Astronomy and science fiction, ultimately leading to music not just outside the box, but denying the existence of boxes.

I don’t remember exactly, but I think that my parents gave me a portable record player that would play 33 1/3, 45, and 78 rpm records for my seventh birthday. They gave me and my brother Gene Autry’s recording of “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer” that we played so much that we wore it out. They also gave me a set of red 78 rpm Mickey Mouse Club records. And that started my love of vinyl.


For my ninth birthday my parents took me and my friends to see Journey to the Center of the Earth with Pat Boone and James Mason. My introduction to Jules Verne...


I am not sure when I first saw the classic Forbidden Planet, but Louis and Bebe Baron’s soundtrack marks one of my introductions to experimental and ultimately Space Music. Definitely not when the movie was released, I was much older.

I must have been about 12 or 13 when I received my first transistor radio and started listening to the AM rock station WABC broadcasting from New York City. There I was introduced to a new world of music, not the 1940s music my parents listened to every morning at breakfast. I remember listening to “Telstar” on the radio thinking The Tornados were a west coast band akin to the surf music of Dick Dale, Jan and Dean, and of course The Beach Boys...


Then the Mamas and Papas, Spanky and Our Gang, and lo and behold Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” and The Doors “Light My Fire.” What did fascinate me were all the novelty singles: Brian Hyland’s “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini", pre-Chipmunks David Seville’s “The Witch Doctor”, Bobby Pickett’s “Monster Mash”, The Searchers’ “Love Potion Number Nine” , Napolean IV’s “They’re Coming to Take Me Away Ha-Haaa!”, The Fifth Estate’s “Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead”, The Royal Guardsmen’s “Snoopy vs. The Red Baron” that all led me eventually to Crispian St. Peters’ “The Pied Piper”. And I soon discovered that Crispian St. Peters was more than a novelty act, his first album The Pied Piper, was a cool rock and roll album influenced by his love of Elvis Presley.


I rapidly discovered that I did not like the hit pop songs. Plus, what really irritated me was hearing the same music, songs, over and over again. My brain tends to memorize the music and I want to feel like I am always hearing something new.

While still in Elementary School, the US started space exploration in 1961. The whole school would gather in the cafeteria to watch the launches and landings. Those early Mercury and Gemini missions ignited the dreams of many young people to become rocket scientists.

In 1963 I was in Junior High School, and my music teacher was young and must have been a bit of a visionary, as he played for the class recordings from the RCA lab where they were experimenting with synthesizing sounds, precursors to the modular analog synths invented by Bob Moog and Don Buchla. I was most likely the only one in the class enthralled by these strange and outré sounds emanating from the speakers...


It was also at this time that the British Invasion occurred, starting with The Beatles, followed closely by The Rolling Stones, Herman’s Hermits, The Zombies, The Kinks, Freddy and the Dreamers, The Troggs, etc. And changed everything...

In 1965, Woody Allen released What’s New Pussycat, which was a bit risqué for the times, especially for a 14-year-old boy and his buddy on their own. In all likelihood, if today’s film rating system had been in place, our parents would not have allowed us to see the movie unattended. I have two memories of that experience: 1) Tom Jones singing the title track and 2) a short feature before the movie of The Rolling Stones performing “I Can’t Get no Satisfaction.” Could be this...


Then in September 1965 Star Trek premiered on TV...


Some high school friends that I ate lunch with were always talking about the physics of the transporter and dabbling in wild stories of photographic evidence of people transporting to different locations. Eventually they started exploring Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn and talked a lot about the band and the perceived connections to transporting. Probably a lot of drug use led to these conclusions. I am not sure how they discovered Pink Floyd, I had not heard of the band before this and Pink Floyd was not yet played on the radio in the US. It wasn’t until my second year at university that I found and purchased my first Pink Floyd album, Ummagumma in 1969. Ummagumma remains today as my favorite Pink Floyd album, if not in my top 10 desert island collection.


While in high school I got a job at the Westchester Aquarium, an eclectic pet store. That summer I worked in the basement bagging pet food (bird seed, cat food, dog food, etc.), a mindless job that gave me the opportunity to listen to the underground FM stations broadcast from New York City: WABC-FM and WNEW-FM. Now my musical horizons greatly expanded. I heard Jimi Hendrix, Gordon Lightfoot, Phil Ochs, Country Joe and the Fish, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens, Mimi Farina, Lothar and the Hand People, Fever Tree, Chad and Jeremy, It’s a Beautiful Day, The Byrds, Bob Dylan, Chrysalis, Leonard Cohen, Ultimate Spinach, Rotary Connection, Spirit, The Fugs, Traffic, Ten Years After, Nick Drake, and of course Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention, to name a few. As a side note, WABC-FM changed their call letters to WPLJ in homage to Zappa’s Burnt Weenie Sandwich track “WPLJ.” One of the truly great qualities of FM radio in the late 60s was little to no commercials and they would play the unedited full versions of songs, not the short three minute ditties on AM radio.

In high school I went to see The Royal Guardsmen live. My friends made fun of me because all they knew about the band was the Snoopy song. But the concert was great, hard rocking, and naturally they performed their hit single.
Being close to New York City, we were blessed with the opportunity to hire name bands for senior prom. The seniors were floating the idea of having Bob Dylan perform, but then their parents thought that he looked too scruffy and dirty to play. We eventually hired Little Anthony and the Imperials.

While in high school I started adding to my record collection, though I had to justify the cost with my parents. My first psych album was The Notorious Byrd Brothers. Back in the day record albums were shrink wrapped and the Columbia albums came with the vinyl in a plastic bag you had to tear open, instead of a paper sleeve.
On a whim, I bought the Iron Butterfly’s first album based on both the band name and the cover art. The music far exceeded my expectations. Only to be outdone in the next year by their masterpiece In a Gadda da Vida.


Music in the late 60s just exploded, there were so many different bands exploring new sounds and experimenting with effects. All in time for me to start at university and expand my musical horizons...

much more to come