Confessions of a record addict.

Addiction is rough. It is consuming. It takes over everything. Some people like booze. Some people like hard drugs. I have always dipped into my piggy bank in order to buy music products. Tapes, Records, Cds, T-Shirts, Stickers, Buttons, Posters, Zines, anything that could expand my knowledge and collection of rock and roll.

This started around the age of 8. Every day my mother would pack me a juice box and a few little snacks to accompany the lunch money she provided me. Early on I realized that the snacks could hold me over until I got home each afternoon. I would save the $1.50 a day I was given for lunch and place it into a little white dice shaker that I kept on my dresser. Each week or so I would take that money and purchase a new cassette or cassingle. Records were being phased out of stores to make room for cds right around this time. Most of these tapes were current hair metal that was popular at the time.

I never really broke this pattern. I am not certain if I got an allowance, but my lunch money savings account purchased the majority of my music and comic books throughout my youth. I eventually began getting paid $10 to cut the grass (man i was a sucker! the hills in my yard were practically vertical). This changed it all. I was generating close to $60 a month. Do you know how much money that is to a 12 year old with nothing to do? A LOT.

Playground pizza appeared around this time and the rest is history. $5 admission provided entry, a slice of pizza, and a beverage. In addition, you were also graced with many touring bands from up and down the east cost. During 1992 through 1996, I could be spotted at this venue almost every Friday. I normally had $10 to $15 in hand, ready to buy every 7”, tape, and t shirt in sight.

Over the years not a whole lot changed. I was walking down the street today after buying a record thinking about how I limited myself to a very small lunch budget for the week in order to spend 4 times that on records. There have been times in which I haven’t eaten in order to buy an album. I prefer to think of it as dedication, not sad.