A post related to the band ‘Kansas’ got me waxing all nostalgic, remembering how, as soon as I got a part-time job and had a little money saved, I bought a sweet turntable / cassette player-recorder combo, and did the old Columbia House “12 albums for a penny” deal. Two of the 12 were Kansas albums.
I know a lot of us on this board came of age around that same time-- late 70s, early 80s. How many of you did the ‘12 for a penny’ deal? I then had to deal with the hassle of trying to remember to mail in the thing saying you didn’t want them to automatically sell you the ‘album of the month’. I always forgot and got the album sent to me. I think at first I figured my bad, I’ll pay for it even though I didn’t really want it, but then I found out I could just take it back to the post office and have them mail it right back without paying. I did that so often I got an angry letter from Columbia House telling me to stop it.
Do you remember what your 12 were? Or if you didn’t do the ‘12 for a penny’, what were the first dozen albums you ever owned? I think I remember most of them because they were the first albums I owned. I remember staring at the elaborate cover art the albums used to have while I listened. Later on I became more of a Stones / Pink Floyd fan and thought of bands like Kansas and Journey as terrible, phony “Corporate Rock”, but at the time I loved them. Let’s see:
Kansas- Leftoverture
Kansas- Point of Know Return
Styx - The Grand Illusion
Boston - (just Boston)
Journey- Infinity
ELO- Out of the Blue (not sure if that counted as 2 since it was a double album. Probably.)
Gerry Rafferty- City to City
Fleetwood Mac- Rumours
Hmmm, only remember 8 (or 9 if Out of the Blue counted for 2).
Got my first three in 1964:
Introducing The Beatles (VeeJay)
Meet The Beatles (Capitol)
The Beatles Second Album (Capitol)
after which I can’t say for sure, but including more Beatles (Capitol), Glad All Over (Dave Clark Five), The Little Old Lady From Pasadena (Jan and Dean)…
Also required was Wings over America. A local top-40 radio station ran a contest where the seventh (or ninth, or thirteenth, or whatever number the host felt like saying) caller got their choice of Any Album Ever Recorded. After two or three weeks of every winning caller (and there were six to ten every day) wanting Wings over America, they gave up.
The second two I owned at some point, but maybe not in my first batch of 12.
I actually never owned ‘Frampton Comes Alive!’. I didn’t really like his music-- I seem to remember thinking he really overused that talk box thing, and thought it was kind of gimmicky and dumb.
I think I still have that ELO album somewhere, and I bet if I opened it up it would still to this day have little bits of stem and leaf crumbs in the crease
Heh. About 10 years ago I undertook a project to digitize all my old vinyl. I can’t remember which one, but when I pulled out the record from the album cover, a package of Zig-Zag rolling papers came out as well.
Don’t know if I ever owned Wings over America, but I owned “Band on the Run” and “Wings Greatest”. In fact, “Wings Greatest” may have been one of my first 12 I forgot about.
ETA: thinking about Wings jogged my memory-- the other albums of my first 12 were the double-album Beatles “Red” and “Blue” compilations. Can’t believe I forgot the Beatles!
That would have put the number at 13 though, counting double albums as 2. The actual offer may have been 13 for a penny, or “buy 12 albums for a penny, get the 13th free!”
I joined either Columbia House or BMG in the mid to late 80s after I got my first CD player. So I did CDs not albums, and it was more like 6 or 8 for $1 (because CDs were a new thing and still kinda pricey). The only two I remember for sure were U2 - Joshua Tree and The Traveling Wilburys. Maybe also Yes - Fragile?
the comment sections in the links below are nothing but i screwed over or was screwed over by columbia and bmg … Also the company that owned bmg had various book clubs that ran on the same model …
I have no clue except that it was around 1990-ish, CDs, and I think Pink Floyd was involved. But it does make me think of these pages I found recently in an old issue of Pizzaz magazine.
I think I was a freshman or sophomore in high school when I signed up for Columbia House. I don’t remember all of the albums I got then, but I know that a few included:
Foreigner 4
Paradise Theater (Styx)
Precious Time (Pat Benatar)
The Game (Queen)
What I also remember is that something got screwed up in my order, and one of the albums they sent me in that box was a Johnny Mathis album. It wasn’t entirely a waste, as my mother was a Mathis fan, and I gave the album to her as a bonus Christmas gift (I got that shipment from Columbia House on the day after Christmas).
Columbia House was the one with ads on the back of Parade magazine. 15 year-old me was very disappointed there were no offering of the holy trinity (Beatles, Who, Stones) so I settled for The Beach Boys Endless Summer, Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, The Byrds, Peter Frampton, Rod Stewart, Jerry Lee Lewis, and the Star Wars soundtrack. I remember how hard it was to even find artists you liked. I envied the glee a Carpenters, Neil Diamond, or Barry Manilow fan must have felt reading those selections.
Two of the first albums I ever bought were The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (“Buy For Me The Rain”) and The New Vaudeville Band (“Winchester Cathedral”). Granted I was only about 11 years old, but still…
I used one of these companies (or maybe both, I don’t remember) to get the CD versions of my albums. I had two accounts at my address, two at my mother’s and one at my brother’s. You had to buy one at full price before you could cancel so I did that. Not a bad deal for 65 CDs.
I’m embarrassed to say what my 12 CD club picks were. They are evidence of the fact that this racket was based on certain knowledge of young music consumers being excited about stocking up on dreck that wouldn’t otherwise sell.
Worst of the bunch: King’s X
Best of the bunch: Sex Packets by Digital Underground.
Rest of the bunch: honestly I’m not even sure. None of it was memorable.
you all still remember your first albums from columbia house?? I sure don’t but they were one resource for my building of my music library…(ah glory days something something somethiiiing GLORY DAYS! Glory Days glory daaaay-yay-hay-hays!)
Lets see, I remember I had a lot of make up era KISS, pre-rehab Aerosmith, Ozzy era Black Sabbath, a bit of Led Zeppelin, Nazareth, Metal Church, MegaDeth, Slayer, Man O’War, bits and bobs from a bunch of other bands I can’t recall now. I don’t even know what came through the mail and what I got elsewhere
