Earworm and Song Loops

Earworm #24: REO Speedwagon — Roll With the Changes

You can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish; how the Columbia Record & Tape Club expanded my early music collection ten-fold

It seemed too good to be true.

11 albums or cassettes (or 8-tracks or reel-to-reel tapes) for a dollar? And all I had to do was buy “as few as” 8 more albums at regular club prices over the next 3 years? What was the catch?

The catch was, with the added shipping and higher than record store album prices, you could pay a pretty penny by the time three years had passed.

But, what if you simply never ordered any new albums? What could Columbia House Record and Tape Club do? Especially if you were 13 years old, like I was?

“All you have to do is check the box saying ‘I do not want this month’s selection’ in the monthly mailing,” my buddy George Nescromny said, showing me the booklet and form that Columbia…