Christmas is just around the corner….

Christmases may not be what they used to be when I was little – but I have great memories from many Christmas Eve’s (which is when we celebrate here in Sweden).

I was maybe 4 years old when I got my first plastic Strat-toy guitar. It was back when toy guitars still had steel strings. Of course, you didn’t get a pick to go with the guitar, so I played that thing until my fingers bled – literally. I forgot about the other presents.

Then, Christmas 1978 – I was a big fan of the movie GREASE and the only thing I wanted for Christmas was the Grease-soundtrack. When I saw that rectangular, flat package under the tree, I just KNEW what it was! I couldn’t WAIT for that stupid dinner to be over with so that I could just rip the paper off my present! ‘

And sure enough – it WAS the Grease double-LP with pics and all, oh my GOD I was the happiest, happiest kid on the planet!! John Travolta must have been my first crush, before I even knew what the hell a crush WAS, lol! :)

[This is what it looked like when you opened that double-LP]

I was dancing around on the chairs and the table in the kitchen when my parents were at work, doing my own dance-version of “Greased lightnin‘”!

Christmas eve 1980…. I remember that very clearly as well. Back then, I only had my mother’s portable record player from the sixties in my room, and some mono-radio/tape-player that my parents didn’t use anymore, so instead of throwing it out, I got it.

But it was a piece of crap, if you tried to record something on that thing, it would do two things:
1. The volume went crazy loud if you tried to record something from the radio, and you couldn’t adjust it (earplugs please!)
2. It recorded in the wrong speed, so it would either record too slow or too fast… Worthless!

So, I wanted something to record on or listen to music on. I got my very own mono cassette-player. Geez, when I say it now I realize I’m like a hundred years old..! When I remember all those things that are just SO “out” today that kids nowadays probably don’t even know that the heck a cassette is or was. :)

Something like this… Only the buttons of the player that I got were rounded:

And best of all, I got a handful of cassettes with it too – John Lennon‘s “Double Fantasy”, ABBA‘s “Super Trouper” and Olivia Newton-John‘s “Totally Hot”.
That’s all I needed to forget about the rest of the world!

THIS song from Olivia Newton-John‘s album was my favorite – funny enough many years later I heard a version of it by british band THUNDER that was even better. Good songs are timeless! This was the only video-version I could find that had fairly OK video- and audio quality. :)

Ah, what the hell – here’s the Thunder version as well – ten years later (1990):

/Seems that they removed the only video-version there was on YouTube, now all there is is live-versions or this crappy thing… but better than nothing I guess: :)/

Every Christmas has given memories like that. It’s not about getting “stuff“… it’s really about memories, things that matter to you. Doesn’t have to be expensive, but when it’s got a thought behind it, it’s not just another thing that’s going to collect dust somewhere, it will stay in somebody’s memory forever.