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as a collection of 78s somewhere. You need to buy these albums on vinyl. You need to appreciate what it means to take out a record and put it on a turntable. You need to appreciate album art and cleaning the record and how fragile life and music is by caring for a record.

2. Get Miles Davis Kind of Blue. Listen to it again and again and again. Appreciate music in its purest most unadulterated form. Appreciate the tones and how the band plays together. This is real music for the very sake of music. Play it until you can hum every song and then proceed to the next step.

3. Buy 45s and singles from the following artists: Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, James Brown, and Elvis Presley. I have never been a huge Elvis fan, but he is the King and he should be respected. If the song "Rave On" by Buddy Holly does not make you want to get up, jump around and sing along loudly then you are clinically dead. Get yourself to the nearest morgue for processing.

4. Buy full-blown albums from The Who and Led Zeppelin just so you can decide which side of that argument you come down on. Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced? Get anything by The Doors. Buy everything from the Beatles you can find but especially find Rubber Soul and Revolver. The Beach Boys Pet Sounds. Play these albums until your needle wears out at least 8 times and the grooves get worn down.

Once you have done that I think you can graduate to CDs and then start buying music from the 1970s. I would suggest you find an 8-track player just so you can say you experienced that too. There is a lot of actual music out there and I haven't even touched on more jazz and blues that you can get into.

There's still time to save your musical soul before you think all music is some white-haired moron singing Queen songs poorly and improperly kicking over a mike stand.

Oh yeah, you should buy some Queen albums too. You should hear them the way Freddy Mercury sang them. Hurry. Please.

Learn more about this author, Bryan W. Alaspa.
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