I sat in this glassed-in room, at the local stereo shop, hoping to make my first purchase of a pair of those long-dreamt-of tower-speakers. The guy talked about brand names, and I nodding knowingly — not knowing, of course, but wanting to appear to know.
I moved from one to another, listening to the sound envelop me. Over and over, he played “Lucifier,” an instrumental that certainly seemed like something my parents would hate. Even better, right? “This song has the depths, and the range, to show you what this speaker can do,” the salesman said.
I had a heard a few radio tracks, by this time, from the Alan Parsons Project. But you could forgive me — or anybody, really — from not knowing who they were and for not recognizing the opening instrumental from Eve, released on August 27, 1979. What I remember, even now, was how the Alan Parsons Project’s “Lucifer” leapt out from this new technology. Those big-box speakers were different, so viscerally different, from the shelf models I had back home.
Oh, I was buying the Technics. The turntable, the receiver, the speakers that came up to my waist. All of it. I lugged it all home, plugged it all in, and listened to this song again, safely ensconced in the woodpanelling of my childhood — but yet forever changed by a world of equalizer settings, pre-set radio-station buttons, a volume knob the size of my fist and, yeah, Alan Parsons.
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