I was born the year that the film Viva Las Vegas came out, but by the time I was about six years old Elvis was established as the most popular singer in my family and I was already enchanted with Ann Margret.
I was am still a devoted fan of Elvis’ and still love Ann Margret, but despite all of their albums and CD’s that I still own and listen too as well as the many, many artists that I listen to as well I have to say that the soundtrack to Viva Las Vegas is STILL my favorite album of all time.
When I was a kid ” Santa” gave me the soundtrack to Viva Las Vegas and it was and probably for sentimental reasons still is my all time favorite album.
When I was 12 years old my Mom and Dad used to shop at a department store called Kmart.
I liked Kmart- they used to have a concession stand and I used to like these shopping trips because I would buy a Blueberry Icee and some popcorn and then I would wander around the store.
My parents were pretty generous and I would ususally get a book or a little toy or something. But on some trips I asked if I could go to the record store across the lot from Kmart and they always said yes.
Gray Matter was a record store and they had a nice selection of albums ( not no 45’s which is why I didn’t go there often, albums cost more ) but their main trade were Bongs ( or Glass Water ‘pipes’ lol ).
For some reason when I went in and looked at the albums ( which like I said I couldn’t afford unless I had birthday money or I had done a lot of Babysitting ) the guys who managed the store would give me the Promos for records, posters and the cutouts.
There wasn’t a lot of space on the walls for that stuff because the walls were lined with shelves for the Bongs and stuff like that so I guess giving me some of that stuff saved them a trip to the dumpster.
They knew I was there to mostly kill time, so we talked about my dog, my guitar lessons, sometimes we talked about who was going to be on the tv show ” Midnight Special ”
One day one of the salespeople asked how my guitar lessons were going and I said fine and he says, ” “Hey, take this. They’re an all girl band and they’re only a little older then you ”
He handed me this album and some posters tied to it:
That’s how I discovered the Runaways and became a life long Joan Jett fan.
I thought that was very nice and I was thanking him when he says- ” Hang on, you might like this one too- the girls are really good singers – you should practice your singing too if you want to be in a band. ‘
So I don’t have one favorite album of all time, I have two and if you are curious that year I did learn to play and sing both of the songs I posted from these albums.
