The Love Machine

Artist: The Love Machine

LP: The Love Machine

Song: "Sex-O-Sonic" 
[ listen ]

My brother sent me a message on Facebook earlier this summer to let me know that Off the Record was closing. It's the last remaining record store in Yakima, our hometown. Off the Record opened in 1985, when I was in my junior year of high school, just one year before I landed my dream job at Budget Tapes & Records, our town's premiere record store at the time. (Yuppies bought Budget Tapes & Records in 1987, painted it pink and blue and quickly drove it into the ground.) A collector of 7" singles, it was at Off the Record that I purchased my first full-length LP in 1986. The store has supplied Yakimanians with good music (and bad music too, I'm sure) over the past 29 years, but now the owner is retiring so the place is going to close. I rounded up a few friends one weekend in August and we took a day trip to Yakima to pay Off the Record one last visit.

 [ Me and my records at Off the Record ]

One of the friends I went with picked out this 1978 album by The Love Machine and carried it around Off the Record in his hot little hands for nearly an hour while I tried to shield the fact that I was turning green with envy. When he finally began to sort through his pile of LPs in order to make his final selection, he slowly stuck this one back on the shelf. I had to use all my self-control to keep from throwing myself on top of the record to claim it as my own. I was scared he might change his mind! With carefully measured casualness I suggested, "Hmm...I think that one looks kinda' interesting. I might go ahead and get it since you don't want it." I still can't fathom how anyone could possibly pass on an LP that features a song called "Sex-O-Sonic." Anyway, in the future I really need to remember not to invite friends to go record-hunting with me unless they're strictly into christian rock and zydeco.

The seven lovely gears in The Love Machine are Kathy Bradley, Sheila Dean, Renee Gentry, Bernice Gibbons, Paulette Gibson, Mary Hopkins, and Sandra Sully. "Sex-O-Sonic" features Kathy Bradley on vocals; in the photo on the back of the cover, I think she's the one in the center with her leg up in the air. You may recognize her from the movie FRIDAY or maybe from the daytime television game show "The Price Is Right."

[ Off the Record — Yakima, Washington ]