I'm going back through what comprised my senior year of high school and first semester of college in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Come along for the ride. New posts every day or so mixed in with other things.
Prologue: 1979. I would always go with my mother on Thursday nights when she would shop for groceries at the Kroger store located at what was then called the Murfreesboro Mall. I would get $5 if I was lucky and I would spend some of that money playing pinball at the Silver Shack. I might buy a 45 or cutout record at Port 'O' Call Records. I would definitely spend some of my time in Readmore Books browsing the shelves and checking out the magazine stand. It was around this time I started buying Circus magazine which soon led to me buying Hit Parader and Creem.
One night I found a book on the shelf in the movie section that intrigued me. It had a pair of lips on the cover so I thought it might have something to do with The Rolling Stones. That wasn't the case. I had discovered The Rocky Horror Picture Show Book by Bill Henkin. As I thumbed through it I began to look around to see if anyone saw me with it as I thought it had to be something that belonged up near the adult magazines like Playboy and Penthouse. The images of people in their underwear were shocking to my 12 year old eyes and, while most of the book was in black and white, there were plenty of lurid color pages that caught my attention too. I would sneak a glance at this book almost every time I came to the store for many months after. I figured out it was a movie, but then forgot about it completely until April 1985.
April 3 & 4, 1985. I was a Rocky Horror virgin at the beginning of 1985, but that was about to change. I would get to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the M.T.S.U.'s Keathley University Center movie theatre on April 3rd!! I don't know if I found out about it through D.D. Blank or another friend, but I was told it would be fun....and that I should bring toast, a squirt gun, newspaper, and toilet paper too. One of our friends, the X-Man, had graduated the year before from Riverdale, would be there that night and he knew every snappy saying to yell back at the screen. It was the early show so I don't recall if there was anyone dressed up, but there would be some in costume arriving for the late show. It was strange, wondrous, and I stopped off at Cat's Records the very next afternoon after school to buy the soundtrack album. I would screen the movie many more times at midnight showings for years afterward at the Cinema One_Two in town. I never dressed up as a character, but I suppose if I had it would have to be either Eddie or Riff Raff. My favorite character in the film was Columbia. I had a mad crush on her.
1 comment:
Didn’t see Rocky Horror until my freshman year at University of Arizona.
Post a Comment