GREASE IS THE TURD

I've been discussing assorted music stuff with a former DC colleague who's also a fellow music nut cut from my eclectic cloth, and the conversation turned to fails when people who didn't know any better gave us very bad choices of LPs as presents that were meant to love. 

Summer 1978: When the movie of GREASE came out and was super-popular, my mother totally ignored my actual musical tastes (which she neither liked nor understood) and decided to buy me the soundtrack as a present. That idea was bad enough but it was made even worse when she bought the ancillary Frankie Valli album that also included his single of "Grease is the Word." The album was clearly a Valli solo album with a huge portrait of him dominating the cover, but what made my mom think it was the movie soundtrack was the gigantic red sticker that proclaimed "Featuring the hit single 'GREASE ." When I unwrapped the LP and was confused as to why I was given a Frankie Valli album, my mom said "It's GREASE ! GREASE is popular, right?" I then had the unpleasant task of attempting to explain to a ragingly-menopausal and prednisone-addicted black mother why the gift was a massive fail. It was not pretty.

The album in question. A junior high buddy and I took it into the woods and blew the shit out of it with his dad's shotgun.