Elizabeth, South Australia, 1976
It was our older brother Rindert who instilled in me and my younger brother Jeff an enduring love for rock’n’roll.
As kids, we’d sit on the floor outside Rindert’s bedroom door (we were rarely invited inside this sanctuary) listening to the latest Rolling Stones, Beatles, Easybeats and many others belting out of the Stereogram.
Along with the experience of growing up together in, what was at times a challenging environment, our shared love of music has kept us close to this day.
Jeff’s passion for music led him to become a drummer at a young age and he is still active in the Adelaide music scene. As for me, I gain pleasure and a heightened appreciation of music hacking away at various acoustic guitars.*
Jeff and I share a lot of preferences for the music we like to listen to. The Stones and Beatles (of course), Frank Zappa and big helpings of Oz rock figure highly.
Our mutual love of Neil Young prompted Jeff to present to me on my 21st birthday a copy of Zuma by Neil Young and Crazy Horse, a great album with a distinctive cover. Among the pen drawings on the back, inside a cloud, Jeff had written ‘To Eric, Happy 21st, Jeff’. This personal touch made this record precious to me.
Years later I lent it to a friend and when I went to retrieve it, it had vanished. It couldn’t be found among any of the mountains of records littered throughout my friend’s house. I was devastated.
Sometime after this I was browsing through records at a local second-hand record shop and came across Young’s Zuma. Great, I thought: this can replace my lost copy. I turned the cover over and lo and behold, there it was, ‘To Eric, Happy 21st, Jeff’ I was more than happy to part with $3.99 to be reunited with this precious gift.
Of course, how this record ended up in a second-hand record shop is another story …
Eric (right) with older brother Rindert and a very young Jeff.
Stereo Story # 552
*Eric is being very modest here. He is a very experienced rock music (and documentary) photographer. He is currently working on an anthology featuring his work for the 1970s and 1980s Adelaide rock journal Roadrunner. Several of these photos have accompanied Stereo Stories about INXS, The Clash, Paul Kelly, Cold Chisel, and more. He is Stereo Stories’ official concert and portrait photographer.
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Eric Algra
Eric Algra is an Australia-based photographer. His documentary style encompasses both commissioned and personal work. Photography, as an art form, a record, an expression of unnameable yearnings, remains a driving passion. Challenging and developing his vision is important so Eric seeks out new thinking and stimulation.
From one Housing Trust kid to another. Those bedrooms were very very small.
Your story reminds me of the book “Old Records Never Die: One Man’s Quest for His Vinyl and His Past” by Eric Spitznagel. After unwisely selling his LPs when CDs hit the market, Eric decides he wants to restock his collection with vinyl… only he sets out to find the actual discs he used to own, records that have since been scattered to places unknown. It’s a crazy, obsessive and somewhat compelling musical detective story.
And “Zuma”? What an album! – Stephen Andrew.