The legend of The Rocky Horror Picture Show loomed large when I was 11 or 12. Every Friday and Saturday I’d see it in my local paper’s movie listings, a midnight party to which I wasn’t invited. I wanted to go so badly.

Where I grew up we had a chain of department stores named Roses that was targeted at people who thought K-Mart was too fancy. That didn’t matter to me, because there was a music to be had. While my parents were off finding great deals on back to school supplies I’d kill time in the record department, and that’s where I got my first introduction to Rocky Horror. That was an 8-track, and it was the Roxy cast with Meatloaf, but I was sold. By the time I finally got to stop dreaming it and start being it a couple of years later, I knew every word to every song and my 8-track was a tangle of vomited tape.

I was baffled the first time I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show and “Superheroes” was inexplicably expurgated:

Anyway, this is all just a long way of saying that I’m a lifetime Rocky fan (Riff-Raff, really), so picking up the earliest available recording–the original London cast–was a no brainer. What a thrill it is to hear Tim Curry‘s early Frank, Ritz’s early Riff, Patricia Quinn’s young Magenta, and Little Nell’s first Columbia.

There are a few versions floating around of the original cast recording, but none sell for more than a few bucks. That’s cheap even by Roses standards. Happy hunting.