X is for Xanadu

When I was 7 or 8 years old, my mother took me to G.C. Murphy's, where I purchased my very first LP album with my own money.  That album was Olivia Newton-John's Greatest Hits Volume II.

I remember playing that record on my "blue jean pocket" record player that, if I'm not mistaken, came from Sears.

The last song on the album was a song called Xanadu.  

I had no idea that the song Xanadu was the theme song from the "romantic musical fantasy"  film of the same name that also starred Olivia Newton-John. According to several online sources, the film was pretty much a flop, but the soundtrack was a big commercial success.  I've never seen the movie, so I can't attest to how bad it is or isn't.

During the time when I was playing Olivia's album on my uber cool blue jean pocket record player, the only thing I knew about Xanadu was that it was the name of what my father called a "disco" in Myrtle Beach, SC.  He had a t-shirt that featured the nightclub's name on the back. It looked like this:

Via

It wasn't until I started composing this piece that I learned that Xanadu was also the name of the summer capital of Kublai Khan's Yuan Dynasty.

I suspect that Xanadu might be a very popular post topic for those participating in the A to Z Blogging Challenge due to the challenge of finding topics to write about that start with the letter X.  But, then again, a lot of folks may choose to wax poetically about x-rays, Xena the Warrior Princess, X-Men, or xylophones.

Are you familiar with the song or the movie Xanadu?

As always, thanks for stopping by!

This is the twenty-fourth of twenty-six alphabetized blog entries I am publishing this month as a part of the 2016 Blogging A to Z Challenge.  Many bloggers who participate in this challenge, select a theme.  My theme is - "Whatever I Think Of."  

For more information on the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge, click here.