Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

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141Comments

  3. 3.

    The Red Pen

    KISS, Destroyer and I am not ashamed. It’s a classic album even if it was produced by assholes.

    Diesel and Dust was an early CD purchase for me. It was one of the first fully-digitally-mastered albums produced.

  6. 6.

    maurinsky

    When I was 8 (in 1977), I bought the David Bowie album, David Bowie, specifically for Space Oddity, which I then listened to on repeat for about 5 days in a row until I knew every single nuance of the song. I don’t think I listened to any other song on that album!

  9. 9.

    Cube Zombie

    The Beatles’ “Let It Be” 45 rpm, with the awesome “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)” on the B-side. I played it continuously until everyone around me begged me to stop.

  12. 12.

    Elizabelle

    Think it might have been a 45 of Bobby Bloom’s Montego Bay, at a PX.

    Mr. Bloom was a one hit wonder, and I see that he got murdered a few years later.

    Def got my parents to buy me some Monkees singles. Also was lucky my mom had good musical taste: we got to listen to all the pop on the radio.

  13. 13.

    Elizabelle

    I’ve got Diesel and Dust on vinyl and CD. Great album. Saw the boys at Merriwether Post some years back. Tight band.

  14. 14.

    Ryan

    Metallica’s self-titled, black album, which I almost never listen to anymore. My second album was Bon Jovi’s Keep the Faith, which is a great album that gets my attention maybe once a month after 25 years.

  15. 15.

    EZSmirkzz

    Bought six albums from Columbia Record Club for the price of one, ended up with Deep Purple In Rock, Black Sabbath’s Iron Man, Free, Neil Young’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Santana, Grand Funk Railroad’s E Pluribus Funk, and Three Dog Night. Left them at my Mom’s house when I hit the road so I still have them in my second or third childhood, depending on how you define childhood.

  16. 16.

    brodertown

    A cassette of Stravinsky’s “Firebird” in a bargain bin my freshman year in college. I was a pretentious youth.

  17. 17.

    Cervantes

    Talk about the first music you bought on your own power.

    As a young child I had a clock-work music box that played the Brandenburg concertos. (You could swap out the cylinder to hear the entire suite.)

    Still works.

    Did not buy it myself, though. It was just there.

  19. 19.

    Amir Khalid

    Led Zeppelin’s fourth album on LP. (I saw a magazine article once which quoted Plant as calling it that: “the fourth album”. Beats the heck out of calling it “Four Emojis”)

  22. 22.

    debbie

    My first purchase was two albums: Hendrix’s Are You Experienced and Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volume 1. I’ve been schizophrenic about music ever since.

  24. 24.

    raven

    @EZSmirkzz: When I worked on the dock at the Champaign, Il Post Office we got the returns for the Columbia Record Club. That was some nasty, heavy shit.

  25. 25.

    raven

    @Cervantes:

    The Columbia House brand was introduced in the early 1970s by the Columbia Records division of CBS, Inc. as an umbrella for its mail-order music clubs, the primary incarnation of which was the Columbia Record Club, established in 1955. It had a significant market presence in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 2005, longtime competitor BMG Direct Marketing, Inc. (formerly the RCA Music Service or RCA Record Club) purchased Columbia House and consolidated operations. In 2008, the company (as well as book club operator Bookspan) was acquired by private investment group Najafi Companies, and its name was changed to Direct Brands, Inc. Although Direct Brands shut down music mail-order operations in mid-2009, it continued to use the Columbia House brand to market videos in the U.S. and Canada, selling DVDs and Blu-ray Discs via the controversial practice of negative option billing. DB Media’s Canadian assets ceased operating on December 9, 2010, and all staff were dismissed,[1] while U.S. operations continue as usual. In December 2012, the company was sold to Pride Tree Holdings, Inc. In 2013, the company changed its name to Filmed Entertainment Inc.,[2] The sale of the DVD division at bankruptcy auction was announced August 10, 2015.[3]

  26. 26.

    captnkurt

    Pretty sure it was George Harrison’s 33&1/3, at the time on the strength of “This Song“, which 12-year-old me adored, but the rest of the album still holds up as well.

  28. 28.

    ellie

    I don’t remember the first music I bought, but I saw Midnight Oil several times in concert at Pine Knob in Michigan. Love them!

  29. 29.

    raven

    @brodertown: I hung out with his grandson. Wild ass gambler who had to get out of Urbana to move to NYC so he could put down a bet!

    eta Cool, the google says his son went to SCAD!

    “Charlie Stravinsky, great grandson Long Island, NY, USA, 2007

    In 2007 Charlie was a high school student, playing at the school’s orchestra and working on his art portfolio. Now he is a student at Savannah College of Art and Design.”

  32. 32.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    Genesis Abacab, Def Leppard Pyromania, and Rush Moving Pictures were my first – all purchased on the same date at the same time at the same store the day after I got my first boom box. So, I’m not exactly sure which came first but I’d say Genesis was the band I was most into at the time.

  33. 33.

    Swiftfox

    BJ Thomas 45. Everybody’s Out of Town. Far from his best. I can barely listen to anything with lyrics now. Its mostly classical, jazz, and instrumental folk these days for me.

  35. 35.

    Halcyan

    Man, you were the rich kids if your first music was an LP. I bought singles, and the little plastic thing that went in the middle, or the thing that allowed you to drop another one down after the first one played.

    I don’t remember which music I bought. I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade. I think it was Petula Clark’s “Downtown”.

  36. 36.

    Belafon

    The first album I bought was Welcome to the Real World by Mr. Mister.
    The second album was Victorialand by the Cocteau Twins.

  39. 39.

    Jeffro

    @S-Curve: Took the words right out of my mouth! Purple Rain, Synchronicity, and Frontiers (yeah I said it)

    It’s quite possible that there were also Ratt, Asia, and the Cars cassettes amongst those first dozen ones I bought. It was a weird time…

  40. 40.

    suilebhan

    In late 1963 early ’64 it was all Beatles all the time. My first 45 was “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” I think the B side was “I Saw Her Standing There.”

  41. 41.

    Ridnik Chrome

    Does it count if you asked for it specifically, but a grown-up did the actual buying? If so, then the 45 RPM single of “No More Mister Nice Guy” by Alice Cooper, his current hit at the time. I was eight years old. If it has to be something I actually paid for myself, then probably another song that was on the radio during that period (1973-74). There was a Woolworth’s near my mom’s workplace that had a bin full of 45s that they sold for 39 cents each, just cheap enough for my budget. Usually it was things that had been in the top forty a few months earlier. God, listen to me. 45 RPM records. I might as well be talking about horses and buggies.

    ETA: First album I bought with my own money was “Houses of the Holy”…

  44. 44.

    Punchy

    First, a comment: 1.5 days until Australia! Hot damn!

    Next, some advice: Don’t ever, EVER use DHL to send packages. Dont do it. Whatever FedEx charges, pay it.

    My blood pressure is off the charts trying to get DHL to actually SEND the fuckin package I’ve paid an insane amount of money for them to ship. 9+ phone calls and counting. Worst company I’ve ever seen.

  47. 47.

    jayboat

    We had a few Beatles albums around the house as well as the Monkees, Petula Clark and other pop stuff that someone had given my mom. The first album I actually bought was The Temptations Greatest Hits in 1968.

    Funny how you remember that stuff. The powah of music.

    @Punchy- I thought they were out of business.

  49. 49.

    Suezboo

    78″ vinyl. Ricky Nelson . Hello Mary Lou. And
    78″ vinyl. Lloyd Price . Personality. And
    78″ vinyl. I dunno who. The ballad of New Orleans.
    (I was spoiled rotten, pocket money-wise, back in the 50s)

  50. 50.

    Betty Cracker

    It MIGHT have been Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours,” but I’m not 100% sure. My younger sister was more into music than I was (still is, really), so I’d mooch off her collection, or we’d go in halves.

  51. 51.

    low-tech cyclist

    Bob Lind, “Elusive Butterfly.” Still love that song.

    Recently discovered that there’s an extended version of the song, with several more verses, out there on YouTube. Lind also wrote for the Weekly World News for a number of years.

  52. 52.

    p.a.

    @Cube Zombie: I can’t remember my first purchase (parents bought or me from my allowance) but I remember what I first owned. 45’s: Let it Be, Long and Winding Road, Sugar Sugar, NaNa HeyHey Goodbye, Quentin’s Theme (Dark Shadows tv show). LP’s: 3 Dog Night Golden Biscuits, Best of the Guess Who, Neil Diamond Shiloh.

  56. 56.

    gogol's wife

    Beatles 45, “Please Please Me.”

    ETA: But probably my brother will come on here to say that he bought it. Maybe so, he has a better memory than I do.

  57. 57.

    rikyrah

    Outraged Dad Wonders If a Public Speaking Class Is Only for Rich Kids
    September 15, 2015 7:57 AM

    Back in 2006 media mogul Oprah Winfrey conducted a provocative experiment for an episode of her eponymous talk show: She swapped kids from Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville, Illinois, a well-heeled Chicago suburb, with kids from Harper High School in Englewood, an impoverished, violence-filled neighborhood on the city’s South Side, just 35 miles away.

    It wasn’t only the Olympic-size pool at Neuqua Valley that shocked and angered the kids from Harper. They were stunned by the academic offerings—including more than two dozen AP classes, compared with the two offered at Harper.

    Nearly a decade later, Frankie Adao, a dad in Newark, New Jersey, who is active in progressive education reform efforts there, is wondering why his son is only being taught ELA/SS,—a combination of English language arts and social studies— while his peers in other parts of the state are being offered a more plentiful selection of advanced-sounding courses: Google Hacks, Civics, Media/Public Speaking, Sports Statistics, Creative Writing, and a whole stable of other art, language, and music electives. That’s just at one school.

    “A bit of jealousy came over me,” Adao wrote on his blog late last week about his reaction to seeing the schedules being offered at other schools. “I wanted for my son what their kids had! Fair and equal opportunity to a great education.”

    http://news.yahoo.com/outraged-dad-wonders-public-speaking-class-only-rich-115727369.html

  58. 58.

    boatboy_srq

    Police: Ghost in the Machine, vinyl.
    Real Life: Heartland, cassette
    Academy of St. Martin in the Fields (Marriner); Nutcracker Suite & Serenade for Strings, CD.

    Yes, I’m a child of the 80s.

    And yes, those were separate purchases, each separated by a couple years, and in that order.

  60. 60.

    Meyerman

    “Imperial Bedroom” – cassette, summer of 1983. I never had to buy much music when I was a kid because my older brother and sister bought 100s of records. Then I taped them.

  61. 61.

    Steeplejack

    For me it had to be Meet the Beatles! (LP). For Christmas ’63 my parents gave me a little fold-out record player (similar to this), along with the Ventures’ Telstar and I could have sworn that Beatles album, but the Interwebs tell me it wasn’t released until January 20, 1964. I would have been at the head of the line to get it with my hard-earned allowance money.

    I might have actually bought Introducing . . . the Beatles first, since that was released on January 6. But the iconic photograph on the cover of Meet the Beatles! is what’s seared into my memory.

    I had an amazing collection of LPs until I lost them all in the terrible fire of ’02. Never got into 45s, for some reason, although I had a handful.

  62. 62.

    grape_crush

    On vinyl back in junior high, Journey’s Escape.

    When I won my Walkman in a kite-flying contest, the first cassette was Rush’s Moving Pictures. I’m happy that my high-school age neighbor directed me to better stuff than Journey, or I’d probably be a Nickelback listener today…

  65. 65.

    Big Jim Slade

    Elton John’s Greatest Hits – my sister had it and I wanted it, too. The first album I really got on my own was Toys in the Attic by Aerosmith. I was 8 or 9 and was just beginning to be notorious (to myself, at least) for misunderstanding rock lyrics – in Walk This Way, when I heard in on AM radio I thought he was singing Honky Slave! I called into KHJ to request it once – they must have gotten a good laugh over it.

    To me they were just words that were thrown around in rock songs and I didn’t know honky could be slang for a white person (ie., me), or really much about slavery at that point.

  66. 66.

    phein39

    “Be the first caller to WHB and you’ll get a free record!”

    Might’ve been 10 years old. Took that certificate down to wherever and got “Come Together”/”Something.” The 45 didn’t have a B side: an A and a AA side.

  67. 67.

    phein39

    @raven:When I worked on the dock at the Champaign, Il Post Office . . . .

    No. You cannot be in Champaign-Urbana, working for the USPS. The world cannot be that small.

  68. 68.

    Ridnik Chrome

    @Mike in NC: Was wondering when someone was going to bring up 8-tracks. For Christmas one year my dad bought me a portable 8-track player plus a bunch of tapes which, judging from the titles, he probably picked out of a cut-out bin. But one of them was Pink Floyd’s soundtrack to the film “More”, still one of my favorites by them.

  69. 69.

    Miss Bianca

    The soundtrack to “The Sting” on vinyl – I was 9 years old. (Now I’ve dated myself!)I saved up for it. Must have seen that movie a dozen times in the first year it came out. Gave me a lasting taste for ragtime in general and Scott Joplin in particular.

  70. 70.

    shell

    I played it continuously until everyone around me begged me to stop.

    That was me with Donovan’s single ‘Atlantis.’ Played over and over till my Dad pleaded for a break.

  72. 72.

    Hunter

    I honestly don’t remember the first music I bought on my own — it was probably either Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Peter, Paul and Mary, or the Stones.

    On vinyl.

    And just by way of contrast, lately I’ve been buying MP3s of Kimmo Pohjonen and Morton Feldman.

  75. 75.

    Ole Phat Stu

    It was in the 1950s, a record of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D-moll, played on the organ of St.Stephans cathedral in Passau, which is the biggest organ in the world. Gran sat on it 3 weeks later, probably because I’d been playing it LOUD all the time :-(

  77. 77.

    HinTN

    Jefferson Airplane, Takes Off – I was really into popular music on the radio (WLS at night out of Chicago), mostly folk, pop and rock. Not sure why I homed in on the Airplane but that was a really folk tinged album.

  78. 78.

    OldDave

    “Hit the Road, Jack”, on 45. I think – it’s been a very long time ago. Certainly an early purchase, possibly not the first.

  79. 79.

    Paul in KY

    I think mine was ‘Beatles Rock and Roll Music’. Out of print for a long time. Was a double record of their early stuff.

  81. 81.

    jannydarling

    “The Twist” by Chubby Checker, with “Lets Twist Again” on the B side of a 45. I don’t know what happened to that record. My girlfriend and I walked up to Woolworths to get it. Got it home and put in on in the living room, which would never fly if my father were home. I can still see my mother, so young, coming to sit on the bottom landing of the stairs, to watch the two of us demonstrate the twist for her. I can still see the joy in her face.

    I had to stop because now I’m weepy. Why you do dat to me? Why you drag up good memories so dat I cry? Why? Why? :)

  82. 82.

    cintibud

    First – Neil Young, After the Gold Rush (as requested on my Christmas list)
    First that I walked into a store and purchased – George Harrison, All things must pass

  85. 85.

    donnah

    First music was a 45, Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch (Can’t Help Myself). Loved Motown.

    First album was Elton John’s Madman Across the Water. I bought it with my babysitting money.

    Hoo boy, I’m old!

  87. 87.

    trollhattan

    “Abbey Road” in high school, it was. Went a little crazy after that and the only thing that saved my wallet was discovering the hippie used record stores.

  89. 89.

    Honoré De Ballsack

    ELO, Discovery, on cassette. I’m not ashamed to admit it (ELO made some good albums, but except for “Don’t Bring Me Down,” Discovery isn’t one of them.) I’m surprised that everyone else’s choices seem to be deathless evergreen classics: apparently in the pre-disco era, only great records were released.

    Also: reading the comments on this post, I cannot help but add: the commentariat here is positively antediluvian. :P

  90. 90.

    Ridnik Chrome

    @HinTN: I used to listen to WLS as a kid. John “Records” Landecker and Larry Lujack. The other big top forty station in Chicago at the time was WCFL. I think that’s where Lujack started out, and then he moved over to WLS in the mid-Seventies. Ran into him once on Lower Michigan Avenue when I worked at the old main library…

  91. 91.

    John

    Motley Crue – Too Fast For Love on vinyl.

    or it might have been REO Speedwagon – High Infidelity on vinyl.

    Hey, I was a 14-year-old white boy.

  92. 92.

    KS in MA

    I think it was “Fresh Cream” on vinyl. I’d never heard of the band, but I thought the cover photo was cool.

  93. 93.

    Reformedpantysniffer

    Still have all my vinyl (1700+) and still play it when allowed (no one home but moi). First three albums I bought after getting my Emerson stereo for eighth grade graduation (1976) was James Taylor, Greatest Hits, Jay and the Americans, The Very Best of, and the Bee Gees, Main Course. Bought them at Bradlees. Fourth album might have been Boston’s debut. My CD collection is bigger. My car has boxes of cassettes. I think the 8-tracks are somewhere else.

  94. 94.

    maurinsky

    If we’re talking my own money, my mom gave me the dough to buy David Bowie, my first purchase with my very own money was Duran Duran, which oddly, turned out to be the gateway music to punk, because it was only 2 years later I was buying Bad Blood, Dead Kennedys, Crass.

  96. 96.

    pete

    Single: Runaway by Del Shannon
    LP: Cliff by Cliff Richard
    CD (not including replacements of vinyl): Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits
    MP3 (not including replacements): ??? Devil Makes Three, maybe

  97. 97.

    otmar

    My first CD was the Dire Straights best of compilation.

    I never bought LPs, back than I heard whatever was on the radio or my older brother bought.

  99. 99.

    Matt McIrvin

    Talking Heads’ late-ish album Little Creatures, on cassette. It had just come out. Brothers in Arms might have been the second.

  100. 100.

    J R in WV

    Ramsey Lewis, jazz trio, 1967ish. A big jazz fan then and now, along with most other genres of music. I only enjoy opera live, and then only barely.

    But classical, folk, rock, the Dead, Western Swing, some country, traditional, Mountain Stage, jazz in nightclubs, Blues, Blues, Blues!

    I saw Pinetop Perkins many years ago when he was touring and did a show in WV, and then while I was staying in Houston when my Dad was ill, a good friend who was in Austin while his wife was completing another graduate degree called, and invited me to come for Pinetop’s 92nd birthday show. He did two sets. Two guys helped him up the stairs to the little stage in the club, but once he sat down he killed it.

    When we go to New York, which we do from time to time, we do music every other night, and more fancy dinners the other nights. Everything from New York Philharmonic to Iridium or BB Kings, where we saw Jimmy Vaughn last trip. Once we went to the Carlyle and saw Judy Collins, it was a bit steep, but a fine venue and a wonderful informal and chatty show.

    Music is very important to me. I’m 64 and have loud hobbies involving power tools and loud bangs, yet my last Dr appointment found that my hearing was still “exceptional”… so maybe that helps me appreciate the music. We do use hearing protection for the loudest hobbies, and the loudest rock shows, when necessary.

    Trucks-Tedeschi was loud, but tolerable. ZZ Top was loud but OK, their opener, Lynard Skynard was intolerable, too distorted, clipped, over driven speakers, etc. Their music didn’t appeal either, but I made it through to see ZZ Top, who did a GREAT show. They were real showmen, polite and thoughtful too.

  101. 101.

    ascap_scab

    I was six and yes this counts. From the back of a Kelloggs Frosted Flakes box I ordered the Banana Splits four song EP on vinyl.

  102. 102.

    James E Powell

    Rolling Stones Now! – My older sister liked the Beatles. Hell, my mom liked the Beatles. Ten years old and I was already embracing the dark side of the force. I spent the next fifteen years trying to be like Keith.

  104. 104.

    James E Powell

    @trollhattan:

    Those used record places were the opposite for me right after the hippies, later punks, running them realized that if they said “These guys are really good” with enough conviction, I’d buy anything.

  105. 105.

    Brachiator

    Probably something Beatles. Can’t remember.

    But later, when I was discovering jazz, the first record I bought was Herbie Mann, “Memphis Underground”

  106. 106.

    Bill Tucker

    Revolver, by the Beatles, a choice I’m still proud of. Purchased when my family was living in a small village in Turkey, on a rare trip to Ankara, with money I’d saved for months. Worth every kuruş.

  107. 107.

    SiubhanDuinne

    First record (LP) I bought with my own money? Scots Guards Pipe Band On Parade.

    :-)

    Yes, really.

    I’m sitting in the waiting room of a medical imaging center. Have an echocardiogram scheduled in a few minutes.

  112. 112.

    EZSmirkzz

    @Cervantes: Sorry so slow to respond, thought I’d better mow the South forty while it was cool.

    AFAIK Columbia Record Club just recently folded their tent.

  114. 114.

    Elizabelle

    @Bill Tucker: I love Revolver.

    My vinyl copy seems to have developed legs. Must obtain another.

    @p.a.: Yes! Quentin’s Theme. 45. My sisters, mom, friends and I lived for watching Dark Shadows in original release.

  118. 118.

    Juju

    After a bunch of babysitting jobs, I went out and bought a few albums for the first time. I had been listening to sister and brothers albums before I purchased “Year of the Cat”, “Frampton Comes Alive”, and “JT”.

  119. 119.

    Elizabelle

    @Mike in NC: Never had an 8-track system. The money. Had my little kid record player (in a little suitcase) and the parents’ Magnavox stereo, that stacked records as it played.

    @Voncey: All right Voncey!

    Sad to hear Bobby Bloom had a short life, but it was productive. Sound producer for Shuggie Otis, wrote Mony Mony recorded by Tommy James/Shondells, wrote an Archies song or two and sang on a few … all before he hit 29. Which he never did. Whole album is up on youtube; might listen to it. Bloom had a good voice.

  120. 120.

    rea

    The brand-new Jethro Tull album Thick as a Brick

    [Singing]: “Really don’t mind if you sit this one out . . . .”

  121. 121.

    NotMax

    First album can recall seeking out for purchase might have been Shostakovich’s 9th symphony, Ippolitov-Ivanov’s Caucasian Sketches or else the cast album of Man of La Mancha. May have been earlier ones but no memory of anything specific.

    Never was much interested in singles, but do remember buying Eve of Destruction and also They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha Ha. Still have the latter. The former was lent out and never returned somewhere along the way.

    Also purchased some prerecorded reel-to-reel tapes (yes, they were available just the same as records were) but that would have been a tad later on.

  122. 122.

    Brachiator

    @James E Powell:

    I spent the next fifteen years trying to be like Keith.

    A non-musical talk radio host read a promo for a sister station’s interview with Richards about his new solo album. The talk radio host was surprised to read that “Crosseyed Heart” was Richards’ third solo album, and mused that he didn’t know that Richard ever did anything independent of the Stones.

    I remember seeing Richards in Hollywood as part of his X pensive Winos tour. Think I might have bought a T shirt.

  123. 123.

    Hungry Joe

    “The Doors.” For some reason I decided that the guy in the wire-rimmed glasses (Manzerak) was the vocalist named Jim Morrison.

    And: EIGHT TRACKS? I had a four-track system in my black ’59 Chevy Bel Air. Used to blast Blue Cheer and think I was pretty damn cool. I was wrong, but I bought it at the time, so what the hell.

  125. 125.

    JohnM

    It was the Yellow Submarine soundtrack and I paid $5 for it. It was 1971 and I was 6 years old. My mother offered to pay me one penny for each weed I pulled from our 1/4 acre garden. She figured I would pull 100, maybe 200 weeds until I got tired of it. I pulled 1000 over the course of the afternoon, counting very carefully the whole time.

  126. 126.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    I can’t remember what the first album I bought was. I do remember my brother taking me to one of the Cool Record Stores for my birthday and buying whatever I picked out, which was a Duran Duran 12-inch import single from Japan and a “Mr. Roboto” standee (from the Styx concept album, not the current TV show).

  127. 127.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    Also, too, I decided early on that buying cassettes was a scam, and only did it in a pinch (like being on a road trip). I defied the music industry and taped my own albums. A 90-minute cassette held a full album quite nicely most of the time.

  130. 130.

    Paul in KY

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): I made some great compilation cassette tapes back in the day. A few developed legs & left somehow…

    Was time consuming work at Paul in KY Studios. Keeping track of what you wanted off a cassette & then knowing which song you had recorded & which songs (if any) were still on that album, etc. etc

    Had fun doing em though!

  131. 131.

    caroln

    i know I’m way late to the party but this was such a fun thread (trip) down memory lane to read. I was in grade school and sent my mom to the store with a list. She came back with Killer Joe, don’t recall the band, and Little Eva’s Do the Locomotion. I can still sing ’em. First LP I remember buying by myself was the Yardbirds and been rockin’ ever since!

  132. 132.

    The Golux

    Love Me Do / P.S. I Love You and Twist and Shout / There’s A Place. Tollie Records. I think they were 73 cents apiece.

  133. 133.

    joel hanes

    First 45: “Lies”, the Knickerbockers

    First LP: “Magical Mystery Tour”, by some obscure band out of Liverpool

  134. 134.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Paul in KY:

    I had a friend whose parents were more culturally strict than mine (immigrants from India) so I would make her mix tapes of my favorite songs. They eventually decided that pop music was not harming her, so they let her start buying her own albums. I remember she had more Depeche Mode than I did (I think I liked the Cure more).

    Also, I distinctly remember that one of my older brothers had Elvis Costello’s “Armed Forces” on 8-track, but I don’t remember listening to it. I didn’t get into EC until he released “Spike.”

  138. 138.

    Mike E

    I think I’ve put my hands on most of the albums mentioned here.

    In ’76 I spent my paper route $$ on The Beatles greatest hits double albums (red, and blue).

  139. 139.

    greenergood

    Mom and Dad bought me the Monkees, but my aunt gave me Surrealistic Pillow, I think, because the album cover was pink – little did she know … I was 11 or thereabouts – changed everything …

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