Apparently we need one. Talk about the first music you bought on your own power. Me, Diesel and Dust on tape. I really have not changed much since I was nine years old.
Your turn.
by Tim F| 141 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Apparently we need one. Talk about the first music you bought on your own power. Me, Diesel and Dust on tape. I really have not changed much since I was nine years old.
Your turn.
Comments are closed.
Dolly Llama
First CD I ever bought for myself: Welcome to the Pleasuredome, Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
Tim C.
1985. cassette tape. Ghostbusters soundtrack. I was 10.
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.
Gin & Tonic
Vinyl, of course. Pretty sure the first album was Freak Out.
Yes, I wasn’t like the other kids.
raven
Surfin Safari 1962.
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!
S-Curve
Cassettes, Purple Rain, Born in the USA, Synchronicity. A spree!
Lee
Vinyl. Earth Wind & Fire
I forget which album.
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.
Eric
Rainbow Rising. And so it began….
dirk
AC/DC – Back in Black on vinyl, probably about the time it came out in 1980.
Still a great album.
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.
Elizabelle
I’ve got Diesel and Dust on vinyl and CD. Great album. Saw the boys at Merriwether Post some years back. Tight band.
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.
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.
brodertown
A cassette of Stravinsky’s “Firebird” in a bargain bin my freshman year in college. I was a pretentious youth.
Cervantes
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.
shell
It was either ‘Wipe Out’ by the Surfaris or ‘Do The Mouse’ by Soupy Sales.
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”)
Cervantes
@EZSmirkzz:
Are they still around?
xenos
Fly Like an Eagle , Steve Miller Band. I was 10. Nothing to be ashamed of.
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.
jeffreyw
Not really sure if it was the first, or even if I actually bought it, but in a rebellion against my parent’s love of big band music I ended up with an album by Lefty Frizzel – circa 1959.
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.
raven
@Cervantes:
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.
japa21
IIRC, I think it was something by Louis Prima and Keely Smith.
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!
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.”
Rex Tremendae
Beatles for me. LPs. Can’t remember the first, possibly Meet the Beatles (this was ~1980).
Elizabelle
I misinformed re Bobby Bloom cause of death. Was possibly an accident cleaning a gun, while depressed. Age 28. Not murdered.
He shows up in a book called “The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars: Heroin, Handguns, and Ham Sandwiches.”
Not a ham sandwich. Page 70.
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.
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.
EriktheRed
I bought “Rock and Roll Over” by Kiss on vinyl.
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”.
Belafon
The first album I bought was Welcome to the Real World by Mr. Mister.
The second album was Victorialand by the Cocteau Twins.
Eric S.
On tape, I Think ZZ Top, Eliminator. On CD, CCR Greatest Hits.
Cervantes
@raven:
Thanks.
There was a time when they seemed to be everywhere.
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…
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.”
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”…
raven
@suilebhan: That was my second.
Cervantes
@Halcyan:
Funny thing about that song: it was inspired by mid-town.
New York, that is.
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.
Ken T
Not sure, but I think it was probably something by The Ventures (early 60’s surf music).
dedc79
Aerosmith – Pump (sigh)
Motley Cru – Dr. Feelgood (sigh)
Bon Jovi – New Jersey (dry heave)
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.
Omnes Omnibus
Either Parallel Lines by Blondie or Get the Knack by the Knack. Not sure which.
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)
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.
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.
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.
Glaukopis
Beatles 45. I want to hold your hand. Before their first album was available I think. Still have it.
Mike in NC
Showing my age here: “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Simon & Garfunkel, on an 8-Track tape.
Voncey
@Elizabelle: Me too! 45 of Bobby Bloom’s Montego Bay.
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.
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
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.
nilnoc
1964. 45 rpm single of Shirley Bassey belting out “Goldfinger” He’s the man!
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.
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.
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…
morepie
The B-52’s. 1979
debbie
@rikyrah:
Similarly:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with
Transcript:
http://m.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/transcript
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
shell
That was me with Donovan’s single ‘Atlantis.’ Played over and over till my Dad pleaded for a break.
AliceBlue
First vinyl: The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper.
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.
HinTN
@Gin & Tonic: We are the other people, we are the other people, You’re the other people, too. Find a way to get to you…
HinTN
@Gin & Tonic: We are the other people, we are the other people, we are the other people. You’re the other people, too. Find a way to get to you…
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 :-(
Cervantes
@Ole Phat Stu:
The biggest cathedral organ in the world.
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.
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.
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.
Paul in KY
@Halcyan: I got the Archies ‘Sugar Sugar’ off a cereal box, Mr. big spender.
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? :)
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
burnspbesq
@Suezboo:
Johnny Horton.
My first LP purchase was “Beach Boys Concert.”
Greg
Honky Chateau – Elton John
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!
Just Some Fuckhead
Ghostbusters soundtrack.
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.
raven
@HinTN: No Grace but Signe Toly Anderson’ Also, Skip Spence who was in Moby Grape!
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
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just One More Canuck
@Elizabelle: @ellie: Last year one of the Grade 4 classes at my daughter’s school sang Beds are Burning for an assembly – I was quite impressed with the choice
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
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.
Heliopause
Anyone mentioned yet that the murdered Illinois cop might actually have killed himself?
Matt McIrvin
Talking Heads’ late-ish album Little Creatures, on cassette. It had just come out. Brothers in Arms might have been the second.
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.
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.
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.
Steeplejack (phone)
@jannydarling:
Great story.
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.
Brachiator
Probably something Beatles. Can’t remember.
But later, when I was discovering jazz, the first record I bought was Herbie Mann, “Memphis Underground”
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.
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.
Steeplejack
@HinTN:
Surrealistic Pillow is one of my all-time favorite albums, but I always loved “It’s No Secret” from that first album.
Steeplejack
@Brachiator:
That was the first album I bought when I went to college in the fall of ’69. I got it with Freddy Robinson’s The Coming Atlantis. “Black Fox.”
ETA: “Before Six.” YouTube has more clips than they had even a short while ago.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
Good luck with that.
gogol's wife
@jannydarling: @Steeplejack (phone):
What Steeplejack said.
Let’s twist again, like we did last summer.
Twist, baby twist, ooh yeah, just like this, well, twist a little sister, do the twist.
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.
EZSmirkzz
@raven: Probably all those Andy Williams albums.
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.
Brachiator
@Steeplejack: I don’t know Robinson’s work that well. I will definitely check out the links. Cool stuff.
piratedan
Raspberries greatest hits – 1976 on 8-track
Elizabelle
@J R in WV: Saw ZZ Topp open for Tom Petty at the Hollywood Bowl a few years back. Magical. Great bands.
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”.
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.
rea
The brand-new Jethro Tull album Thick as a Brick
[Singing]: “Really don’t mind if you sit this one out . . . .”
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.
Brachiator
@James E Powell:
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.
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.
Hungry Joe
@Steeplejack: “Surrealistic Pillow” still holds up, as does “It’s No Secret.” Balin could SING.
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.
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).
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.
A guy
Aerosmith-toys in the attic. 1976 or 77 I’d say
Paul in KY
@Steeplejack: Maybe their best song ever.
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!
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!
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.
joel hanes
First 45: “Lies”, the Knickerbockers
First LP: “Magical Mystery Tour”, by some obscure band out of Liverpool
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.”
Mark
The Royal Guardsmen. The album that had Snoopy vs. The Red Baron. I was about 8 or 9.
Bitter Scribe
Traffic,”John Barleycorn Must Die.”
Mikem
KISS (self-titled) (vinyl)
Was one of the proudest moments of my life.
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).
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 …
Paul in KY
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Love The Cure! What a band. Actually saw them 2 years ago at Voodoofest. Robert Smith in all his mopey glory!
Bloix
@Gin & Tonic: I listened to Freak Out. My big brother bought it.