What was the first record you bought?
Tuesday, March 31, 2009 While I was waiting to be interviewed on BBC Radio Tees this morning (subject: cigarette vending machines), I heard the presenter, John Foster, invite listeners to send him details of the very first record they had ever bought. It got me thinking.
Although I can remember listening to Alan Freeman's Pick of the Pops as long ago as 1965, when I was six, and recording songs on to my father's reel-to-reel tape recorder, it was 1972 before I bought my first single. I bought my first album (actually, a "compact cassette") the same year. In 1978 I bought my first 12-inch single and a year later my first 45 on coloured vinyl:
First single: 'Cindy Incidentally', The Faces (1972)
First album: 'Himself', Gilbert O'Sullivan (1972)
First 12" single: 'Denis', Blondie (1978)
First coloured vinyl: 'Furniture Music', Red Noise (1979)
First cassette single: 'C30, C60, C90, Go', Bow Wow Wow (1980)
What were your first records?
Reader Comments (5)
I bought my first single in 1974 at the grand old age of 7. Terry Jacks 'Seasons in the Sun' which I think went to number 1.
The first album I bought was around 1978 and was the Sex Pistols 'Never Mind The Bollocks'.
First colour vinyl was 'The Banana Split Song' by The Dickies which was in yellow and I bought that about 1980.
First 12 inch was 'Blue Monday' by New Order around 1984.
I can't remember the first CD I ever bought but I know that the last one was 'The Best of Willie Nelson'
Pretty eclectic mix.
Get it on by T.Rex. I also bought a second hand copy of The Tremeloes LP which I played on my little High Fidelity recod player. I put my name and adress on the back of the LP. I forgot what happened to it but many years later my eldest daughter was browsing in a second hand record shop when she found the Tremeloes LP with my name and address still on the back. I have no idea how it ended up there. She bought it and gave me it back, somewhat more scratched than I rememeber, and I've still got it.
I think my first record was a Frankie Laine LP, and it had Rawhide on it. And maybe The 3:10 To Yuma as well. And would have been in about 1960.
But that was before I moved on to Gene Pitney and Roy Orbison and Ricky Nelson and Johnny Cash and Duane Eddy.
"Mud Rock" by Mud [on cassette].
Due to a strict puritan upbringing, the devil's music on a record-player was verboten until I was 14. Wasn't sure why cassettes were considered more Godly, but there was certainly less space for lurid imagery on their tinsy little covers.
By 1978 however, the regime had slackened so the Pistols, The Stranglers and all their nasty leathery spitty mates were noisily polluting the parental peace.
Side-note: despite my parents' clean-living ways, an ashtray was still brought out for guests. Would have been rude not to.
Crime of the Century by Supertramp ... and then nearly died when I played it in front of my mother and the song "Bloody Well Right" started blaring out! (Old fashioned lady, my mother, and I was only a young teen).