What were your first albums and what do you think of them today?

[Mart68]

A common point on this thread.
Just goes to show much spare cash people have to waste on 9,000 different kinds of nonsense today, not just music!

Yes my weekend job paid just over £1 an hour in 1985 which is £3.20 today. Now, due to minimum wage legislation, it would be £8 per hour although not sure you can employ sixteen year olds to stack shelves any more.

 

[Redacted]

Yes my weekend job paid just over £1 an hour in 1985

"Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife."

"Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah."

 

[Bleib]

:ish

First was Erasure Pop 20 first hits ca 1994

At one point I got tired of it and wanted something angrier and darker as I was growing up. Today I consider it pop-genius, wish they were as good today as their peak.

What happened to melodies?

Anyway, that began a love affair with London based Mute records. Depeche Mode. Nick Cave. Einsturzende Neubauten. Moby. Goldfrapp. Mick Harvey. Anita Lane to mention a few

 

[DanielT]

"Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife."

"Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah."

He he. It was probably only a matter of time before that MP reference would pop up.

Having said that, it is a fact that today's youth have all the world's music, new and old, on tap. In most cases for free, I guess. I have no idea if or when young people, teenagers will start paying for their own internet subscription.

Then we have the older teenagers/those in their twenties who, once they start earning their own money, BUY physical vinyl records. The boom for vinyl, owning something physical and all that.

 

[Redacted]

Vinyl? Are they mad?

 

[DanielT]

Vinyl? Are they mad?

You've got to be kidding, right? You haven't missed the young and vinyl trend, have you?

Even more fascinating is buying vinyl without even owning a record player:

Younger people around me are leading an analog resurgence. Far from the stereotype that only older generations buy physical media, Gen Z has emerged as the vanguard of “analog seeking” behavior. According to Luminate’s 2023 entertainment report, Gen Z listeners are 27% more likely to purchase vinyl records than the average music consumer, despite having grown up in the era of Spotify. In fact, half of U.S. vinyl buyers today don’t even own a record player – they buy records as tangible tokens of fandom and identity.

https://lightcapai.medium.com/the-great-return-from-digital-abundance-to-analog-meaning-cfda9e428752

 

[Redacted]

If I remember correctly, everything I bought in the 70s was vinyl. And later, cassette recorders to make mix tapes.
I'm very glad I kept all my vinyl until the early 2000's - even back then, before it was all trendy, I got a ton of money for a job lot of "attic junk". Actually may have paid for my first NAS/RAID unit!
Do not underestimate my trendiness

 

[Kr2d2]

Nice topic!

Definetly 'Revolver' by The Beatles, my first own music I bought with my own money around 1973.

Came out in 1966 and being born in 1959 that was a bit too early for me, so I was a bit late buying it. But discovering music I was under the influence of some Beatles singles from my older sister and brother, so my first own LP had to be 'Revolver' for me! Plus I guess because of the cool cover art by Klaus Voormann.


Nowadays mainly listening to Classical Music and Jazz, but it's one of the few Vinyls that I still listen to from time to time and I still like the music.

And because it brings me on a little time travel... I still remember how proud I was after buying this (my very first own!) LP at the music department of the Hertie department store in the small northwestern town of Emden...

 

[Fahzz]

My first album, still seems ok, Geoff Love was very good

View attachment 534258

Great movies too!

 

[Fahzz]

I bought Happy Jack and Mr. Fantasy with my birthday money.

 

[wadude]

I forgot the other part of the question:
1) McCartney: Maybe I’m Amazed is a great song. I occasionally hear it on Hits and History.
2) c1960: Still love this one, Ain’t She Sweet, Cry for a Shadow, lots of good Rock and Roll. You can really hear Paul’s bass because the producer took away Pete’s bass drum.
3) Elvis: Still a fan, but now there are ‘50s box and ‘60s Essentials, etc.
4) DC5: I never mind hearing DC5!

 

[Somafunk]

First cassette I bought was Iron Maiden- Number of the Beast as I had just received a Walkman style player with a radio and shoulder cord/strap. I remember going into Woolworths in Castle Douglas (sw Scotland) with my parents and spending my Xmas vouchers from my gran on the cassette as I thought the cover was cool, must’ve been Xmas 83.

Not listened to it, or any of the heavy metal music I was into from 83-91 ever

Just had listen on roon but I skipped through each track rather than subjecting myself to Dickenson’s vocal cries.

Can still remember the lyrics to every song as I worked my way through the album but there’s not a hells chance of me ever listening to it again for enjoyment, just glad I didn’t have Slayer - Reign in Blood as my first album/release that I’d have to suffer listening to, although I did own the cassette and a t-shirt 40 years ago……my parents must have thought “wtf is this shite?”

So it’s a very firm, “thanks…..but no thanks”

 

[GD Fan]

I can't recall what it was but it was on cassette tape. I do remember the first CD and here it is, still in my collection:

VHII. Listening to it now, still a brilliant album. I always thought of it as Van Halen's party album, but outside of of Dance the Night Away and Beautiful Girls it has some fairly heavy songs. And only one potential skip track in Bottoms Up (just one is fewer than all the DLR skip tracks on some of the albums that follow).

At the time I had / accumulated very few CDs - cassettes were just much cheaper.

 

[Thomas_A]

Now I remember. Some friends but mainly their older brothers had a record player plus cassette deck so we younger ones recorded as much as we could and were allowed to do so. Among other things, Secret Service albums. Damn how popular they were in Sweden in the late 70s and early 80s. For those of you who don't know them, I can mention that they were good. Maybe polished 80s pop but with good melodies. My first girlfriend's name was Jessica so that's why I have fond memories of this one:

That plus recording music onto cassettes from the radio when they played pop songs was the thing. I didn't have a record player but a cassette deck that I managed to scrape together money to buy. It was the cheapest but it worked. In any case, it was worth the work of shoveling hay bales at my neighbor's who was a farmer (I lived in the country side). Plus in my case a cheap tuner and my dad's old amplifier and his home-built Voigt speakers, with Peerless drivers, which I was allowed to borrow. That was how it was from when I was about twelve until I was seventeen.

Then I bought a record player after a summer job when I was seventeen. I watched the Amadus film on VHS, then I bought the soundtrack. My first vinyl.

Well yes they were popular back then. About their music. Well. Found the LP in the basement and it is quite high modulated and distorted. But they also had som distortion generator on Ola Håkanssons voice. I like the record label though.

 

[Barrelhouse Solly]

My first was The Clancy Brothers with Tommy Makem around 1961. I still sing a lot of the songs from it. I followed it with Joan Baez's second album and one of the Woody Guthrie/Cisco Houston Stinson LPs on red transparent vinyl. Then came Flatt and Scruggs and the Tom Lehrer live albums that had the same songs as the 10" LPs but also had between songs patter. "The outpatients are out in force tonight." "Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it." All of them improved my time in high school. Oh, 2 Dave Van Ronk albums and the second Bob Dylan album. I annoyed my dad with my choices.

 

[DSJR]

First albums?

The Shadows first album which dad bought, arguably because I jogged the record shop record player and scratched it (hey, I was only four years old...) -

Next, which was my conscious choice -

I was also a fan of The Monkees (YIKES!!!)

What happened to this vibe? We got absorbed into society I suspect

 

[JeffS7444]

Elton John's Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy was one of my first, and IMO, it's aged well. Some of the lyrics sailed over my youthful head though!

 

[Audionaut]

first

second

third

fourth

fifth

I still really enjoy listening to it today. In fact, I don't think there's ever been a time when I've come to dislike the music I started listening to around the age of 15 or 16.

 

[EJ3]

Age 13, George Benson "Give me the Night" produced by Quincy Jones. Still among my fav albums ever.

I like George Benson's "On Broadway" as done by AC/DC better than George Benson's own version.

 

[Multicore]

Not listened to it, or any of the heavy metal music I was into from 83-91 ever

Why not?