Do you remember the first album/CD you owned? I do.
My father was into woodworking. He made a beautiful stereo cabinet. He made his own speakers. He brought back two reel to reel tape decks from Japan. We had a good turntable and a good receiver.
I grew up listening to music. Listening to good music. I can still remember playing Peter from Peter and the Wolf as it played on the stereo. I remember listening to Peter Pan and other music/stories.
If I wanted to listen, I could put on the good headphones and lay on the living room floor and bliss out.
I never owned my own turntable. The portable versions didn’t sound good to me. If I wanted to listen to albums, I used The Stereo.
One Christmas, I received my own music. A portable cassette tape deck. Along with the tape deck, I was also given two tapes.
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Good tracks.
Happy Anniversary, Charlie Brown!
I bought the CD a week before I bought my first CD player. That’s how committed I was to it.
Still have that disc.
In fact, I’m going to play it right now.
My first CD preceded my first cassette even though I’m the right age for a cassette to come first. I just was never much of a musical listener growing up of really now for that matter.
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First CD Big Willie Style – Will Smith.
First cassette Hysteria – Def Leppard.
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I’ve since seen Def Leppard a few times in concert and Will Smith none lol.
I think it was The Bangles – Different Light. I’m not quite sure. Other possible would be Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
for my own “personal” album. The family of course had many.
First album: Fleetwood Mac Rumors. (Yeah, 1977, I’m old)
First CD: Pink Floyd, Wish you were here.
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Never bought factory recorded cassettes, too expensive, too fragile, and too crappy sound. Always recorded the album for use in the car. Same with streaming music, have not paid a cent to “own” a song/album digital only. I will always buy a CD and then rip it for use via bluetooth, in the car, or whatever.
First album: Vivaldi’s “Concerto for diverse instruments”, a wonderful piece accurately described by its title.
(and first single: “Summer in the city” by Loving Spoonful.)
First single: “Puttin’ On the Ritz”, on vinyl. Had fun as a kid switching the turntable from 33 1/3 rpm to 45 rpm and back and listening to the tempo and pitch change (before I even knew words like “tempo” and “pitch”).
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First CD/album: “Weird Al” Yankovic – Greatest Hits (which would eventually be “Greatest Hits Vol. 1” as he released others). The one with “Bad”, “Eat It”, “Like a Surgeon”, “Lasagna”, “I Lost On Jeopardy”, and “One More Minute” all on one album.
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I was too young to understand the concept of “parody”, and didn’t hear the original works until later (and to this day my brain wants to sing the parody lyrics by default).
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I still have the CD. The vinyl was lost to time, probably during one of several moves.
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And no, I refuse to pay one more cent to “buy” digital streaming media. You’re just buying the privilege to stream it on demand or download a local copy, but that privilege can expire or be revoked at any time, and when it is your local copies get smoked, too. I’ve lost enough music that way to never do it again. (Luckily I hadn’t invested much in my “digital library”, so not a big monetary loss. Just a small headache and a trip to the local reseller to buy physical copies and make my own digital ones.)
First CD: Robert Shaw Chorale doing Rachmaninoff’s “Vespers.”
First LP: No idea, because I listen to my parents’ collection from time to time. It starts in the early 1960s.
I pulled this up and listened to it while writing today’s article. Thank you.
I still have a box of vinyl in the basement, but oddly, I don’t remember the first album I bought. I DO remember when I managed to get my paws on the “It’s a Beautiful Day” “White Bird” album, though.
Mom and dad had a Chrysler Imperial with an 8 track in it, and Mom loved listening to Engelbert Humperdinck and similar… (BTW, later in life, I used to HATE working on 8 tracks when I was doing automotive audio repair. They ALWAYS came in with the capstans polished bright and smooth, with God only knows what wrapped around the top and bottoms…)
Dad rebuilt a stereo / turntable he got from somewhere, and hand built a very nice all hardwood cabinet for it with storage on either end for LPs. Went to move that the other day, and I had to get a hand truck to carefully lift the ends. (Doesn’t help that the thing is still full of the old Time-Life skinny encyclopedia series..)
In high school, I bought a used Dual turn table (the one with a VERY HEAVY platter,) and rebuilt the idler system. Paid through the nose for a high end Sure cartridge and a high quality diamond needle. Bought the cleaning solvents and the ‘micro fiber’ pads that supposedly cleaned out the groves and left a micro fine layer of some kind of mumbo jumbo silicone lubrication.
I remember watching the neon light lit strobe bars on the edge of the turn table and adjusting the speed control to get it in sync with the line frequency. Had a few cheap cassette recorders, then bought one that could handle the new ‘metal’ tape that had just come out. (It did sound marginally better than the high coercivity oxide tapes.)
Most of the car players at the time could change the playback equalization by sensing a notch in the back of the cassette to determine if it was 70 or 120us. They actually had a pretty good frequency response up into the 12 – 15k range.
Good grief! Welp, thanks for the trip down memory lane!
Everything for me got started when I discovered, Full Tilt Boogie and Roy Buchanan and Mike Bloomfield with Paul Butterfield and Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. It all went south from there and now I’m so far gone that I can’t get back….gotta go my Polk Audio is headin out the door
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After reading this post I went hopelessly down memory lane, worked up a sweat twisting it up, then sat down to write this post. Thanks Awa.