First Albums
January 10, 2009 11:37 AM   Subscribe

Everybody has one -- that album that first made you a music-lover for life. It could be the first album you ever heard or bought with your own money. It could be one you didn't hear until later in life. But everybody has one, and we want to know about yours.
posted by davebush (212 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
Like A Flag Out Of Hell by Mods and the Rockers
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:40 AM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


Doesn't CNN pay people to generate content, like reporters?
posted by fixedgear at 11:40 AM on January 10, 2009 [5 favorites]


For the...um, record...mine's "Alice Cooper: School's Out".
posted by davebush at 11:42 AM on January 10, 2009


Ray Charles: The Genius Sings the Blues" ["Last night you were dreamin' and I heard you say... 'Oh Johnny!' Well you know my name is Ray..."] A Date with Elvis.
posted by shambles at 11:44 AM on January 10, 2009


The Starland Vocal Band, Starland Vocal Band.
posted by Johnny Porno at 11:45 AM on January 10, 2009 [2 favorites]


Blondie's Greatest Hits, which was also the album playing when I first had sex ,which was also the first time I was caught having sex. "Hanging on the telephone" brings up a strange mix of powerful emotions.
posted by The Whelk at 11:46 AM on January 10, 2009 [2 favorites]


Oh, and it's Led Zeppelin IV.
posted by fixedgear at 11:49 AM on January 10, 2009


Billy Joel's "The Stranger." It's the first album I can remember sitting straight though. I had it on tape too. I would listen to it every time I cut the lawn - blastingly loud, and would use it to gage how long it took. I suppose you could say it was the album I started going deaf to.

I bought the 30th anniversary edition this summer when it came out, so yes I still love it completely.
posted by Kimothy at 11:51 AM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


Geez, I don't even remember. The first album I bought with my own money was The Misfits' "Earth AD" on cassette, because I thought the cover was cool and wanted to know what kind of music could have a cover like that. I was maybe 12, and that album didn't even hold up a few years later (Walk Among Us, on the other hand, holds up). The first record I really loved? I dunno, maybe Fugazi's "13 Songs"? Husker Du's "New Day Rising"? Those were some albums I remember listening to over and over around junior high, and I still love them.
posted by DecemberBoy at 11:51 AM on January 10, 2009


Faulty premise: albums came onto my radar years after my sisters' 45s and songs on the radio had first made me a crazed music lover. So probably The Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" or "The Birds and the Bees" by Jewel Akens.
posted by FelliniBlank at 11:53 AM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


3-way-tie: REO Speedwagon, Hi Infidelity; Foreigner 4; Billy Squier, In The Dark.
posted by not_on_display at 11:57 AM on January 10, 2009


Supertramp "Crime of the Century," first heard via my best friend's older sister's cool boyfriend.
posted by Turtles all the way down at 11:57 AM on January 10, 2009


Under the Table and Dreaming by Dave Matthews Band. I was eight.
posted by danb at 11:58 AM on January 10, 2009


Oh! Some quick Scientology auditing has uncovered an earlier engram, and I remember I had Motley Crue's "Girls Girls Girls" on cassette when I was about 6 years old, because, again, I thought the cover was cool. That album most certainly did not hold up. I realized it sucked before I learned to write in cursive.
posted by DecemberBoy at 12:02 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


The Beatles 1962-1966, followed shortly thereafter by The Beatles 1967-1970. Around the same time, Spirits Having Flown by The Bee Gees, and Tommy by the Who (not some misguided soundtrack or other - just the music as Pete Townshend et al intended it, in 1969).
posted by fingers_of_fire at 12:02 PM on January 10, 2009


More of the Monkees
posted by rfs at 12:03 PM on January 10, 2009


Swordfishtrombones, first LP I bought.

But, first cassettes I was given: Something Bee Gees and something Beatles.
posted by Dumsnill at 12:06 PM on January 10, 2009


The Offspring Americana and Weird Al Bad Hair Day are the two albums I bought by my self. The one that made me a music lover was Neil Young Decade, mainly just for Old Man, I still love that song and album.
posted by lilkeith07 at 12:06 PM on January 10, 2009


Prince's Batman soundtrack. It was the first album (cassette, actually) I listened to with headphones, really paying attention to stereo separation among other things.
posted by infinitewindow at 12:06 PM on January 10, 2009


Not EVERYONE has one, because I don't.

My dad started collecting LPs when he was 16. When I was born, he has in his 30s, and he'd amassed a huge collection. Music played day and all night in my house. So maybe you can say that I did have one, but I don't remember it, because I heard it while I was in the womb. I never rebelled and found "my own music." My tastes are pretty much the same as my dad's. In any case, I've always been a music lover. I can't imagine what it would be like to not like music.
posted by grumblebee at 12:06 PM on January 10, 2009


You mean *before* I first encountered Merle Haggard?
posted by fourcheesemac at 12:07 PM on January 10, 2009 [2 favorites]


I was at summer camp in sixth grade - it was a prep school's campus, I believe, and we were housed in its dorms. My parents never really listened to much/any music, and my few friends weren't really musically inclined. So when one of my roommates put on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, it was a light-bearing epiphany. Hearing "Tonight, Tonight" for the first time is probably one of the half-dozen most significant moments of my life.
posted by Tomorrowful at 12:07 PM on January 10, 2009 [2 favorites]


Jefferson Starship, Knee Deep In The Hoopla.

We built this city! We built this city on. Rock! And! Roll! Yeah!
posted by stavrogin at 12:07 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


But in all embarrassing seriousness, it was Wish You Were Here.

I still love it very much.
posted by fourcheesemac at 12:08 PM on January 10, 2009


As modern music goes, it'd have to be They Might Be Giants' Flood, which I didn't even hear until late '96, or so, which was after, in fact, I had already recorded several songs that people said sounded like TMBG songs ... it was strange. Prior to that, it would have to be Gilbert and Sullivan's Yeoman of the Guard. Sure, I liked The Mikado, The Pirates of Penzance, and HMS Pinafore, but Yeoman was a bit more tragic and bleak than the rest of them. I think that combination, music both tragic and funny, drew me closer to music as a whole.

Now that I think about it, I can see how a childhood obsessed with Gilbert and Sullivan could lead to TMBG-esque songwriting.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 12:08 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


Limelighters Through Children's Eyes.
posted by RussHy at 12:09 PM on January 10, 2009


Please be aware: You are all revealing your age as surely as if you'd been swiped in twain by a chain saw and we could count your rings.
posted by Faze at 12:09 PM on January 10, 2009 [22 favorites]


I'm pretty sure I was a music lover for life before I knew what an album was -- my first memories of music are from roughly the same time period -- when I was 2 or 3 -- my dad listening to Beethoven & Mozart on LP records, and one time, our neighbor, who was named Jack, was outside working on his car on a nice sunny day, & had his AM radio on. Hit The Road Jack came on and he turned it up real loud -- he liked that song because his name was Jack, too. So Ray Charles was the first pop musician to enter my conciousness. I think that was a pretty good place to start. I got Help! for my 6th birthday, but was fully and completely a bona-fide Beatles fanatic by that point. Hey Jude was like a mystical religious experience when I was seven.

In adulthood, the two albums that stopped me dead in my tracks and made me re-think what music was about/for & how it could be constructed were Discipline and English Settlement. (This statement causes me grief in that by winnowing it down to two, I'm giving short-shrift to Remain in Light, Look Sharp, This Year's Model, The Pretender's 1st, and a whole host of great music that stormed the world between '77 & '83)

But to try an settle on one record, or even a handful, is really an impossible task for me. Dylan showed what could be done with lyrics, Crosby Stills & Nash showed what could be done with the human voice, John Bonham informed me of the value of hitting drums hard, Joni Mitchell informed me that music could be shaped by female sexuality as well as male sexuality... I could go on for hours. It was a slow metamorphosis, really, but it began before I was self-aware, almost.
posted by Devils Rancher at 12:10 PM on January 10, 2009


The soundtrack to The Harder They Come.
posted by Divine_Wino at 12:11 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


I'm waiting for someone to say something like, "The first time I listened to Nirvana Nevermind when I was five or six."
posted by stavrogin at 12:11 PM on January 10, 2009 [3 favorites]


And in all further seriousness, and I swear this is true, I checked it out of the *public library* in 1976 when I was 11. In a suburban American town.

Internets eat your heart out.
posted by fourcheesemac at 12:11 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


Please be aware: You are all revealing your age as surely as if you'd been swiped in twain by a chain saw and we could count your rings.

Right, then I'd like to change mine to Lady GaGa "Poker Face."
posted by Turtles all the way down at 12:12 PM on January 10, 2009


Mine was MC Hammer's Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em. It was a different time, a different world.
posted by hermitosis at 12:13 PM on January 10, 2009 [2 favorites]


I got my first two albums (Styx: Grand Illusion and LedZep4) as birthday presents. No idea what was the first I bought with my own money. Probably some K-Tel compilation.
posted by rocket88 at 12:14 PM on January 10, 2009


Queen's 'The Game'...on 8-track no less.
posted by UseyurBrain at 12:14 PM on January 10, 2009


It wasn't the first album I ever bought, but Steely Dan's Aja was the first one I listened to over and over with my dad's big clunky Koss headphones. My dad improbably enough also had an 8-track of the original Hair soundtrack recording that I sometimes played around that time as well which might have sown the seeds of my counter-cultural tendencies at a young age.
posted by aught at 12:15 PM on January 10, 2009


I'd like to revise my answer to add that two years later I bought Bjork's Debut and everything in my life improved drastically in nearly every way.
posted by hermitosis at 12:16 PM on January 10, 2009 [2 favorites]


The first time I listened to Nirvana's Nevermind I was five or six
posted by Dumsnill at 12:16 PM on January 10, 2009 [5 favorites]


Stavrogin, as a college teacher I get humiliated every day by students to whom Nirvana means what the Beatles meant to me -- I had hippie parents, so this was their music. It took me til my 20s to *appreciate* the Beatles as rock and roll. For incoming freshmen, Nevermind was made the year they were born. I was born the year "I Want to Hold Your Hand" hit #1 in the US.
posted by fourcheesemac at 12:17 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


Chicago
At Carnegie Hall Vol. I - IV

posted by Jikido at 12:18 PM on January 10, 2009


REO Speedwagon, Hi Infidelity; The Knack, Get the Knack. I bought them at the supermarket. I don't think I'd ever even been to a record store.
posted by jessamyn at 12:19 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


Electric Boogaloo was the first single I bought, got me loving music. Next up was my dads copy of Modern Girl, Meatloaf! I think that was the album that made me think, I never want a world without music (well, that was probably footloose). It was indeed a different time and world!
posted by twistedonion at 12:20 PM on January 10, 2009


Appetite For Destruction, Guns N' Roses, grade five. I don't even know what life would have been like without that one.
posted by danwalker at 12:21 PM on January 10, 2009


3-way-tie: REO Speedwagon, Hi Infidelity; Foreigner 4; Billy Squier, In The Dark. said not_on_display

REPROGRAMMERS! WE'VE GOT A LIVE ONE! CODE NINE!
posted by Devils Rancher at 12:23 PM on January 10, 2009 [2 favorites]


To redeem myself and re-establish some sort of cred, the album that got me into 'good' music was Tom Waits, heart of Saturday Night. I was 15, getting stoned and drunk in Hillbrow, South Africa (scary place now but the greek cafes and alternative scene was exploding in the early nineties as far as my rose tinted specs can remember).
posted by twistedonion at 12:23 PM on January 10, 2009


Beatles' Revolver and Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life.
posted by hooptycritter at 12:23 PM on January 10, 2009


First CD purchased with my own money:
- Rick Rubin remixes Queen (CD-EP)

Formative "first-record" experiences as a youth:
- my Dad's copy of The Who's Live at Leeds
- my Dad's copy of The Kinks' Lola versus Powerman ...
- my Dad's copy of ... shit, just about anything.

Thanks, Dad. Seriously.
posted by joe lisboa at 12:24 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


First one I ever listened to over and over was my parents' vinyl copy of Kenny Rogers' Greatest Hits. I was maybe five.

First LP I went to the store and picked out of the bin myself was Business as Usual by Men at Work. Around the same time, I remember taping Michael Jackson singles ("Billie Jean" and "Beat It") off Kasey Kasem's Top 40 countdown on the radio because they were the No. 1 songs and so must be the best songs.

The music-lover-for-life album, though? Toss up between Def Leppard's Hysteria and Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet, which I alternated back and forth ceaselessly on the old neon-yellow cassette Walkman back in the spring and summer of '87.

With the possible exception of "Livin' on a Prayer" (whose Springsteen-lite lyrics are the very definition of imperial overstretch), the singles from all four of these hold up alright. But I could probably live a happy life - and certainly a healthier one - without ever again hearing "Don't Shoot Shotgun" or "Social Disease" (both of which I could air-guitar along to by rote once upon a time).
posted by gompa at 12:26 PM on January 10, 2009


Art of Noise - Who's Afraid of the Art of Noise

Still in my top 5 along with the second album I started on (bought a cassette), Scraping Foetus off the Wheel (Thirlwell) - Nail
posted by Zangal at 12:26 PM on January 10, 2009 [2 favorites]


First bought, I think something by They Might Be Giants (John Henry? That was the new one when I started listening to things). However, the album that serves as the foundation of most of my musical taste to this day is DEVO's Q: Are We Not Men?
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:26 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


Can't say I'm a big fan of the question, as I was already a music fiend before I could buy albums. The first album I went to the store and bought with my own money was Led Zeppelin - Song Remains the Same, but I'd been trawling through my brothers' record collections for years before that. (and it's worth noting that both my grandfather & father were record collectors, vinyl being the one thing they would allow themselves to occasionally splurge on when they were young & poor). I suppose the first album that really blew my mind and took me to the next level of being a music geek was the 1-2 combo The Kinks - Arthur / We Are the Village Green Preservation Society, which I got when I joined the Columbia record & tape club and got 13 cassettes in the mail. I must have been....11 years old? maybe 12.

Damn straight they still holds up today. Bless Ray Davies for giving me high standards at a young age.
posted by the bricabrac man at 12:28 PM on January 10, 2009


Roy C, Shotgun Wedding
posted by PeterMcDermott at 12:31 PM on January 10, 2009


I remember driving cross country when we moved from Maryland back to California in 1989. My parents (engineers!) sorted all the cassette tapes so that we'd have new ones to listen to every day. Unfortunately, the bulk of the tapes were classical, which I though was hella boring, so I would sit in the back seat and beg, every day, for us to ditch the system and listen to Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever or Chuck Berry's 16 Golden Greats again.

That said, the first album that I put on at home by myself and listened to over and over was Blood on the Tracks.

I also had a Panasonic tape—the ones you could have Sam Goody or MusicLand or whatever make for you back in the late eighties. My parents each got one with songs they'd had on record but didn't have anymore, and then they decided it was only fair to let me get one, too. I didn't know real music from Raffi at that point, so I picked mine entirely by song titles. It had "I Wanna Be Your Dog," "Strut," "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes," "Wooly Bully," "Silver Threads and Golden Needles," and "Werewolves of London."
God I loved that tape. Its hair was perfect.

posted by felix grundy at 12:34 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


It was Nevermind for me too. I was 13 or so and Cobain had been dead for a couple of years already, which was a huge disappointment, but that was the album that really got me excited about music, and away from listening to whatever top 40 was listened to by default by the kids around me.
posted by good in a vacuum at 12:38 PM on January 10, 2009


Well, I was an (all kinds of) music lover long before that but my first Pop Music Albums were:

- Madonna 'Like a Prayer'
- Whitney Houston 'Whitney'
- Kylie Minogue 'Kylie'
- Jennifer Rush 'Movin'

*waits for jonmc to pop an aneurysm*
posted by ZeroAmbition at 12:40 PM on January 10, 2009


First music purchase: some cassette of Queen. My parents felt it was necessary to inform the little me and smaller little brother what "Queen" meant in this context. I didn't understand the excitement or concern. "Men dressing like ladies? So what?"

Before Queen, it was dancing on my parents' bed to some cassette by the Police or Sting, possibly some Greatest Hits thing (it had both Roxanne and Englishman in New York, from what I recall). But little kids dance to anything with an obvious rhythm, it seems.

After Queen came Weird Al, and Spin Doctors (Two Princes was big for me in Jr High). Smashing Pumpkins were the first band I really cared about as a band, starting with Siamese Dream, then getting Gish, Pisces Iscariot, and Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness.

Then I found Bjork and Radiohead, plus Happy Hardcore and Industrial music. Now I have a few walls of CDs and a closet full of vinyl.

Oh, this was only about the album that was my first true love? Stopping with one is like only taking a sip of delicious absinthe* - I don't have the willpower to stop. And my music addiction was a gradual progression, with peaks and troughs of consumption, but never purging.

I have not tried absinthe, nor do I support the consumption of illegal substances, should absinthe be illegal where you are.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:42 PM on January 10, 2009


The first albums I bought myself were Lifes Rich Pageant by R.E.M., and Capitol Records' American compilation 20 Greatest Hits by The Beatles, but I already loved both those bands heaps by the time I got the CDs at 15.

The first album I ever heard that made me fall in love with music? Gee, my aunt owned a record store back in the day. That's like asking which jellybean made me love jellybeans. I'll say it's a tossup between Be Attitude: Respect Yourself by The Staple Singers, Music Is My Life by Billy Preston and Amazing Grace by Aretha Franklin and the Southern California Community Choir. My aunt had those in her 8-track stereo system CONSTANTLY. I would've been about 4? 3 or 4 years old. I made it my goal in life at the time to be able to sing Old Landmark like Aretha does. I'm not her, of course, but I'm not bad!

I have each of these albums. All five indeed hold up. Preston's cover of Blackbird is especially killer, and Music Is My Life was really hard to find, which is a shame.
posted by droplet at 12:46 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


Roosevelt Franklin's "Days of the Week" b/w "Mobity Mosely's Months" on 45. ("Mobity Mosely's Months," in particular, holds up tremndously.)

Oh, and then, later, Phil Collins' Hello, I Must Be Going!
posted by Karlos the Jackal at 12:49 PM on January 10, 2009


The record that made me wonder "Are you allowed to do that?", the one that hit me in places where I didn't know I had places, the one without which I would somehow be a different person was Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band's Doc at the Radar Station. The lyrics from "Brickbats" nicely summarize the experience of listening to it:

My mind caught by the corner
Gradually decides its safe
Becomes a bat itself
Flexes its little claws
Curses its leather wings
With loud, hollow pops
Around the room
Threatening to dash its brains
Somehow at the last minute
Retreats and becomes a natural glue
And holds fast and slow
And every other motion
Making the night more interesting

posted by Joe Beese at 12:51 PM on January 10, 2009


Thanks, Dad. Seriously.

Seems like a lot of you formed your early musical tastes by listening to your parents' record collection. For some reason, I never remember doing that, or liking anything I heard them listen to. I still don't like much of what my dad's into (ZZ Top, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Eric Clapton, Marshall Tucker, that kind of crap, although he likes some blues stuff like Robert Johnson and the various Kings that I also like). My mom is/was into Motown, and I dig a lot of that stuff now that I can appreciate it, but as a kid I just thought of it as old people music. I did pick up a lot of stuff from my friends' older brothers (I'm the oldest in my family), and I heard of a lot of bands I ended up loving for the first time from the late 80s/very early 90s computer underground, such as Cult of the Dead Cow's record reviews. And stuff that would be mentioned in guitar magazines once I started playing guitar.
posted by DecemberBoy at 12:54 PM on January 10, 2009


Tapestry, with my own paper route money.
posted by timsteil at 12:55 PM on January 10, 2009


The first album I bought with my own money was Jethro Tull's "Heavy Horses".

Yeah, I know.

But the SECOND album I bought was AC/DC's "If You Want Blood", which I bought on 8-track. And proceeded to wear out that section of tape containing the song "Whole Lotta Rosie".

Then at some point I discovered "Exile on Main Street" and "Blonde on Blonde" and "Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy".

But the record that shaped me the most, that I have owned in every format from cassette to vinyl to CD to MP3, that I have endlessly proselytized to everyone who would listen: "Double Nickels on the Dime", by The Minutemen.

Best. Rock. Record. Ever. Made.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 12:56 PM on January 10, 2009 [3 favorites]


Not the first album I got by a few years, but the first album that changed my life was Disintegration by The Cure. At my funeral I want complete darkness for several minutes, then "Plainsong" blasting into the room as loud as possible.
posted by snofoam at 1:01 PM on January 10, 2009


Mine was MC Hammer's Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em. It was a different time, a different world.

Wow, ditto hermitosis, completely. I played that album so much that my dad took it away from me and gave me En Vogue's Funky Divas, the Pointer Sisters and Chaka Khan—I guess he thought a 7-year-old girl into hip-hop ought to have some female role models. Ace of Bass, the Zombies, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Alvin and the Chipmunks and MTV's Party to Go Volume II were other early influences.

After that, I went through a long dormant period in terms of my musical tastes and interest level, when I think just about every other female my age was into NKOTB—I instead had a brief, ill-advised flirtation with Garth Brooks and line-dance country, because the boy I liked said he liked country.

That is, until I started listening to popular radio in 1996 and fell in love with punk-pop and the last vestiges of grunge. (Even at age 12, I could tell I'd missed out on something big.) First three album purchases that summer (on cassette): Green Day's Dookie, The Offspring's Smash and Everclear's Sparkle and Fade. Number four would've been Gravity Kills or Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie, but I couldn't afford them then.
posted by limeonaire at 1:05 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


First album I ever owned?

Mousercise

First album that made a difference?
Pink Floyd - The Wall

First Album I ever bought with my own money?
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magic

First album that ever changed my life?
Negative Approach - Tied Down

First album that got me out of the feedback loop that is Punk/Indie/Hardcore?
Wu Tang - Enter the 36 Chambers
posted by orville sash at 1:05 PM on January 10, 2009


Oh, and there was this great radio show in Houston in the very early 90s that would play the sort of music that would shortly thereafter be known as "alternative" (which was and is a retarded term), like The Pixies, Matthew Sweet, King Missile (before their 15 minutes with "Detachable Penis"), and all kinds of other great stuff. I picked up a lot from that. Then later on, the same sort of thing with 91.7 KTRU Rice Radio, the greatest college radio station of all time.

Speaking of "alternative", I never liked Nirvana, detested and still loathe Pearl Jam (the first time I heard "Alive", I thought it was some old crappy song from the 70s, like Bad Company or something), was bored to tears by Soundgarden, and pretty much didn't like anything from that whole "Seattle Sound" era, except Alice In Chains who were really just lumped in with it by virtue of geography alone, and am probably the only person my age who never owned a Nirvana album. I never understood why everyone was claiming that this middle-of-the-road post-punk was so revolutionary, when I could clearly hear that it was just a mediocre retread of stuff that had been done just a few years before.
posted by DecemberBoy at 1:08 PM on January 10, 2009


Oh, and one of my earliest memories is of really, really liking a particular song on this one ABBA album my mom had in the car—white cassette, dark yellow label—because it made me think of Lydia on Beetlejuice. I asked an AskMe question about what album it could've been at one point, but no one ever really had a definitive answer...
posted by limeonaire at 1:11 PM on January 10, 2009


first album i purchased with my own money?

NOFX - Punk in Drublic

shortly followed by:

REM - Document

hard to say which one turned me into more of a music lover.
posted by 256 at 1:12 PM on January 10, 2009


the first cd purchased with my own money was the soundtrack to good will hunting. i got to the till and was short 10 cents. the lady at sam the record man had to float me. i am thankful for her, because that was how i discovered elliot smith.
posted by janepanic at 1:14 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


Wezzer - the blue album / Snoop Dogg - Doggystyle, almost simultaneously. Oh the roads I have now traveled.
posted by penduluum at 1:14 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


First piece of music I consciously loved and chose to listen to on a regular basis was Beethoven's 5th; not so much the first movement, but the second.

First real album I listened to like crazy was probably my dad's copy of Simon and Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence, followed very quickly by The White Album.
posted by Knicke at 1:15 PM on January 10, 2009


Probably TMBG's Flood and Apollo 18 for sing-along-with-friends goodness. Best of Andrew Lloyd Webber for sing-along-with-mother-in-car goodness. Nine Inch Nails Downward Spiral for High School angsty goodness. Sublime 40 oz. to Freedom for late high school quasi-rebellion goodness. Pink Floyd Piper at the Gates of Dawn for college psychadelic experimental goodness.

My end all be all favorite album is Neutral Milk Hotel In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.

I'd do more, but I have to go to work.
posted by schyler523 at 1:19 PM on January 10, 2009


Best Of The Animals.
posted by Restless Day at 1:20 PM on January 10, 2009


But the record that shaped me the most, that I have owned in every format from cassette to vinyl to CD to MP3, that I have endlessly proselytized to everyone who would listen: "Double Nickels on the Dime", by The Minutemen.

Best. Rock. Record. Ever. Made.


THIS. If you take anything away from your daily reading of Metafilter, let it be to beg, borrow or steal a copy of this album if you haven't heard it before. It's one of those exceedingly rare albums that's just completely perfect in every possible way, like The Beatles' "Revolver" or The Ramones' "Rocket To Russia". It's the one album I have that everyone I've ever played it for, male or female, young or old, has said "wow, what's this? This is really good!".
posted by DecemberBoy at 1:20 PM on January 10, 2009 [11 favorites]


Peter Gabriel's "Security" in 1982. Still one of my all time favorite albums. On a tangent, do any Mefi Battlestar Galactica fans think the closing credit music of the show sounds a lot like "Rhythm of the Heat"?
posted by John Smallberries at 1:21 PM on January 10, 2009


The Police Synchronicity
posted by vibrotronica at 1:22 PM on January 10, 2009


First three albums that my cousin brought back from college:

Black Flag In My Head

Dead Kennedys Frankenchrist

Husker Du Flip Your Wig

Those three, while living in a cultural vacuum in mid-80s South Texas, changed my life
forever.
posted by gcbv at 1:26 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


Doesn't CNN pay people to generate content, like reporters?

Oh, of course. But you have given us your best shot, so is giving you a show. You've got a phone, you've got a camera -- go to ireport.com and upload your best material.

*Random bunch of people saying stuff like "Ben Johnson, for CNN iReport ungghhhh"*

*Vaguely aggressive music ends*
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 1:30 PM on January 10, 2009


I rode my stingray bike to get my 1st 45, Signed,Sealed,Delivered - Stevie Wonder (yeah, Tamla Records), trying to keep my clutzy, 11 year old self upright only using one hand so as not to damage my prize.
My sister's hippie boyfriend gave me his old copies of Jimi Hendrix Axis:Bold as Love and Smash Hits.
For eighth grade graduation I got The Concert for Bangladesh and enough money to buy Joni Mitchell, Blue.
posted by readery at 1:31 PM on January 10, 2009


Sympathy For the Devil by Laibach
posted by Grongl at 1:32 PM on January 10, 2009


I think the first album I bought was whatever C.W. McCall album had "Convoy" on it (around 1975). The one that made me love music? Probably The Beach Boys compilation "The Endless Summer" (1975 or 1976). I still listen to that one. I have a real vivid memory of buyng "Sgt. Pepper" with my first paycheck from the gas station job (1979-80) at Harmony House on Woodward Ave.
posted by marxchivist at 1:35 PM on January 10, 2009


Presence, Led Zeppelin, 8-Track

Playing in the background the second time I had sex...
posted by Tube at 1:40 PM on January 10, 2009


Operation Ivy - Energy [punk/ska]
-and-
John Coltrane - Giant Steps [jazz]

Both led me down a long and winding path of genres of musc I had never considered before and in part made me who I am today.
posted by mrzer0 at 1:40 PM on January 10, 2009


I'd have to say the one with the most longevity in my life:

Faith No More's Angel Dust
posted by mannequito at 1:40 PM on January 10, 2009 [2 favorites]


Billy Joel's "The Stranger." It's the first album I can remember sitting straight though. I had it on tape too. I would listen to it every time I cut the lawn - blastingly loud, and would use it to gage how long it took. I suppose you could say it was the album I started going deaf to.

I bought the 30th anniversary edition this summer when it came out, so yes I still love it completely.


kimothy you are my blood brother. Right down to buying the the 30th Anniversary Edition.
posted by chairish at 1:41 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


The first album I think I bought for myself was Everclear's So Much for the Afterglow. It doesn't hold up so much.

The first album I really truly loved was Stunt by the Barenaked Ladies, which has some tracks I still to this day find incredible (particularly the rare edition with the two bonus tracks). "One Week" isn't really one of them.
posted by Caduceus at 1:43 PM on January 10, 2009


The Cure, Boys Don't Cry.

I bought it in the first months of sixth grade, thereby eliminating any chance of "happy" teenage years.
posted by Graygorey at 1:43 PM on January 10, 2009


One year for Christmas, my brother got a new stereo and I got a clock radio. I remember pressing my ear up to the radio, straining to hear the Talking Heads over the hard rock blasting from my brother's room. When I finally got my own turntable, I broke it in with Remain in Light and Speaking in Tongues.

All this nostalgia reminded me of Sunday night radio when they used to play album sides and the King Biscuit Flower Hour.
posted by hoppytoad at 1:45 PM on January 10, 2009


Before I bought albums, I listened to Kasey Casem's American Top 40, and as a loner geek, there was no one to tell me what "kind" of music I should like or not. So I was exposed to all genres and bought any songs that grabbed me: Fire by the Ohio Players, Fame by David Bowie, Free Man in Paris by Joni Mitchell (and OK, Bloody Well Right by Supertramp, Spiders and Snakes by Jim Stafford and Angie Baby by Helen Reddy.)

I miss that.
posted by msalt at 1:49 PM on January 10, 2009 [3 favorites]


If you changed the question to "which album turned you on to jazz (which has since become the majority of what I listen to)", then at least I'd have an answer: Ellington at Newport.
Does it still hold up? Why, yes. Yes it does.
posted by uosuaq at 1:51 PM on January 10, 2009


Oh jesus, where to begin?

The first song I can remember with total clarity is R.E.M.'s "I am Superman," which my brothers played a lot. They had generally good taste in music in the early eighties, and so I heard a lot of Love and Rockets and The Smiths and that sort of thing, far more than I was hearing Michael Jackson or Madonna or NKOTB.

Later, however, once I was getting my own albums, I immediately went for what was most popular. I wasn't allowed to buy any Vanilla Ice, but I picked up Please Hammer Don't Hurt "Em, C+C Music Factory's Gonna Make You Sweat and EMF's Schubert Dip. At some point, though, I bought 3 Months, 5 Years and 2 Days in the Life of Arrested Development, at which point I couldn't take any of my previous albums seriously anymore. This was music that was not only catchy, but felt like it was about something, and as much as I'm happy to laugh at Speech's unbelievable pretension now, this was the best thing I'd heard up to that point.

When grunge came along, I was 12 and, of course, totally on board. I wore a lot of flannel for a kid living in the tortuous humidity of Houston. I liked Nevermind, but it didn't change my world the way it did for a lot of my classmates. Pearl Jam's Ten was much closer, but it was years before I really "got" the second side of that one (I originally had it on cassette.) But at that time, I could've told you what "my" album was, as sure as I could've recounted my name and birthday: Siamese Dream.

Does that one hold up? Yes and no. It's particularly difficult to separate it from Billy Corgan as a whole, and Billy Corgan the man is an inveterate asshole who has spent his life trying to become Kevin Shields and alienating everyone who dared to work with him, while slowly but surely losing all vestiges of his former talent. That album, however, still holds most of it's charms. "CHerub ROck," "Today," and "Disarm," no longer really do anything for me, but they never really did to begin with. The heart of the ablum is tracks 7-9, "Soma"/"Geek U.S.A."/"Mayonnaise," and that is as good as it ever was, and perhaps even more so because I can hear more of what they (he, really) were doing.

Once I was older, and listened to older music as something other than homework, Wish You Were Here, Houses of the Holy and particularly Abbey Road broadened my horizons and made me love music even more, which is something I wouldn't have thought possible. Also, those come pretty pret-a-porter - you know they'll hold up forever. So I guess I'm stuck with Siamese Dream if I'm being honest, but don't judge me too harshly - I was only thirteen.

For more of my thoughts on this matter (self-link, obviously) check out Stuff Nobody Likes #91: Realizing the Music You Loved as a Kid Kinda Sucks.
posted by Navelgazer at 1:55 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


I first started listening to music when I found my dad's classic rock albums - mostly Pink Floyd and Deep Purple. I think my favorites were "Wish You Were Here" and "Machine Head".
posted by archagon at 1:59 PM on January 10, 2009


The Beatles Rock and Roll Music, Volume 1. The anthology came out on TV at just about the exact moment that puberty hit, and I was convinced that Beatlemania was still alive and well, in me. I played my mother's Beatles' records until she told me to cut it out because I was making her sick of them. So, instead, I would fall asleep every night listening to the cassette of Rock and Roll Music I on my neon green and pink walkman. The hoarseness of Jon's voice on "Twist and Shout" still gives me a little thrill. I started wearing bell bottoms every day to sixth grade, in a time when tapered jeans were still cool. At eleven I thought myself terrifically counterculture, a feeling which set the stage for the mohawk and dog collar, later.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 2:06 PM on January 10, 2009


I should also mention that - to caduceus, I will still defend So Much for the Afterglow somewhat. Not a lot of street cred, or any, involved with that one, but I still enjoy almost all of it. And to Tube and The Whelk et al, the album playing when I first had sex was the X-FIles: Fight the Future soundtrack/homage/thingie, which I put on by choice.

Strangely, I have no regrets about that now.
posted by Navelgazer at 2:11 PM on January 10, 2009


Revolver. My parents had a copy on vinyl, which I played on a Mickey Mouse record player, and I couldn't get enough of "Yellow Submarine". Eventually I tried listening to the rest of the album, and at the age of 5 it freaked me right the hell out, especially "Eleanor Rigby." It was the first time I ever heard (or, at least, intently listened to) pop music that dealt with dark, complicated emotions and issues and it really stuck with me.
posted by The Card Cheat at 2:13 PM on January 10, 2009


Did anyone get as far as Step 2 in the challenge?
posted by markr at 2:14 PM on January 10, 2009


So I guess I'm stuck with Siamese Dream if I'm being honest, but don't judge me too harshly - I was only thirteen.

If someone judged you too harshly for your thirteen-year-old tastes, I'd be enormously suspicious of their understanding of the idea of a "music-lover for life." I mean, my Siamese Dream was frickin' Hysteria, for crissake. Impressive production values and all, and the British music-geek press has always been way kinder to Def Lep's legacy than the critics on this side of the pond, but it's no Rubber Soul, you know?

I took this question to be asking, basically, when did music move from the background to the foreground of your consciousness? When did it become a constant companion and when did it begin down the road toward an obsession? And so while it'd be hipper for me to answer with Nevermind, which I discovered blind drunk at a party my last year of high school and which fundamentally changed my idea of what music was for and how powerful it could be and led me to the Pixies and Fugazi and backward through the punk canon to a different kind of life - while that'd be the hipper answer, the truth is that by the time Nevermind came along I was already a lifelong music obsessive, a junkie, and the even uglier truth is that the drug that got me hooked was the cheap high of all those Mutt Lange whoa-yeah overdubs on Hysteria.
posted by gompa at 2:17 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


All this nostalgia reminded me of Sunday night radio when they used to play album sides
posted by hoppytoad


hoppytoad, what radio station was that? WABX or WWWW in Detroit had a show called "The 7th Day" on Sunday nights they would be play seven albums in their entirety. Taped a bunch of them. I was wondering if you were listening to the same station or if this type of thing was common. This would've been mid to late seventies before big conglomerations and all the attendant shit.
posted by marxchivist at 2:19 PM on January 10, 2009


Radiohead - Kid A

My older brother got it for me as a 13th birthday present, and because of that I think he's the coolest brother ever.
posted by azarbayejani at 2:19 PM on January 10, 2009


>So I guess I'm stuck with Siamese Dream if I'm being honest, but don't judge me too harshly - I was only thirteen.

Shit, I was 20 when that album came out and for about a year I thought it was The Truth. And then one day I threw it on and thought "Damn...Billy Corgan is a whiny little turd," and that was that.
posted by The Card Cheat at 2:21 PM on January 10, 2009


I bought 45's before I ever bought albums. I remember getting Manfred Mann - Blinded By The Light with some money I earned from helping my sister with her paper route. it was the extended version, part one on side A part two on side B. I have an older brother that really got me into music with albums like Toys In The Attic, Cheap Trick at Budokan, and Dreamboat Annie. The first albums I bought for myself were through some music club where I picked out like ten for a penny. I chose Big Country, Eurythmics, Flock of Seagulls. But the first album that I bought and listened to start to finish repeatedly was The Psychedelic Furs. Without a doubt it still holds up.
The first album I ever stole from a record store was Upstairs at Eric's.
posted by Sailormom at 2:22 PM on January 10, 2009


Chaos AD by Sepultura, 7th grade, given to me by a Brazilian friend of the family. I thought it was the coolest thing that the bonus live tracks were recorded at the legendary First Avenue in Minneapolis, which I'd heard of but never been to, and have since seen dozens of amazing shows at.
posted by baphomet at 2:26 PM on January 10, 2009


She's So Unusual! It was a few years old by the time I was able to buy it with my allowance, but I distinctly remember having to own it.
posted by macrowave at 2:28 PM on January 10, 2009


Not that I don't recognize the premise of this as absurd (I became a music lover by playing music as a very young child and by learning to read classical notation nyah nyah), but....

The album that made me a *POP* music lover (the real question here, apparently) is Boys Don't Cry. It came and left with puberty, along with black, teased-out hair.
posted by gorgor_balabala at 2:28 PM on January 10, 2009


> I took this question to be asking, basically, when did music move from the background to the foreground of your consciousness?

In that case, maybe I should change my answer to the Miami Vice soundtrack. I'd hook it up on my tape deck, throw some Chopper Command into the 2600 and shit would be ON. That album (in particular the main theme by Jan Hammer) is the first one I remember giving me that "HELLLL YEAHHH!!!" rock-and-roll adrenyline rush.

God, that's embarrassing.
posted by The Card Cheat at 2:29 PM on January 10, 2009


Dead Kennedys Bedtime for Democracy cassette. I bought it on a whim because I liked the cover art. Up until that point, I was a Phil Collins person. But then again, weren't we all?
posted by buzzbash at 2:36 PM on January 10, 2009


Weird Al was the first artist I listened to that my parents did not. Dare To Be Stupid was the album. I consumed everything by him for a few years, and it wasn't until Metallica's Black Album came out did I venture outside of the comedy realm.
posted by nitsuj at 2:37 PM on January 10, 2009


My first vinyl mistress was so damn cool and demonstrative of how far ahead of my peers I was (and continue to be) that I refuse to say what it is. Okay, okay, fine--it was Boston.
posted by Camofrog at 2:39 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


BitterOldPunk - I've recently rediscovered "Heavy Horses". After dismissing anything remotely prog when The Ramones changed my life back in high school, I've recently started digging into old pre-punk 70's stuff. I was shocked to learn how much I like early Tull.
posted by davebush at 2:41 PM on January 10, 2009


Also, nthing Double Nickels on the Dime...not my first love, but surely one of the greatest.
posted by Camofrog at 2:50 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


marxchivist, it was either WWDC or WAVA in DC during the late seventies. I forget exactly what they called it, maybe something like "7 Sides at 7".
posted by hoppytoad at 2:50 PM on January 10, 2009


Also nth-ing Double Nickels. Yeah, it's that good.

The contemporaneous Rolling Stone review that alerted me to its existence gave it 3-and-a-half stars.
posted by Joe Beese at 2:53 PM on January 10, 2009


Janet Jackson's "Control." My musical tastes have improved considerably since then.
posted by notjustfoxybrown at 2:55 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


"Unmasked", Kiss. Says my slighty embarassed friend.
posted by Dumsnill at 3:00 PM on January 10, 2009


I think maybe Purple Rain.
posted by 2or3whiskeysodas at 3:08 PM on January 10, 2009


I was raised by musicians, so there wasn't a moment from birth when my life wasn't accompanied by a constant soundtrack. My parents were also loathe to wallow in "children's music," so there was quite a lot of variety (yes, we did have some kid's music, most notably Free to Be You and Me which certainly has had a greater impact on my life than any other album, but that wasn't anything to do with the music).

Narrowing it down to one, I'm going to go with "Graceland" by Paul Simon.

And yes, I still love the hell out of it and could probably never co-habitate with someone who hated it.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 3:08 PM on January 10, 2009


Above the Rim Soundtrack.

Gotta be handy with the steel if you know what I mean, earn ya keep.
posted by clearly at 3:11 PM on January 10, 2009


U2's The Unforgettable Fire and XTC's Skylarking. Fact: My Born Again boyfriend broke up with me because I liked the song "Dear God" so much. (I guess losing his virginity to me before marriage wasn't a biggie, though.)
posted by Kloryne at 3:19 PM on January 10, 2009


this did not happen to me, maybe because I was born in the summertime underneath a purple sky in '63 and came of age in the '70's, there was no ONE record/album that sticks in my memory. of course the whole era was a friggin soundtrack, so maybe it was an never again time. Johnny Cash, Judas Priest, Deborah Harry, Billy Joel, Led Zep, Queen,Gladys Knight, Chicago Marvin Gaye, Gladys Knight, Jefferson Airplane, Boston, Elton John, the 'New' Elvis, The Eagles, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Glen Campbell, Gordon Lightfoot, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Marshall Tucker,Carole King, Dylan, Stones, Aretha Franklin, AC DC, Blue Oyster Cult, Rush, KC and the Sunshine Band, Ohio Players,Dusty Springfield, Don McLean, fucking KISS, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Helen Reddy, Patti Smith, Jackson Browne, Donna Summer, Steely Dan, Stevie Nicks...good lord, and there is supposed to be ONE?
posted by dawson at 3:27 PM on January 10, 2009


I liked Gladys
posted by dawson at 3:30 PM on January 10, 2009


First album: my dad recorded the American Grafitti soundtrack onto 8-track for me (the time ran extra, so he decided to add a Hank Locklin song on the end. Thanks, Dad).
First one I paid for: I sent in a penny to get Q: Are We Not Men?, B52's, Cars' Candy-O, Talking Heads' Fear of Music and Billy Joel's Glass Houses.
posted by Bernt Pancreas at 3:32 PM on January 10, 2009


I'm waiting for someone to say something like, "The first time I listened to Nirvana Nevermind when I was five or six."

I don't really understand why that would be a bad or funny thing to say? But yeah, Nevermind when I was nine.
posted by naju at 3:37 PM on January 10, 2009


First album that made me a music lover: obviously something of the parents, but which? I know I paid a lot of attention to Mancini's Hatari soundtrack..."Baby Elephant Walk" was dope!

First 45 I owned (singles preceded any albums): "Kicks" by Paul Reviere and the Raiders...

First album I owned: James Gang's first, or maybe Three Dog Night's One...

Obviously my rings are showing...

Hey, what about your first CD? I remember putting off getting into the whole thing until there was hardly any new vinyl coming out and you HAD to buy CD's...but I can't remember what it was. I know it came in a long cardboard box....
posted by bonefish at 3:56 PM on January 10, 2009


My roomate in college 'discovered' the B-52's 'Love Shack' and bought the CD single with 10 versions of the song and proceeded to play it over and over and over...

Of course, I got back at him by playing my 'Rocky Horror Picture Show' soundtrack and early Jane's Addiction. He hated that.
posted by UseyurBrain at 4:02 PM on January 10, 2009


U2 - The Joshua Tree. I was a sophomore in high school, I borrowed it from the library.

Yeah, I still love U2.
posted by exhilaration at 4:06 PM on January 10, 2009


Having a sister who is 10 years older meant a steady stream of hand me down record players and 45's, starting around age 5. I remember spending hours upon hours holed up in my bedroom listening to "Sterling Holloway reads Aesop's Fables" and "Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea". Of course I was still riding a tricycle and sleeping with stuffed animals at this point.
My sister gave me my first LP - "Cosmo's Factory" by Creedence Clearwater Revival, on my 10th birthday. The first one I paid for with my own cash was "Killer" by Alice Cooper. Think I was around 12. In high school I fell in with some guys that were into Bowie, Lou Reed and Roxy Music. This was a turning point for me. It finally dawned on me that there were other options besides what I was hearing on top 40 radio.
posted by reidfleming at 4:13 PM on January 10, 2009


First music purchase: Single (45 rpm) of CSN's "Marrakesh Express". First LP: Herb Alpert, "Whipped Cream and Other Delights". First LP I had to replace because it got played until the grooves wore out: Pink Floyd, "Meddle".
posted by jet_silver at 4:17 PM on January 10, 2009


When I was a wee sprog (though not as wee as some who've posted about their formative experiences) my parents bought me a record player. My dad was an audiophile and music fan of sorts who had both vinyl and reel-to-reel in the house I grew up in. I must have been ten, and my dad must have asked the clerk at the record store what he should give his child to bless her with decent music taste as an adult--or maybe just what was popular. He got me three albums, one of which I don't remember, one of which was a disco album featuring two statuesque black women with guitars that I identified as A Taste of Honey later in life, and Steely Dan's Aja.

Thank you, unknown record store clerk, for helping me start off right. I still love me some Steely Dan.
posted by immlass at 4:21 PM on January 10, 2009


Music is the kind of love that I fall into once a week. But the album that I fell in love with, got married and raised kids with, the album into whose eyes I look deeply 25 years and tell myself I'd do it all over again?

Love and Rockets, Express.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 4:25 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


Wow - okay, um: quick history:

1. Age 5 - bought Elton John's Greatest Hits with my own cashola. Had fantasies about meeting Haley Mills at camp after watching the original Parent Trap. This is my first known memory of both music and girls.

2. Age 12 - Fleetwood Mac, Rumours - I SO wanted to bump into Stevie Nicks at the local hippie bookstore in town. Again, music and women. I can listen to The Chain and Gold Dust Woman on repeat now as then, and so should you.

3. Roxy Music - Avalon, and R.E.M. - Murmur in 1985. Before these two records, my favorite band was Cheap Trick for the Budokan album. After hearing these releases, I learned the bass part to 9-9 from Murmur and thought I was cool. I also went out and bought every single Roxy Music album available.

Man, since then? Deep waters...everything from Appalachian murder music to me sitting at the computer last night and realizing the first-ever pieces of recorded music have a cool, dubby quality from the paraffin cylinders giving out at the end of the song.

Right now, I'm having another epiphany over the music of Mariee Sioux, and it's like I'm five years old all over again.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 4:25 PM on January 10, 2009


One of these statements is true and one is a lie.

1) My first album was Trout Replica Mask
2) My first concert was Phillip Glass in whichever tour he did before ten thousand airplanes on the roof
posted by stet at 4:25 PM on January 10, 2009


AC/DC Back in Black, and the first time I heard a whole Beatles album; I think it was RUbber Soul. For life; hooked on the vinyl... And all The Rainmakers lyrics I have ever forgotten to learn from.
posted by buzzman at 4:27 PM on January 10, 2009


I'm guessing the first one is a lie, since the name of the record is Trout Mask Replica.

The best best best best part of this thread is that not a single person has mentioned Will Oldham yet. Damn, I jinxed it.

/irrational hatred of Will Oldham
posted by BitterOldPunk at 4:33 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


Art of Noise's 1986 In Visible Silence. That was one of the first albums I ever bought. Before that, I listened to the radio, and didn't know what was available.

Then came the The Cure and Depeche Mode years. "Alternative," before it was called that.

Then DK, Ministry, NIN, Big Black. Industrial stuff, punk, postpunk.

Then everything sort of blew out and now I'm as eclectic as can be.
posted by exlotuseater at 4:33 PM on January 10, 2009


Adam and the Ants, PRINCE CHARMING

Not only does it still hold up; the cd is in my car as we speak and I still listen to it.
posted by wittgenstein at 4:49 PM on January 10, 2009


Europe - The Final Countdown.

I would submit that the awesome synth line in that song remains totally awesome.
posted by empath at 4:57 PM on January 10, 2009


No, we don't want to know about yours. It's not interesting. But we know you think it's fascinating, and we do want your traffic, so...
posted by Wolfdog at 4:58 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


My ex-gf used to lived with a couple of frat boys when i started dating her, and they were CONSTANTLY listening to hair metal ballads from the 80s (and this was only a few ears ago). They'd stay up all night drinking and snorting ritalin, and listening to Journey and Ratt and Foreigner.

I distinctly remember being woken up at 3 in the morning one night I was staying there, by the 4 or 5 fratboys that were having a party in the living room (they would often have impromptu parties at like 2am on a weeknight, which was awesome when me and my gf both had to be at work at 9am). Night Ranger that was playing at full volume at the time, and one of the guys stood and and kind of shouted in the way that drunk people do when they lose control of the volume of their voice -- "OH MY GOD... What IS this MONSTER BALLAD?!!!!"

Even though I was highly pissed off about being woken up in the middle of the night, I thought that was the funniest thing I had ever heard.

Really has nothing to do with the thread other than being about bad 80s music.
posted by empath at 5:06 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


Feels a bit kinky listening to The Whelk's first sex music.

My dad played blues and folk guitar quite well. Sang too, wonderfully. He also played the harmonica really well, all which he'd practiced while sailing around the planet on a schooner with his friends for three and a half years. So from birth I heard him play folk and blues music on guitar and really loved that.

First album: age 10, Science and Nature Songs. Geek music. Faves: Zoom a Little Zoom l Why Does the Sun Shine l What Is a Shooting Star l Song of the Rocks.

First album: Donovan, Catch the Wind and his Josie, so tender-hearted.
posted by nickyskye at 5:09 PM on January 10, 2009


The first album that came to mind 311-Transistor. T

That album knocked my jaw off 10 years ago as a highschool freshman and I can still listen to it all the way through.

On my desert island mix-cd, at least 6 songs are coming off that album.
posted by tylerfulltilt at 5:25 PM on January 10, 2009


The first time I listened to Nirvana's Nevermind I was five or six

Get off my lawn.
posted by Bonzai at 5:36 PM on January 10, 2009


Nickyskye:

You might enjoy the They Might Be Giant's version of Why Does The Sun Shine?. They only play it live and it's always a show stopper.
posted by The Whelk at 5:39 PM on January 10, 2009


Take Five, Dave Brubeck Quartet. From before I could name it.

My father would dj Sunday mornings on our gigantic old console stereo where you could "stack" the records to drop and play. When I got old enough, I would request it by doing the "saxamaphone" line.

Damn, that makes me sad.
posted by ltracey at 5:39 PM on January 10, 2009


I am the king of Malformed URLs!

TBMG link should go here
posted by The Whelk at 5:42 PM on January 10, 2009


Oh, who cares. I've been more deeply moved and influenced by music I've heard in the last five years - which can be from any era, really - than anything I heard as a kid with putrid taste and no access to anything.
posted by fleetmouse at 5:47 PM on January 10, 2009


The first time I can remember seeking out specific music from my parents' vinyl collection was to find Louis Armstrong's version of Mack the Knife when I was maybe 8. When I was 9, I dug out some of my mom's old Tommy Steele 78's, so my uncle scrounged up a player so we could listen to all of them - which was mostly jazz with some Motown, plus some Elvis and The Beatles. I like jazz and Motown OK, and I listen to The Beatles often still. Elvis and Tommy Steele, not so much...

Then my brother got into heavy metal, blasting it from his room day and night. In protest, I started listening to anything that was opposite to it. I think the first vinyl album I bought was the soundtrack to Fame, mostly to annoy him. Luckily, that phase didn't last long. The first CD I bought was U2's "War", to replace the vinyl that had become unplayable from wear.

So if I had to say a single album, I would have to say War. It was the first time I sat down and painstakingly translated all the lyrics to Swedish for myself, which took days.
posted by gemmy at 5:59 PM on January 10, 2009


If I'm being true to the spirit of the question and not just, the first album I bought or really liked, it would be ...Dory Previn's "Mystical Kings and Iguanas" and The Glove's "Blue Sunshine". Both where played for me by people I had huge crushes on and both made me fall totally in love in their respective genres and the people who shared them with me.
posted by The Whelk at 6:10 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


First record I loved (so much I acted out all the parts): The Magic Toyshop (on 78 RPM)
Second childhood record: Peter and the Wolf, Leonard Bernstein ( I think? - also on 78)
See, my mother worked, we were sorta poor, so the only records we had were played on this tiny, portable 78 player; she would pick up records cheap at the thrift shops. I remember turning records over and over and *over* to hear a whole symphony.
THEN when I was about (oh geez!) 10, we got a Hi-Fi, and the two of us sat transfixed listening to Ferde Grofe's "Grand Canyon Suite".
About a year and half later "Meet the Beatles" changed my life.
That is all.
posted by dbmcd at 6:13 PM on January 10, 2009


Ooh. First album that made me love music was Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense. I played that tape daily for like, a year.
posted by gaspode at 6:14 PM on January 10, 2009


K-Tel's Goofy Greats was the first album that I freaked out to as a small child.

This may have had lasting effects.
posted by benzenedream at 6:16 PM on January 10, 2009


My first album was probably Spice Girls. Does not hold up at all. That CD being my first isn't guaranteed, though; I remember painfully little from before grade 9.

First album to make a difference? Probably that Beatles compilation, 1962-1966, or the soundtrack for the Broadway production of Chicago with Bebe Neuwirth. "Pop, squish..." Soon followed by a mix tape given to me by a friend, with NOFX, Green Day, Metallica, whole bunch of things.

First thing I apparently ever grooved too? My parents claim I was in love with Kylie Minogue's "Locomotion" when I was one years old. Then, as I learned to speak and had begun making sounds, Fine Young Cannibal's She Drives Me Crazy was a hit. Dad trained me to say 'ooh ooh' whenever I'd hear someone say "she drives me crazy."

Apparently, he played the song a couple years later, or sung it at least, and I looked very confused with myself when I started going 'ooh ooh' during the chorus.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 6:25 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


Sorry stavrogin, another nevermind, 11. Though brutally honest, a melancholic christian musical called franz or something, would love to find one that again. nevermind and bleach literally transformed my life from catholic choirboy to punk band drummer within two years, so much for the importance of music.

To really piss off you people who lived when there was real music I have to ask: What about you young people around here? kid a was the only one post fucking 91 so far I think!?

edit: yay weezer, chaos ad, two princes, punk in drublic and the offspring :) more!
posted by dnial at 6:46 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


First album I ever bought was Sgt Peppers at a record store in Brattleboro, Vermont called Captain Bullfrogs. The Peter Frampton and Bee Gees version. I was 8 and had seen that stellar movie and thought the songs were awesome.

My father was so horrified at the corrupt and bastardized choice I had made that he took me out the next day and bought me the original Beatles version. I listened to both for a while and then went down the Beatles path (for the better, por supuesto).
posted by jeremias at 6:51 PM on January 10, 2009


Yikes Glass Tiger's The Thin Red Line.
posted by xmattxfx at 6:56 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


Ahh Fuck, guess I better: Dio's Holy Diver
posted by captainsohler at 7:00 PM on January 10, 2009


Pearl Jam Ten, or possibly a stolen record from my neighbor, AC/DC Back in Black, although the latter was at about age 10-11 so I am not sure I really was able to appreciate that in its fullest.
posted by vaportrail at 7:14 PM on January 10, 2009


Metafilter: stay up all night drinking and snorting ritalin, and listening to Journey and Ratt and Foreigner
posted by msalt at 7:18 PM on January 10, 2009


First 45 I ever bought: "Jesus Christ Superstar"
First LP: "Alice Cooper: School's Out"
First cassette: "Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks"
First CD: "Public Enenmy: It Takes a Nation.."
First (purchased) download: "Stars of the Lid: And Their Refinement of the Decline"
posted by davebush at 7:19 PM on January 10, 2009


Thriller no question
posted by citron at 7:48 PM on January 10, 2009


My parents tell a story about me being absolutely transfixed by a PBS broadcast of Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" when I was, jeez, three or four?

I don't remember that one. I do remember the Beatles' Revolver and Abbey Road — like The Card Cheat, I was originally there for "Yellow Submarine" and "Octopus's Garden," and only gradually branched out from there. Musta been six or so by then. My love for music definitely comes from the stuff they listened to, but there's too much of it to pick just one album: the Beatles, yeah, but also folkies like Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro and Paul Simon, and classic soul like Ray Charles and Al Green, and anyway most of that stuff was great singles rather than great albums.

If I had to pick out a single crucial moment, it would be the one that came a few years later, when I was eight or nine. My parents also had a CD with "Pictures at an Exhibition" and "The Rite of Spring" on it. I'd always take it off after the end of "Pictures," because it got all weird and hairy after that. I vividly remember the first time I worked up the nerve to leave it on for "The Rite of Spring" — the visceral, almost (in hindsight) sexual thrill and discomfort I felt at the strangeness of the music. It wasn't what made me love music, but it's definitely what got me hooked on the hard stuff.
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:52 PM on January 10, 2009


the first album i ever bought was meet the monkees - but that wasn't what made me a music lover for life - it was am radio in 1967 - it was the year that rock changed for good

best year ever for music - 2nd best year 1991
posted by pyramid termite at 7:52 PM on January 10, 2009


Janet Jackson's "Control." My musical tastes have improved considerably since then.

That album is completely brilliant! So is Rhythm Nation.
posted by citron at 7:52 PM on January 10, 2009


I haven't been able to come up with an answer that I like to the question at hand. It might well be a Best of the Monkees tape I had that I constantly listened to in a walkman for some reason. I'm not sure how I was... less than 10 I think, but my memory is remarkably malleable so you could probably convince me it was two years ago if you tried hard enough.

But, this:
Europe - The Final Countdown.
I would submit that the awesome synth line in that song remains totally awesome.


inspires a recent anecdote that's probably only funny to me. At New Years this year, we had an extremely drunken game of Apples to Apples going on with about 20 fairly diverse people. When the card "europe" was played I started to belt out duh DU DUHHHH duhhhh DU DUH DUN-DUN DA. By the time i finished the first measure every person in the room was DUUNNing along.

The synth line to "a final countdown" is universal, my friend.

It happened at least three more times. The fact that we had a countdown to midnight shortly afterwords certainly helped
posted by flaterik at 8:07 PM on January 10, 2009


Black Flag, First Four Years. Changed everything.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:04 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


I love threads like this!

My first 45 single: Bay City Rollers, "Saturday Night" or Ace Frehley, "New York Groove" (I can't remember which one I got first!)

I also have very fond youthful memories of:
Devo - "Whip It"
Information Society - "What's On Your Mind (Pure Energy)"

First album I owned: The Eagles - The Long Run
Later on I fell in love with:
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
The Cure - Disintegration
Peter Gabriel - Passion

All have stood the test of time for me. (Okay, maybe not the Bay City Rollers...but the rest I still love.)
posted by velvet winter at 9:15 PM on January 10, 2009


Two-way tie: Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and Nirvana's Nevermind.
posted by killdevil at 9:35 PM on January 10, 2009


I copied Nevermind on tape from a friend and played it until it literally wore out. The tape broke and I had to buy my own copy.

Seventh grade, as I recall.
posted by killdevil at 9:40 PM on January 10, 2009


R.E.M. Green, I was about 13 so it was in 92 I think. A week later I had Murmur and a few months later anything I could get my hands on by them.
posted by nola at 9:45 PM on January 10, 2009


I had owned a few tapes and records before (some fairly ok, like the Clash), but the first album that really blew my mind was Black Flag's Everything Went Black. I was about 13, and this was the first music I'd heard that was as angry as I was.

I didn't actually buy it -- it was a gift from a friend moving out of state, and more than 20 years later (geez, I'm getting old...) I'd still rank them as one of my absolute favorites. Some things that I liked back then don't do much for me now, like Husker Du and the Dead Kennedys, whereas the Minutemen/Black Flag/Gang of Four-type bands sound better every time I hear them.
posted by Forktine at 10:06 PM on January 10, 2009


Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Live 75 to 85, especially the third cassette.
posted by Kwine at 10:12 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


The Beatles, Revolver. My dad gave me all his Beatles records one at a time, but he didn't have Revolver so he went out and bought me a new copy when I was still in grade school, sometime in the late '70s. Listened to it over and over on my kids' turntable, something like Fisher-Price plastic thing that folded up like a lunchbox, so it was portable, though it relied on a power cord. Sometimes my dad would sneak in my room while I was still asleep in the morning and blast "Good Day Sunshine" to wake me up. The White Album was a close second, but by the time I got a copy of that I had already played the hell out of Revolver. Also, I remember hearing Led Zeppelin's "Moby Dick" for the first time on the local album rock radio station (remember those?), after the DJ said Bonzo was playing with his hands. That made me want to be a drummer. So did Ringo. No shit. And a few years later I did.
posted by krinklyfig at 10:12 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


Van Halen 1984, ZZ Top Eliminator, Bruce Springsteen Born in the USA, Bryan Adams Reckless.
posted by KokuRyu at 10:22 PM on January 10, 2009


But it was Pixies Doolittle that changed my life.
posted by KokuRyu at 10:23 PM on January 10, 2009


I've forgotten my (newish) glam rock phase...I have totally fallen in love with T. Rex 'Electric Warrior', Roxy Music 'Roxy Music', Brian Eno's 'Taking Tiger Mountain - By Strategy' and 'Here Come the Warm Jets.' The first time I heard Roxy Music's S/T effort, I nearly lost my mind. I thought, "How had I never heard of this? Why isn't this much more popular?"

I've also forgotten my love for Devo and the Talking Heads, Television and the Velvet Underground.

But in high school, I bought the Cornershop album 'When I Was Born for the 7th Time' just for the song 'Brimful of Asha', only to find the entire album was amazing. I must have fallen asleep with that album on repeat thousands of times. My parents noticed and bought me Ravi Shankar CDs because I'm sure that they had tired of the album.

That would be a great sub-question. What album did you buy, just for a popular single but now can't let go of the album?
posted by schyler523 at 10:38 PM on January 10, 2009


Actually, it was twice in my life that I heard something that made me go "...ohhhh." The second time was several years after Black Flag, the first time I heard the Sisters of Mercy's Floodland. I would've hated it even a year earlier, but I heard it at just the right time and got lost in it.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:48 PM on January 10, 2009


What album did you buy, just for a popular single but now can't let go of the album?

Blind Melon's self-titled album, oddly enough. Unexpectedly brilliant and totally underrated — with the sole exception of that goddamn single, which was absolutely dreadful and deserved all the mockery it got.
posted by nebulawindphone at 10:51 PM on January 10, 2009


The soundtrack to Star Wars. Although the album that first made me a rock fan was Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA.
posted by infinitywaltz at 11:17 PM on January 10, 2009


Everybody has one -- that album that first made you a music-lover for life.

I protest. Those of us who are not music-lovers don't.
posted by darksasami at 11:47 PM on January 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


Soundtrack to Midnight Express.
Elton John Madman across the water.
posted by JujuB at 11:49 PM on January 10, 2009


Hot Rocks 1964-1971.

Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:09 AM on January 11, 2009


INXS, Kick

I've come a long way since then, but I remember listening to that one over and over on my cassette tape Walkman. I dunno. There were some definite pop sensibilities there, but not always the greatest lyrics.

And I think it had ten different charting singles. Kind of impressive.
posted by bardic at 12:49 AM on January 11, 2009


empath wrote about ..."Night Ranger that was playing at full volume at the time..."

Because you brought up up Night Ranger, I'd like to derail for a second, because I just learned this particular bit of trivia and I have to share: my high school was the setting for Night Ranger's "Sister Christian" video.

Per Wikipedia, the school was also the birthplace of the whole "420" phenomenon, and I know that it's responsible for a number of adult film stars, but I was really excited about the Night Ranger phenomenon. I'm no fan, it's just kind of surprising.

End derail, carry on.
posted by Graygorey at 12:50 AM on January 11, 2009 [1 favorite]


The Beatles... "1."

Sorry.
posted by so_necessary at 3:05 AM on January 11, 2009


Fields of the Nephilim - Elizium
posted by CautionToTheWind at 4:49 AM on January 11, 2009


The Beatles - Help!

Me & my siblings owned that LP for a good few years without having a phone. By the time we've got a gramophone, it earned a cult status.
posted by Think [Instrumental] at 4:58 AM on January 11, 2009


Seems like a lot of you formed your early musical tastes by listening to your parents' record collection.

I didn't so much listen to their collection as get a full-blown education in the contents of it. My dad was THE original headmaster of the School of Rock.

At the tender age of 3, my curriculum included The Beatles, KISS, Electric Light Orchestra, The Stones, Zeppelin, The Who, Pink Floyd, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, and the Doors. He also took me through the other greats like Michael Jackson, Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and Robert Johnson. He would devote entire afternoons to the different genres and their corresponding periods in history. Besides the learning, I cherished the time he dedicated to making sure I would come to love and appreciate music.

In the end, I found Who's Next to be the album that made me fall completely in love. Keith Moon was the reason I picked up a set of drumsticks.
posted by arishaun at 5:40 AM on January 11, 2009 [1 favorite]


U2's The Joshua Tree. I remember I was in the 7th grade when it came out. I was drawn to it, like most people, because of "With or Without You", but it was also the first time I heard an album that I loved every song on it. As I got older, I started liking the second half much more, and to this day "One Tree Hill" is my favorite song. Also, while the overall volume of the album was low, the production is top notch (helps having Brian Eno and Flood on board).
posted by Chocomog at 6:58 AM on January 11, 2009


My Stompin' Grounds by Stompin' Tom Connors.

Bought at the Woodward's record department with birthday money.
posted by mazola at 7:54 AM on January 11, 2009


Despite an elementary school obsession with the Beatles (which has, of course, continued), my first actual album was The Joshua Tree as well, which threw me not only into a years-long fixation on U2, but prompted my older brother to lend me stacks of CDs each week to further my education.

(nthing Double Nickels too. I spent Christmas break during my freshman year of high school playing it over and over again while playing endless games of Solitaire - the best two weeks of my life.)
posted by punchdrunkhistory at 8:04 AM on January 11, 2009


Oh dear. I'm out of the loop again. The album that started it all for me was called Overture!, and it was just a compilation of orchestral overtures. The Marriage of Figaro overture hooked me forever.

That was followed by The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, the first album I ever bought.

Also of note: Eugene Ormandy leading the Philadelphia Orchestra in Shostakovich's 4th Symphony, and Bernstein's recording of Berio's Sinfonia. I think those albums pretty much set me on track for the rest of my life. (Also checked out of a public library!)
posted by ancientgower at 8:18 AM on January 11, 2009


Limiting it to albums seems a bit narrow. I was a huge fan of Die Fledermaus (German) opera when I was five years old because my mom played it constantly on the "hi fi". The radio was very important before everyone had their own stereo. I recall liking Gilbert O'Sullivan a lot in the late 60's. And of course the Beatles and Rolling Stones. I recall hearing "Jumpin' Jack Flash" coming out of a car going by when I was seven and it made a huge impression on me. The energy and rawness of the song touched something deep inside. The first album I bought with my own money was Elton John's Greatest Hits, 1974. But the first one that really defined my musical tastes for a long time was Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks 1976.

These days my tastes are all over the map, as long as the musician is honest, I think I tend to like it. Latin Jazz has held some special interest. Some Brazilian music is unbelievable simple and totally sophisticated. How do they do that?
posted by telstar at 10:11 AM on January 11, 2009


Yeah, actually I had some weird Italian cassette tape of the Stone's greatest hits (it was orange plastic) and I wore it out on Jumping Jack Flash, I literally listened to it 'till it broke (Rest in Peace, Biggie Smalls). So that Italian cassette of the Rolling Stones and The Harder They Come soundtrack, for a long time those were the only two tapes we had in our car. I can thank my dad for that, I love my dad.
posted by Divine_Wino at 10:31 AM on January 11, 2009


First record I ever bought for myself was a real turkey:
Buckner and Garcia - Pac Man Fever full-length album

When video music television came around, I started buying Duran Duran cassettes and the first Run-DMC full-length. Then I got my lid flipped by SST Records and the rest was history.
posted by porn in the woods at 11:27 AM on January 11, 2009


Why is the world in love again?
Why are we marching hand in hand?
Why are the ocean levels rising up?
It's a brand new record,
For 1990,
They Might Be Giants' brand new album: Flood!
posted by Durhey at 12:02 PM on January 11, 2009 [1 favorite]


I don't think there was an album that turned me into a "music lover for life". I listen to music on and off; I'll have long stretches where I prefer to work in a music-free environment and just be alone with my thoughts and the ambient noises around me. This happens more and more as I get older; in college days I'd use a Walkman and my own mix tapes to shut out the world.

That said, the Art of Noise's In no sense? Nonsense! was some kind of revelation when I got it, and later on Aphex Twin's Selected ambient works, Volume 2 turned some part of my head around late at night.

And all the Skinny Puppy of that era has simply fallen out of my playlist, over the years. I still have it but I only listen to most of it for nostalgia; I'm just not full of enough anger to enjoy it any more.

I think the first album I ever bought with my own money was Rush's 2112. These guys were very clearly not cool and I liked that...
posted by egypturnash at 12:33 PM on January 11, 2009


Bitter Old Punk: I AM Will Oldham, in another of my enigmatic personas. It's Pushkin to you, though.
posted by msalt at 12:37 PM on January 11, 2009


...all the Skinny Puppy of that era has simply fallen out of my playlist, over the years. I still have it but I only listen to most of it for nostalgia; I'm just not full of enough anger to enjoy it any more.

Likewise. I got into Skinny Puppy, Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, etc. when I was in my early twenties and much more angst-filled than I am now. I don't listen to those bands much anymore, but I do still have a lot of EBM, dark ambient, neo-folk and goth music that I love. Lots of great '80s synth-pop and new wave, too.
posted by velvet winter at 2:08 PM on January 11, 2009


No album has changed my life as much as a mixtape that was given to me in high school that was filled with Nick Cave, The Pixies, My Bloody Valentine, Leonard Cohen, 808 State and They Might Be Giants.

I can trace almost everything that I listen to nowadays genealogically back to that one tape and how it was, to my mind, a perfect slice of music in the early 90s.

Though, having said that, I still get a small nostalgic thrill when I listen to The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld -- though, now, less for the technical quality of the album and more for memories associated with going to raves, hanging out at clubs and dreaming of the future
posted by bl1nk at 2:12 PM on January 11, 2009


My "real" first album as a kid: Led Zeppelin IV.

The first album that made a difference: Paul Simon - "Graceland". I had pretty much lost interest in music and there really wasn't anything I enjoyed listening to. Graceland introduced me to African music and changed my musical taste.
posted by mike3k at 2:33 PM on January 11, 2009


Oh, also: As I was thinking back on my early musical influences, I remembered the first record I was obsessed with, probably when I was in preschool or kindergarten. I remember playing Juice Newton's "Queen of Hearts" on my mom's old record player and watching the purple label in the center with the Capitol Records logo in white swirling around and around and around...
posted by limeonaire at 3:17 PM on January 11, 2009


Cheap Trick ..live at Budokan was probably the one that did it for me, though I don't have a single song from it in my music library right now. Odd, that.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:39 PM on January 11, 2009


ELO -- Eldorado. Boy, did I fall hard for that one. Possibly because I was deep into my Conan and Lord of the Rings stage, and this record was the perfect soundtrack. ELO turned all schlocky and mainstream soon after, and as their popularity grew my interest waned, but Eldorado still holds up, I think.
posted by Bron at 7:22 PM on January 11, 2009


Lisa Loeb and Nine Stories - Tails. Still love it, I throw it on all the time when I need to be reminded that I'm not too tired for this life, and it's not gonna matter if I fall down twice.
posted by yellowbinder at 7:44 PM on January 11, 2009


So late to the game, but:

Donovan, A Gift from a Flower to a Garden. For the record, I was in middle school, and my parents never really listened to him; rather, my mother would mockingly sing 'Happiness Runs' to my siblings and I as children. It was the gift of Napster. Yes, this makes me totally cool.
posted by nonmerci at 8:12 PM on January 11, 2009


Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet. I was 12 years old and idly flipping through the vinyl collection at one of the Reykjavík library branches I never went to while waiting for my dad who was in a meeting in the same building. The design appealed to my science fiction obsessed geekiness and I decided to check it out along with my stack of books (largely science fiction). Later that day I put it on my parents' record player and was blown away. I listened to it a lot for the week I was allowed to have it and then I returned it. After that I started to really, really listen to music.
posted by Kattullus at 9:48 PM on January 11, 2009


So strange...as much as I loved the pop and rock I grew up with in the mid 60's on, the albums that made the biggest difference to me were Morton Gould's Orchestra and Band doing the 1812 Overture and Ravel's Bolero, the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the Philadelphia Orchestra's recording of Mahler's 2nd. But if I had to choose something non-classical, it would have to be Neal Diamond's Taproot Manuscript. I'm pretty sure the Mahler and the Gould would hold up if they were still in print, but I know the Diamond does.
posted by lhauser at 10:52 PM on January 11, 2009


Queen's Greatest Hits LP. I still have it.
posted by elmono at 6:55 AM on January 12, 2009


Lonely Is An Eyesore

Not even close to the first, but it changed my 14-year-old life.
posted by everichon at 9:47 AM on January 12, 2009


Borrowing cassette tapes from my dad(divorced parents, I lived with my mom as a young child) really kicked off my love of music by listening to things I knew he liked. Some I remember in particular:
Elton John - Greatest Hits vol 1, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
Aerosmith - Aerosmith, Toys in the Attic, Pump
Queen - Greatest Hits

When I got older and started to develop a more independent taste in music, he would sometimes borrow albums from me. At the very least, he tried to remember the names of the bands I liked most. Thanks, Dad. I miss the hell out of you.
posted by owtytrof at 2:30 PM on January 12, 2009 [1 favorite]


kimothy you are my blood brother. Right down to buying the the 30th Anniversary Edition.

Well...sister, but sure. Glad to have you.
posted by Kimothy at 9:57 PM on January 12, 2009


In 1978, at the age of one, I was given a copy of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds by my godparents. It was my favorite LP for many years as a small child, fostering a love of music, space exploration and science fiction.

Sadly, as with Watership Down or The Plague Dogs, it has been my experience that many parents no longer consider WotW to be an 'appropriate' gift for their small children. Their loss, frankly.
posted by MarchHare at 1:58 AM on January 13, 2009


a perfect slice of music in the early 90s.

Speaking as an audiophile and music lover since the late 60's, I remember the early 90's as a wonderful time in terms of creativity in popular music.
posted by telstar at 8:32 PM on January 16, 2009


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