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Can't remember. Piano lessons most early years and wound up listening to a lot of classical. As if to drop a bit of a hint my sister arranged with my parents to buy What's the Story Morning Glory for a Christmas present. I was stumped. What was this strange thing called pop?

So this Oasis/Nintendo kid went through a bit of a crash course in some truly terrible shite. Was probably Flava by Peter Andre or something, but also liked the sound of that Faithless dude banging on about eating tights so that went in the basket as well. Dad went mental on a long car trip as that was the only music on constant repeat. Totally by chance I spotted a 2nd hand copy of Second Toughest in the Infants in a charity shop in rural Cork and never looked back. Thanks to whoever gave that one away, you silly sod

Star Trekking by The Firm was first vinyl purchase. It was for my brothers birthday though. My first proper album was U2 The Joshua Tree. I say proper as I don't know if any one else remembers the Woolworths tapes you could buy for 99p. I think they were called "A tribute to ..." or something like that Not by the origiunal artist and lyrics and music presumably changed just enough to avoid copyright laws. I remember having Madness and Thompson Twins amongst others. Prior to that just taped the BBC1 charts every Sunday night

Memory might he playing tricks but I think I had Blodwyn Pig Ahead Rings Out early on. Only vinyl I’ve kept although I’ve nothing to play it on is Byrds’ Greatest Hits.

Guy Smiley wrote: ↑Mon May 30, 2022 5:59 pm

Fonz wrote: ↑Mon May 30, 2022 5:35 pm God only knows how much music I pirated before I actually paid for a record, but I'm 99% sure it was Viva la Vida by Coldplay. I would have been 16.

Either that, or, naturally, something by Slayer -- iTunes entrapped me one day by offering their golden era discography remastered for $50.

For the record, I completely stand by Coldplay's early work, their first four albums are all full of great stuff. Make all the gay jokes you want!

Unfortunately Coldplay totally went off the rails as the 2010s came around, so they also hold the distinction of being the first band to piss me off by selling out/going to shit.

This sheds yet more light on the impact discovering Talking Heads has had in your life

I'll always be indebted to you, my Kiwi rock sherpa

Seriously though, early Coldplay's not bad, you can aspire to much worse than being Radiohead Lite. Ok, Radiohead Ultra Lite Zero, but still.

(Side note: funny how I never checked out the band my arguably favorite band took their name from...)

GogLais wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 3:40 pm Memory might he playing tricks but I think I had Blodwyn Pig Ahead Rings Out early on. Only vinyl I’ve kept although I’ve nothing to play it on is Byrds’ Greatest Hits.

I've been thinking lately that my next frivolous purchase might be a record player. I'm sure you old heads will get a kick out of this, but I have never actually even heard one before.

Has a robust fanbase of hipsters and old guys round here -- I'm told of a "warmer sound". Can think of a fair few albums that I'd like to sample in that format.

Honestly I had very little money when I reached record buying age and am pretty sure my first buy would have been some budget Woolworth LP of terrible cover versions of the hits of the day...

For the real stuff I just taped it off the radio

No Mercy - Where do you go?

Had some other singles, but it was my first album.
I'm not proud but I'm not mad either: I was in my early teens and it was the dawn of the Latin years.

Followed it up with albums by Blur, The Police and Nirvana (the ones I can think of in the 90s, more would follow in the '00s.) And my mum would have classic albums like Queen, Toto, Genesis etc.

GogLais wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 3:40 pm Memory might he playing tricks but I think I had Blodwyn Pig Ahead Rings Out early on. Only vinyl I’ve kept although I’ve nothing to play it on is Byrds’ Greatest Hits.

How many did you have originally? Old vinyl can be worth quite a bit now. A friend of mine is working through cataloguing his on Discogs and he’s at about £25ks (mid-point value) worth for 1.5k albums so far. Glad I never got rid of any of mine.

Tattie wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 9:30 pm

GogLais wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 3:40 pm Memory might he playing tricks but I think I had Blodwyn Pig Ahead Rings Out early on. Only vinyl I’ve kept although I’ve nothing to play it on is Byrds’ Greatest Hits.

How many did you have originally? Old vinyl can be worth quite a bit now. A friend of mine is working through cataloguing his on Discogs and he’s at about £25ks (mid-point value) worth for 1.5k albums so far. Glad I never got rid of any of mine.

Oh not many. I’d bought most of them probably in the 70s - didn’t pay that much attention to music in the 80s and then it was cassettes and CDs.

Fonz wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 4:37 pm

GogLais wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 3:40 pm Memory might he playing tricks but I think I had Blodwyn Pig Ahead Rings Out early on. Only vinyl I’ve kept although I’ve nothing to play it on is Byrds’ Greatest Hits.

I've been thinking lately that my next frivolous purchase might be a record player. I'm sure you old heads will get a kick out of this, but I have never actually even heard one before.

Has a robust fanbase of hipsters and old guys round here -- I'm told of a "warmer sound". Can think of a fair few albums that I'd like to sample in that format.

I’m not sure of the technicalities of it but a vinyl junkie friend described it to me once as being something about wider frequency ranges making vinyl sound better and richer.

I would imagine the actual physical part of listening to vinyl would feel very strange and alien to someone used to streaming music or even using CDs.

It’s a very different experience as it pretty much forces you to listen to an entire album, or one side at least, unless you’re very keen on standing up and sitting down… a lot, and don’t mind the putting on and taking off records which is time consuming. Also the fact that it’s easy to damage vinyl so you don’t just leave them lying about.

There’s a certain, hard to describe pleasantness about it. A throw back to simpler, slower times.

Give it a try.

Jb1981 wrote: ↑Tue May 31, 2022 5:44 am

Even worse than my Wet Wet Wet purchase as an 11 year old.

Fonz wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 4:37 pm

GogLais wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 3:40 pm Memory might he playing tricks but I think I had Blodwyn Pig Ahead Rings Out early on. Only vinyl I’ve kept although I’ve nothing to play it on is Byrds’ Greatest Hits.

I've been thinking lately that my next frivolous purchase might be a record player. I'm sure you old heads will get a kick out of this, but I have never actually even heard one before.

Has a robust fanbase of hipsters and old guys round here -- I'm told of a "warmer sound". Can think of a fair few albums that I'd like to sample in that format.

The sound is definitely different, and 'warmer' was always the favoured description. There's more going on at the point of 'picking up the data'... the stylus needs clean contact with the surface of the record... and that is the big challenge with owning records and a turntable. You need to pay attention to cleaning your discs correctly, handling them the right way and looking after the stylus and arm so everything can function cleanly and with no distorting influences like dust or misalignment.