# Remember 12 albums for a penny? What were your first 12 albums? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** music\ **Created:** [May 17, 2021, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-12-albums-for-a-penny-what-were-your-first-12-albums/942296 "2021-05-17T15:58:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![salinqmind1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@salinqmind1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind1)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2021, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-12-albums-for-a-penny-what-were-your-first-12-albums/942296/41 "2021-05-20T01:22:54Z")
Great songs, back in the day. I stopped listening to most stuff (except a very few songs) after 1990. I would buy CDs of many Greatest Hits and drive around listening in my car, even today. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2021, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-12-albums-for-a-penny-what-were-your-first-12-albums/942296/42 "2021-05-20T03:13:58Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I suppose it all became moot a few years later when Napster went live. well sort of… what happened is the companies were inflating the shipping charges and the wrong person asked why it cost 15.99 to send an 8 dollar cd that wasnt ordered in the first place …The ftc investigated and they had to make changes and their profits dropped something like 60 percent and then the whole digital thing started and they were done in a few years ironically the DVD/video portion of columbia house survived until about 4 or so years ago albeit with name and ownership changes ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2021, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-12-albums-for-a-penny-what-were-your-first-12-albums/942296/43 "2021-05-20T03:18:37Z")
I always wondered if _Frampton Comes Alive_ was really the top-selling album of the decade or if millions of Columbia House members just forgot to send that card back. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2021, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-12-albums-for-a-penny-what-were-your-first-12-albums/942296/44 "2021-05-20T03:19:04Z")
the person being the postmaster general whose teenaged grandson was getting charged 23.00. for said cd ---
**Author:** ![Author\_Balk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Author\_Balk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Author_Balk)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2021, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-12-albums-for-a-penny-what-were-your-first-12-albums/942296/45 "2021-05-20T11:19:43Z")
> [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](#): > > never did the Columbia House thing, but I remember my first album purchase was a K-Tel album (“Believe in Music”, 1972) that I bought at Woolworth’s. I could have done worse than start with that album, some truly great songs on it: Brandy (Looking Glass), Long Cool Woman (Hollies), Back Stabbers (O’Jays), Go All the Way (Raspberries), Maggie May (Rod Stewart), Sylvia’s Mother (Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show), Hold Your Head Up (Argent). Let it Rain (Clapton). > > Of course there were throwaways like the two Donny Osmond songs… My first album was the Gilbert O’Sullivan album with Alone Again Naturally. Lesson learned… Don’t buy an album just because you like a song. My second was the same Believe in Magic album. I still have it. I just got it out of the closet and checked out the songs. But, I don’t have anything to play it on. ---
**Author:** ![Dag\_Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@Dag\_Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dag_Otto)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2021, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-12-albums-for-a-penny-what-were-your-first-12-albums/942296/46 "2021-05-20T14:13:52Z")
I have many CDs from both clubs, and I can’t recall any of them except one. They offered a compilation CD from Verve (I think) that was fantastic. If you missed out on it, someone kindly recreated it with a Spotify playlist: [Jazz Like You’ve Never Heard It Before](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3BUcZ7oPCdcMU9ic8L2TZw?si=RMrax1c2Tbec1CcNK-zT8w&utm_source=copy-link) ---
**Author:** ![swampspruce](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/swampspruce/32/261_2.png) [@swampspruce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/swampspruce)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2021, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-12-albums-for-a-penny-what-were-your-first-12-albums/942296/47 "2021-05-20T15:58:44Z")
Did cassettes and then CDs with both. I can’t remember them all but: Cassettes Stranglers-Always the Sun INXS-Listen Like Thieves Scorpions-Love Drive and Love at First Sting Men at Work- Business as Usual Judas Priest- Defenders of the Faith The Fixx- Reach the Beach A bunch more lost to the mists of time CDs Dire Straits-Brothers in Arms Eric Clapton-Unplugged Pink Floyd DSOTM 20th anniversary Scorpions- Love at First Sting and Blackout (Hey, I like German based Metal) Aerosmith-Aerosmith and Rocks Kiss-Greatest Hits I could probably go though the rest of the collection and suss it out but that’s all I can think of off the top of my head. I bought a lot of music over the years with both CH and BMG. I also spent a lot of time on Kazaa, and Limewire building some great mixes and downloading music I had never heard before. Streaming just seems lame in comparison. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2021, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-12-albums-for-a-penny-what-were-your-first-12-albums/942296/48 "2021-05-20T16:41:38Z")
> [@swampspruce](#): > > I also spent a lot of time on Kazaa, and Limewire building some great mixes and downloading music I had never heard before. Streaming just seems lame in comparison. This could be a separate thread, but I still remember that feeling of pirating music. We had cheap dial-up at home, so I used a computer at my college, in an out-of-the-way corner, that I could keep running throughout a class. We kept getting emails saying the school considered pirating as theft and the RIAA could fine us. Adrenaline rush every day! ---
**Author:** ![dbygawdcapn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dbygawdcapn/32/3995_2.png) [@dbygawdcapn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dbygawdcapn)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2021, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-12-albums-for-a-penny-what-were-your-first-12-albums/942296/49 "2021-05-23T12:52:43Z")
These were not from Columbia House, but bought one at a time using paper route and lawn mowing income. Beatles- White Album Beatles- Abbey Road Black Sabbath- Paranoid Alice Cooper- Love It To Death CCR- Green River CSNY- Deja Vu Grand Funk Railroad- Live Grateful Dead- Working Man’s Dead Grateful Dead- American Beauty James Taylor- Sweet Baby James Neil Young- After the Goldrush Neil Young- Everybody Knows This is Nowhere ---
**Author:** ![veryfrank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/87869e/32.png) [@veryfrank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/veryfrank)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2021, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-12-albums-for-a-penny-what-were-your-first-12-albums/942296/50 "2021-05-23T16:26:19Z")
Wow…I only joined ColumbiaHouse in the CD era. I got my first player in 1988, cut the square out of a full-page ad in Rolling Stone and ordereda bunch. I just now did a google image search for a 1988 ad and I see it was six CDs for $1. I don’t remember all of the titles (the fact that it was a full third of a century ago is kinda freaking me out) but I remember in that bundle were: Aerosmith - Permanent Vacation AC/DC - Blow Up Your Video the Woodstock soundtrack (maybe) Grateful Dead - Shakedown Street I can’t begin to say how frustrating it is that I can’t remember the whole delivery. I do remember the first 3 CDs I ever bought, all at used record stores that had, at the time, a dozen or so discs in stock: Document by R.E.M.; Rum, Sodomy & the Lash by The Pogues and The Ideal Copy by Wire. ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2021, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-12-albums-for-a-penny-what-were-your-first-12-albums/942296/51 "2021-05-23T17:35:51Z")
Anybody else remember the Record Club of America? It was in existence during the 60s till the mid-70s. You could join for a nominal fee (I think it was 99 cents), and then you had access to purchase vinyl albums for prices that usually were only 1 or 2 dollars. The upside was that you were under no obligation to purchase a minimum number of albums, nor did you have to return anything each month indicating that you weren’t buying anything. For a kid in the country, this was a great deal. I didn’t regularly go to stores that sold albums, and didn’t have the money for them anyway. But buying albums for a dollar or two and receiving them in the mail was a great thing. I joined as a high school sophomore in 1968 (with my parents’ permission, of course) and immediately bought the soundtrack of _Hair_. My Dad was not thrilled when he listened to it with me. I bought a few more albums through the club, but don’t remember any specific titles. It went out of business around 1975. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2021, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-12-albums-for-a-penny-what-were-your-first-12-albums/942296/52 "2021-05-24T02:41:30Z")
I never joined one of these clubs myself. Since my older sister would join them and I could borrow pretty much any of her records I was interested in, there didn’t seem to be much need. My sister wasn’t buying any records after her first shipment. She was a minor at the time, so the contract wasn’t enforceable, anyway. I don’t remember if she stopped repeatedly signing up because either she was finally a legal adult, they had caught on and just stopped shipping to the same address that had burned them already, or she just stopped because she had everything they offered that she wanted. But by the time she was able to drive, she had stopped signing up. By then, her record collection went all the way down the wall of her room, and that was probably the second biggest room in a pretty large house. But yeah, due to that, I can’t even tell what the first dozen albums I really owned were. I do know that the first four albums I actually remember buying with my own money or I received as presents. They were: 1. Goofy Greats (a K-Tel novelty compilation) 2. Kiss - Dressed to Kill 3. Kiss - Destroyer (Big gap because there were hot and cold running records coming out of my sister’s room, and we _kinda_ shared tastes) 4. Styx - Paradise Theater (Ehh, my sister didn’t want to buy that one, and I wanted to hear it. In retrospect, she was correct to skip it.) After that, it’s a blur of tapes/records. Sadly, I probably have more of the tapes than the records at this stage. I sold a lot of the records I had back then in order to finance the purchase of other records. I would have sold the tapes, but they never had any resale value. But those clubs gave me a ton of listening pleasure through my older sister scamming them repeatedly. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2021, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-12-albums-for-a-penny-what-were-your-first-12-albums/942296/53 "2021-05-25T14:39:38Z")
> [@Author\_Balk](#): > > My first album was the Gilbert O’Sullivan album with Alone Again Naturally. Lesson learned… Don’t buy an album just because you like a song. That was one of mine, too. Also Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, greatest hits albums by Three Dog Night, Johnny Cash, Ray Stevens, Neil Diamond Gold (Live at the Troubadour), Parsley,Sage,Rosemary. and Thyme, Tapestry by Carol King, and a few others whose names escape me. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2021, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-12-albums-for-a-penny-what-were-your-first-12-albums/942296/54 "2021-05-26T01:45:44Z")
The only two I remember are the first Dire Straits album and the Batman soundtrack by Prince, both were great. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-12-albums-for-a-penny-what-were-your-first-12-albums/942296.md?page=2)