Sigh… these sorts of questions come up, and I sound like such a lightweight.
For instance, a common question from my fellow Serious Cinephile friends during our Covid lockdown was “Okay, WHAT was the LAST movie you saw?” (with a subtext of “Maybe the last you’ll ever see?”)… mine happened to be Sonic the Hedgehog.
So, anyhow, my first LP was… Paul Revere and the Raiders’ Greatest Hits.
Now, my parents bought me that as a birthday present. The first album I ever bought-with-my-lawnmowing-money was Van Morrison’s Moondance. And I was constantly playing Cream Wheels of Fire, so I did have some taste, honest!
.
eta: Never bought 8-tracks or cassettes. I bought a cassette deck, but only as a way to make mixtapes for the car (and to give to that girl I had a crush on, but who never acknowledged my labor of love).
The first LP I bought was almost certainly classical, probably on the old Seraphim label (Angel Records’ discount line, which sold back in the day for $2 an album. God knows what it was.
*God probably has a complete set of the Angel and Seraphim records.
Despite being older than that, CDs were the first format I actually bought albums for. I was 25 and my first was Irene Cara’s What a Feelin’ which was then current. I was living overseas and the available variety of CDs was limited.
Growing up of course the family had record players, then eventually an 8-track player, and a cassette player in turn. As a little kid, the parents had quite a collection of old 78s, a few 45s, and a growing collection of LPs and later other formats through my teens. But I bought, or received as gifts, very little recorded music of my own.
I cannot recall my first album, but most likely it came from Columbia House with 12 other albums for a penny. Kind of sure Frampton Comes Alive was one of them.
My first 8 track was the Cars first album, the Cars. Played to death in my 69 Camaro.
Never got into buying cassetes.
My first CD was the Rolling Stones album Let It Bleed. I recall it was New Years Eve 1987 and I pissed off my upstairs neighbor by switching back and forth between the album and CD at very, very high volume to see if I could tell the differance between the two. Damn she was pissed off.
First record I bought. . .hmmm. Lost in time, I fear. I didn’t have my own record player until about junior high, which would be in the early 60s. Otherwise, I listened to my parents’ really old stuff on the console. It may have been “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley (a 45 rpm). First LP album may have been Marty Robbins or possibly The Pink Panther sound track. I know the first (and maybe only) jazz 45 I bought was “Soul Serenade” by King Curtis. First jazz album was Time Out, by Brubeck.
I never fell for the 8-track fad, but I did have a reel-to-reel deck and a number of pre-recorded tapes. The first album may have been Petula Clark.
First cassette is also lost to memory.
First CD would have been a rock album, but I have no memory of it.
After I got the CD player, I enrolled in Columbia House as well. I remember some of the first big shipment: AC/DC’s Blow Up Your Video, Aerosmith’s Permanent Vacation, and the Woodstock soundtrack were in it, but I forget the rest.
This is such a great memory. I think I was 10, and had only listened to music on the radio up until that point. Then for Christmas, my brother gave me a Walkman and Jagged Little Pill (Alanis Morissette) on cassette. Being able to listen to music I like whenever I wanted to, as opposed to waiting for it to come on in the radio line-up, opened up a whole new world for me. I listened to it so incessantly that I wore out the batteries on my Walkman after only a week!
My first LP was called “Certified Gold” from 1981. It had flashy graphics with a picture of a gold seal on the front, and it was a hits compilation with songs like “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” and “Brass in Pocket.”
I don’t remember the first record i bought, but it would have been a 78rpm in the 1960s !
Me & my brother used to go round the second-hand/thrift/junk shops looking
for them. It’s possible it was 12th Street Rag.
First LP was Dvorak’s 9th (New World) Symphony.
First 45 was Fanfare for the Common Man by ELP.
Don’t remember first cassette or CD
It mentions rum, beer and brandy !
(and discobot is stupid !)