19 August 2013 (Day 231) – The First Album I Ever Bought

Back to work today but with a couple of commitments and an offsite meeting to attend, music opportunities are limited.  Scrolling through my iPod, I came across the CD which most closely approximates the first album I bought with my own money. 

The question of the first album you ever bought is a popular question asked of anyone with a remote interest in listening to or creating music.  For example, it is one of two questions (the other being, What Was The First Gig You Attended?) asked of the music fans on the panel of TVs RockWiz.  Three people associated with industry, usually musicians, are also asked this question each month in Mojo Magazine with additional information required to describe where and the circumstances of the purchase.

Why do we have such an interest in this question?   I suspect this is the type of question, or more accurately the response to the question, that can often reveal much more about an individual and their background than any standard privacy invasive probing.  Detail such as whether you bought a vinyl album, cassette or CD, the price paid and where it was bought can just as easily serve to pinpoint aspects about someone as accurately as the album or the act in question. 

If you know something about a person’s musical taste, the question also provides a point of speculative intrigue.  Say, you know someone with a deep love of hard rock and heavy metal and the first album they bought was a Led Zeppelin album, you’ll probably think that person has spent his musical life exposed to a reasonably small range of influences.  Does this equate with your knowledge of that person's tendencies or personality in general?  What about a person whose musical taste is a mirror image of their parents or older sibling? Someone whose taste has gone from the ultra-commercial to hard core indie or from folkie musings to Norwegian death metal? And then there are people like yours truly whose musical taste starts from just one single record to all over the musical map.  What does that reveal?  Now let’s just see what can be gleaned by my answer to the question.

The first album I ever bough was by British glam merchants The Sweet.  It was an Australian only compilation called The Sweet Singles album, essentially containing the highlights from their first four albums.  If memory serves me well, it was released to tie in with an Australian tour but was almost immediately made redundant by the release of the band’s next single, and biggest hit, Fox On The Run.

I purchased the album from a music shop that was located in the shopping strip in my home suburb in Melbourne. It was a music shop because it sold more than records and tapes; musical instruments, sheet music, radios, record players and the like.  Actually, it wasn’t all that different to the music shop ran by Pam Dawber’s father in the first year of the Robin Williams sitcom Mork And Mindy.  For the record, it closed a couple of decades ago, but I suspect anyone reading this would probably have guessed that already. 

The shop wasn’t very large but space was brilliantly managed.  Vinyl albums were stored in back to back racks in the middle of the floor which also ran along the right hand side. To the left of the racks were the permanent glass counters, sort of like present day jewellery shops which inside contain some of the more expensive non album stock.   Instruments and other devices were stored away from the reach of the public behind the counters.  The main counter was at the rear of the shop.  Most of the current top 40 singles were held in box on the right of that counter and next to that was that week’s 3XY Top 40 Chart for the week.  Behind the counter were all of the racks containing multiple copies of albums for sale and the vinyl  albums for the single copy stock.

The entire operation was set up to facilitate the sale of albums not singles.  Two racks were set up in front of the back to back racks so that these faced you as you entered.  These two particular racks held the top 25 albums as well as new releases.  All you needed to do was walk in, flick through the these two racks and everything you wanted to know was there.  If you wanted to purchase an album, you simply took the cover to the rear counter, where the owner would pull out a brand new copy, sell it to you and then politely ask you to return the rack copy to its place.  You didn’t need to pester the shop keeper  about whether a particular album had been released.  If the cover wasn’t there it meant that it wasn’t released or the shop had sold out.

For me, these two racks were just as important as Countdown and the radio for finding out about the release of new albums.  It was here, for example, that I saw the cover of Springsteen’s Born To Run album for the first time.   I paid special attention to them on Fridays which was when expected big albums were released.  By the late 1970s, having a steady stream of income owing to an after school job, I was able to treat myself to the occasional album there. And it was from there and through this technique that I became one of the first people on the planet to purchase AC/DC’s Back In Black and Pink Floyd’s The Wall on the day of their respective releases.

It was also where and how I bought The Sweet Singles album a few years earlier.  In those days, the cost of a vinyl album was reasonably expensive, about $AUD 5.95 or $AUD 6.95 depending on the record label.  I  entered the shop not knowing what album I was going to purchase; it was a toss up between The Sweet album, AC/DC’s High Voltage and a couple of others.  As was the case for many people at the time, and after much time agonising over my choice, I plumped for The Sweet album for the very simple reason that it had more hits on it than the others.  Let’s face it, if you were spend that amount of money (a $6.95 album equalled half of my weekly after school pay), you wanted something you would constantly play.

But as I’ve said, that album was never to be released on CD.  The album that come closet to replicating its contents was;

(# 544) The Sweet – The Sweet Greatest Hits (2001)

This is almost the definitive Sweet compilation lacking only their final hit, Love Is Like Oxygen.  But everything else you’d want is there including irresistible singles Hellraiser, Blockbuster, Ballroom Blitz and Teenage Rampage as well as a couple of other tracks from The Sweet Singles Album such as New York Connection.  The latter day hits, Peppermint Twist (I assume it was a latter day hit because it’s not on Singles), Action, Lies In Your Eyes and, of course, Fox On The Run have all been added to the fun.  If I have a complaint with this particular compilation, it lies with the track sequencing.  Ballroom Blitz, starting with the Brian Connelly's introduction of the other band members, (Are you ready Steve?  Uh ha. Andy? Yeah! Mick? OK Alright now. Let's Goooooo) is an obvious starting track and Hellraiser with the track ending explosion is the obvious end point as they were on the Single album.  Here, the impact of both tracks is slightly diluted.

(#545) The Eagles – Hotel California (1976)

This was another album which I purchased from the same record store and, like the Sweet Singles Album, I still own in its original vinyl form.  The passing of time, or more accurately, the incredible over exposure on commercial radio this band received until … well…  ever  has resulted in me loathing the band today.  However, nothing stops me from playing this particular album at least once a year.  The title track is an acknowledged masterpiece complete with intriguing lyric and brilliant guitar playing in its outro.  Whilst Victim Of love and Life In The Fast Lane can be appreciated as a great examples of 70s LA rock, it’s the ballads that really impress.  New Kid In Town, Wasted Town and The Last Resort are all wonderful examples of LA’s peace easy feeling but it’s the barbed, cynical  nature of  some of the lyrics that often take you by surprise.  But for full appreciation, just stay away from commercial radio.