Fifty plus years of music buying

[The Fish]

So way back when as the first step on what would become a lifelong journey, I bought my first album.
I owned a couple which would have been gifts presumably along with record player. Never had a record
player in the house growing up so must have asked for one Birthady or Christmas, so first things I owned
were Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits and A Collection of Beatles OLdies.

Earliest musical memories, shared I'm sure with Brits of a certain age, were Thank Yuur Lucky Stars, Ready Steady Go, Juke Box Jury
and listening to a crackly Radio Luxembourg beneath the bedclothes hoping parents couldn't hear.

Anyway that first album was After The Goldrush, and I can recall the thrill of dropping the needle and hearing Tell Me Why
coming through the speaker.

What led me to all this Proustian musing was that I have just purchased my 10,000th CD. I was aware that
this milestone was approaching and obviosly would have preferred this to be something significant.

I would have ordered a batch of stuff which would have arrived at various intervals, so the issue arose when entering
these onto CD database and lo and behold, number 10,000 is Young Shakespeare by Neil Young.Put CD in , press play and
coming out of the speakers (note by now plural) is Tell Me Why.

The point, if there is one, is that you come to realise that buying music is a journey, and right now I'm thinking how on earth
did I get from there to here. I honestly can't remember the order in which various artists/styles worked their way into
my consciousness, other than first memories are Dead/Airplane/Quicksilver and the like, and everything else just followed.

I know certain genres (Opera/Classical, Country, Jazz) had to wait a fair few years for my tastes to catch up. I'm astounded by the volume of stuff from back then that I'm only just discovering now, and admit I was sometimes late to the party. First Van album was St Dominisc's Preview,
first Band album was Cahoots etc. and even now there's omissions that put me on the outside of the BCB comsensus
(total Bowie albums 0, total Floyd albums 0, total Roxy Music albums 0, total AC/DC albums 0 and the list goes on).

So how has your journey been ? A smooth ride ?

[Walk In My Shadow]

Almost sixty years in collecting but collecting wasn't the main point of the exercice. Listening to what I was collecting was far more important.
True, those first vinyl LP's were bought by my father because I was eight en he was 26.
So the first Dylan's in the house or the first Joan Baez were there for me only to listen to.Later Dad started buying Fairport Convention and there I started discovering the artist roster of Island Records (John Martyn, Nick Drake, Traffic, Free, etc.) From Island it went to Harvest, Vertigo, Bronze, Charisma, Chrysalis and all the artists that came with them.
America was far away, American artists rarely toured our part of Europe. Only hitsingles were played on local radio and there were more British hits than American. There were even more Dutch hits on pirate radio .
The 70's were better as more and more U.S. LP's trickled down to Europe but only the top Soul acts were available.
As for the rest of the years, I'll have to come back.

[Jock]

The first album I bought with my own money was Chicago Transit Authority. I was 15.
There was music in my house. Mum and dad liked Cliff so we had a couple of his albums. Dad caught onto The Beatles, so we had a couple of the albums. Please Please Me was one. Not sure of the other.
It just grew from there.
I remember getting Bridge Over Troubled Water. Lying on my bed listening to The Boxer and my dad rushed in asking what I was listening to and did I know what a whore was

[Jock]

So way back when as the first step on what would become a lifelong journey, I bought my first album.
I owned a couple which would have been gifts presumably along with record player. Never had a record
player in the house growing up so must have asked for one Birthady or Christmas, so first things I owned
were Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits and A Collection of Beatles OLdies.

Earliest musical memories, shared I'm sure with Brits of a certain age, were Thank Yuur Lucky Stars, Ready Steady Go, Juke Box Jury
and listening to a crackly Radio Luxembourg beneath the bedclothes hoping parents couldn't hear.

Anyway that first album was After The Goldrush, and I can recall the thrill of dropping the needle and hearing Tell Me Why
coming through the speaker.

What led me to all this Proustian musing was that I have just purchased my 10,000th CD. I was aware that
this milestone was approaching and obviosly would have preferred this to be something significant.

I would have ordered a batch of stuff which would have arrived at various intervals, so the issue arose when entering
these onto CD database and lo and behold, number 10,000 is Young Shakespeare by Neil Young.Put CD in , press play and
coming out of the speakers (note by now plural) is Tell Me Why.

The point, if there is one, is that you come to realise that buying music is a journey, and right now I'm thinking how on earth
did I get from there to here. I honestly can't remember the order in which various artists/styles worked their way into
my consciousness, other than first memories are Dead/Airplane/Quicksilver and the like, and everything else just followed.

I know certain genres (Opera/Classical, Country, Jazz) had to wait a fair few years for my tastes to catch up. I'm astounded by the volume of stuff from back then that I'm only just discovering now, and admit I was sometimes late to the party. First Van album was St Dominisc's Preview,
first Band album was Cahoots etc. and even now there's omissions that put me on the outside of the BCB comsensus
(total Bowie albums 0, total Floyd albums 0, total Roxy Music albums 0, total AC/DC albums 0 and the list goes on).

So how has your journey been ? A smooth ride ?

Can't believe you've no Bowie, Floyd or Roxy Music. I'm with you on AC/DC though

[mudshark]

My parents were pretty old(-fashioned) when I saw the light, and we didn't have much in common when it came to music taste. And we weren't very rich so there wasn't much room for luxury items. My dad had some Mario Lanza albums for Sundays and the soundtrack of Anatevka which he played (loud) when he was drunk and sad, so: often, that was about it. If I had some money I'd spend it on 45's. I'm pretty sure my first purchase was in 1968: "Dong-Dong-Di-Ki-Di-Gi-Dong" by the Golden Earrings (they dropped the 's' in 1969). That was a hit single (with a bullet!) at the time, so that was an expensive purchase. At the shops I mostly went through the discounted stuff that nobody was buying. I bought it if I liked the cover. So I ended up with quite an eclectic collection. I can't recall them all, of course, but there are a couple that I played so often that I simply can't forget them: I Can't Stop Loving You by Brother Ray (but I played the B-side No Letter Today far more often) and Save Your Sugar For Me by Tony Joe White. 12 was the legal age (at the time) that you could do your own newspaper round. I did that with a vengeance and became a bit more 'affluent'. My album beginnings may horrify some people: In 1972 I watched The Osmond Brothers perform Crazy Horses on TV. I'd never heard anything like it thought it was awesome. That was the first album I bought, soon followed by "In Rock" again because I saw Deep Purple on TV. At the time there was an amazing initiative in Rotterdam called The Record Library. So a library for LP's. You could hire an album for a week for 1 guilder (which was probably $0.25 in US money and 3 groats in the UK). The membership introduced me to an avalanche of music: 5 different albums a week is what I could afford and I must have kept that up at least until Wish You Were Here come out because I vividly remembering being so happy to put my hands on that one. That was 1975 I think. Fast forward to 1983 when I moved to Singapore. I brought a few albums with me and was pretty much stuck with those for 10 years because the music scene over there was very much MOR and bad country. Not much Roots, Rock and Reggae because of the fact that our all-seeing, all-knowing Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew was more Victorian that Victoria. The place opened up in the 90s when he retired. And soon enough some shops started carrying a greater variety. And all of a sudden there were Borders and Teabag. Borders is the now defunct music aficionado's paradise and Teabag is one of the Top 10 of nicest people, ever. I bought, he bought, we shared. Which has resulted in a collection that is quite huge. Not Mar a Lago huge as in the hugest thing ever in history, but big enough to fill a small bedroom. I'm not a collector, except for everything Zappa. Not quite a small bedroom worth, but definitely a sizeable walk-in closet.

[The Fish]

I'm not a collector, except for everything Zappa.

I could add to the absence of Bowie/Floyd/Roxy mentioned above....

Total number of Zappa albums - 0.5*

*Love Beefheart so own Bongo Fury

[pcqgod]

The journey has been characterized by a tension between wanting to hear the greatest variety of music possible as well as the most recognized classics as possible, and wanting to hear the most of certain favorite music artists. Now the later concern is ascendant, and I'm trying to greatly contract my collection to the point it is all stuff I'm actually going to listen to, or at least likely to want to listen to again. If that means certain recognized classics or popular favorites are not in my collection, so be it.

[John_K]

(total Bowie albums 0, total Floyd albums 0, total Roxy Music albums 0, total AC/DC albums 0 and the list goes on).

So how has your journey been ? A smooth ride ?

Can't believe you've no Bowie, Floyd or Roxy Music. I'm with you on AC/DC though

Somewhat astonished me here too, although a few from AC/DC grace the shelves here too.

If you want Blood arrived with my brief flirtation with Heavy Metal (to my ears) about 39 years ago...