Your First CD
I marvel that it's been so long (19 years, to be exact) since I bought my first compact disc. It was 1989, on the day of my 5-year high school class reunion, that I visited my friend Michele's house and heard CDs for the first time. Their quality blew me away - and folks told me they were indestructible. So as soon as payday came, I bought a CD player of my own - one of those $129 Magnavox one-disc bare bones stereo components with an LED display. The first CD I bought was Disintegration by the Cure, which I had to have after I heard this song from it on MTV. The disc cost me $14.99.
"Fascination Street" by the Cure:
Disintegration also featured the hits "Love Song," "Lullaby" and "Pictures of You."
Do you remember your first CD? What was it? And why?
The first CD I owned was the soundtrack to PRIVATE PARTS, the Howard Stern movie. The first I bought for myself was POP by U2. This was 1997.
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I don't know that I've ever heard the Private Parts soundtrack - I don't even remember seeing the movie. Though I was incarcerated at the time and not permitted to have CDs, somebody sent me Pop on cassette and Howard Stern's book Private Parts.
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My first cd... hmmmm... I really don't remember, but it had to have been one of the Led Zeppelin albums. I would venture to guess that it was the 4th album, the "Zoso" or symbols, one, since that has always been my favorite. I had tons of cassettes, which I had bought to replace my lps, so I was relunctant to go with a new format all over again (we won't even talk about 8 tracks, lol). But once I (too) discovered the sound quality, I never looked back. I remember the big controversy was that the sound was "too clean, too sterile", that it was "soulless" without the scratchy depth of the lp recordings. Music purists only wanted the records, and that feeling persisted, and divided music lovers into camps, for a long time. Crazy, eh?
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The first CD I bought at a store and played at home was Disintegration. But in the interest of full disclosure, before I bought that I ordered 8 to 10 CDs from Columbia House "for a penny." I didn't receive them until two weeks after I got the Cure CD. But I guess you could say I "bought" them first. I don't remember all 8 or 10 now; but I know they included Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, the Jimi Hendrix Experience's Electric Ladyland, David Sanborn's Get Close, Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians' Shooting Rubber Bands at the Stars, the Beatles' "White Album," and Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde. I recall that CDs back then were more limited as far as the length of music that could be fit on them - and I was not happy that they'd crammed all of Blonde on Blonde (which was originally a two-record set) onto one CD, abridging "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" (perhaps my favorite Dylan song) in the process.
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I can't remember my first CD. But I do remember playing with my mom's record collection - I loved the cover of "Cheap Thrills." Always loved R Crumb.
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I love R Crumb, too. I guess I forgot Crumb created the Cheap Thrills cover.
I loved my mom's record collection, too - probably listened to it more than she did. Not a lot of rock in hers, since she was more into Motown. But there was a compliation album she had called Do It Now that provided my first exposure to Joplin, the Beatles, and Hendrix. I must have made her play that album hundreds of times when I was only 3 or 4. Can still pretty much name all the songs on it, though I haven't seen it in 35 years. They included "Down on Me" (Joplin), "Red House" (Hendrix), Minstrel from Gault" (R. Havens), "Mr. Bojangles" (N. Diamond), "Nowhere Man" (Beatles), "When I was Young" (E. Burdon), "Vehicle" (Ides of March), and "Ooh Child" (Five Stairsteps). Wish I could find it on CD today.
Here's a picture of it I nabbed from eBay:
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Ugh... Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer CDs. Got them both, along with the stereo, for x-mas. First CD I ever bought on my own was probably Bon Jovi's soundtrack to Young Guns II. I still pull that disc out from time to time. It was alt-country before the genre label was invented.
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I still like Jon Bon Jovi's "Blaze of Glory." I must admit I bought the MC Hammer, too, though I passed on Vanilla Ice because I thought he was a phony. Hammer inspired me to rap over other people's records, too. But though I liked him at first (for the record, I had some of those baggy pants before I'd ever seen or heard of him), I grew sick of his "songs" (and pants) really fast.
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I can't remember my first CD either.. though I can remember my first vinyl album I bought..LOL.... go figure....
It was the Beatles of course.... A Hard Day's Night.
I'll have to think.... maybe I'll be able to come up with it after a good nights sleep... which has been a rare commodity this week.
But my assumption is it was something classical as a gift for my husband Dick... Ugh...
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The first cassette I ever bought (around 1980) was "classical." It had Beethoven's 5th symphony on one side and his 8th on the other. I believe it was by the Cleveland Orchestra. Walter Murphy's disco hit "A Fifth of Beethoven" (which I loved at the time) was on the radio a lot and my 7th grade music teacher (Mr. Shonk) had told me Beethoven's original was even better - so I had to find out for myself.
The first vinyl album I ever bought (instead of inheriting from Mom or someone else) was Double Platinum by Kiss. I think that was around 1979.
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It was in 1983/84 and it yield about 6% at the time...but, lost the interest..early withdraw and instated penalty..
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Haha! I still haven't bought one of those. But heck, I never even had a checking account until I was 39.
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Shoot. I can't remember my first CD... my first tape (not 8 track) was Genesis. That is going to bug me. The Cure is awesome...
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The first 8-track tape I bought with my own money was Crimes of Passion by Pat Benatar. I liked it so much I made Pat's In the Heat of the Night my second 8-track purhase. Slightly before those, however, my mom bought me two 8-tracks I'd requested: Pink Floyd's The Wall and Linda Ronstadt's Greatest Hits Vol. 2. My first cassette, as I mentioned in response to someone else, was by Beethoven. My favorite Cure CD is probably Wish. What's yours?
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Dang. I can't remember my first CD either, but, like Chris, I do remember my very first vinyl LP...it was A Hard Day's Night, The Beatles, of course. I earned the money by babysitting. I would venture to guess that my first CD was a Beatles, but I couldn't say which one.
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Here's the first CD I bought that is still in my classical collection. I guess this tells you something about me. LOL!!
Yo Yo Ma, Dvorak's CONCERTO FOR CELLO AND ORCHESTRA with the BerlinerPhilharmoniker
Lorin Maazel, Dir.
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When I house sat for you in 2004 and you allowed me to borrow any of your CDs, I ripped that one to my computer. The first "classical" CDs I ever bought were Mahler's 5th and Dvořák's New World symphonies.
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My huge CD collection disappeared while I was in prison. So when I came home, I began borrowing CDs from local libraries and ripping hundreds of them to my computer. One of the first - and it might have been the first - was A Hard Day's Night.
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i wanted to make a symbolic statement with my 1st cd purchase so i went looking for Edgard Varese's "Poem Electronique" from 1958. naturally my tastes were too eclectic for the state of cd releases back then, so i had to compromise and get John Cale's 2 cd career spanning set titled Seducing Down The Door instead.
1st purchases are symbolically important to me. my first vhs movie i bought (i now have 4,552 movies on vhs) was Orson Welles' Touch Of Evil.
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The first LP that Frank Zappa ever bought was Varèse's Ionization. It was out of print when I looked for it pre-prison. Bet I could find it now....
I love John Cale (one of my favorite songwriters), though it wasn't until around 90-91 that I really started discovering his work. After Songs for Drella (Cale's collaboration with Lou Reed in memory of Andy Warhol) came out, I began plumbing the depths of his back catalogue.
First DVD I bought (in 2004) was the bonus DVD that came with the deluxe edition of U2's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb CD. First VHS tape I bought (in 1989) was West Side Story. First laser disc I bought (they looked like CDs but were the size of LPs) was back in 1991: This is Video Clash (music videos by the Clash).
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My first CD was Redheaded Stranger by Willie Nelson.
I had that as an album years before and it was my favorite, but all my albums were stolen. So I had hopes to some day replace them all as CD's and that was the first to be replaced.
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One of the first 8-track tapes I had was Willie Nelson's Stardust. And the last concert I saw before going to prison in 1993 was Willie Nelson's at the Cuyahoga County Fair. But I'm sad to say I've never had Willie's Red Headed Stranger recording. I'm going to look for it the next time I'm at the library.
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Hey JC,
Like a number of commenters, I rushed over to the blog for the chance to talk about my first LP purchase, then realized your subject was CDs. The memory on the transition is foggy. When I first hooked up with my (ex)wife, she was into CDs and I switched over. But the first LP I bought myself was Nilsson Schmilsson.
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Good LP - I've always found it interesting that as good a songwriter as Nilsson was, his biggest songs ("Everybody's Talkin'" and "Without You," at least) were written by others. Kinda like Patti Smith and "Because the Night" (which was written by Springsteen). The first Nilsson I bought was Son of Schmilsson.
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He also admired and recorded a number of Randy Newman's songs. I think you can just mark it down to the fact that he was a terrific singer too.
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I think the 1st CD I ever bought was Steve Miller #5 / great music to do acid to. Now I'm listening to Levon Helm's Dirt Farmer. Go figure...
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Believe it or not, I've not heard either of those. I like old Steve Miller - but am only acquainted with his hits and a few old blues songs he did before he was big. And I like the Band a lot, but don't know any of Levon's solo work. Perhaps I should remedy that sometime....
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I remember the first CD we had in our house...one night my dad went out and bought a CD player (I think it was the same one you described!) and CSNY's "Deja vu". It think that was followed shortly by a Harry Chapin CD. "30,000 Pounds of Bananas" became my favorite song as a kid
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I love that CSNY disc - one of my favorites. "Almost Cut My Hair" from it was my MySpace profile song for a long time (until I finally cut my hair a year and a half ago). I like what I know of Harry Chapin's work, too, but am embarrassed to admit I am unacquainted with "30,000 Pounds of Bananas." Need to check that one out....
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Have a great Harry Chapin concert DVD Live in Germany (although he's dead now...).
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I'm not quite sure of the very first CD but it was probably either the GOGO's Greatest or eponymous by REM. Beauty and the Beat was the theme of my last two years of college and my lp was practically ruined from being played at so many parties. I guess by the early 90's, I already wanted that simpler time back.
eponymous was to replace my cassette of the same which had combined the six or seven other cassettes I already owned that the songs has come from. I had heard Driver 8 and Radio Free Europe in the mid-80's and REM has had me for life.
The first LP I was given was a Greatest Hits of the Beach Boys record (I don't quite remember why now...) but the first one I distinctly remember buying myself is Night at the Opera by Queen. Bohemian Rhapsody id one of my three all-time favorite songs! And this is one of my favorite albums.
It wouldn't have been my first if I ever could have found Moody Blues: Days of Future Passed. I actually found that in Montreal on a high school French Club trip and smuggled it home in my suitcase, sure I was doing something illegal!
Here's a question for you and any one else out there: Have you ever associated or also remembered a particular record or song or group based on what you were reading at the time you first heard them?
Your choice of the Cure made me think of this. The first time I bought a Cure cassette I was reading The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice and forever after Robert Smith and The Cure has been linked to that particular story.
I know we all link music to emotions, events, and people in our lives, but books? Am I just weird in this? Do others do it? I've had it happen with things I've written too.
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My tastes in books, music, art etc. are just too eclectic to even respond to this blog.
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No I don't think that's strange at all. Certain of my books are extra special because of my memories of them. I remember reading Black Beauty, Ann of Green Gables and Nancy Drew in my childhood bedroom. I still have those books and they bring back memories. I remember the books I read on vacation and they remid me of where I was when I read them. I think that when we want to leave ourselves little clues to revive a memory, we leave ourselves little clues, like the great book I was reading on vacaton. So I trained myself that when I see that book I think of a happpy time. But it's not just books, and it's not just happy times. The night my Uncle died, my Mom was making a hash and noodles casserole, an Irish Favorite. It was in the oven when she found out my uncle had died in a car accident. She never made that dish again.
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I had to think about this. I am one of those generation straddlers who remembers the first person in my neigbhorhood to get a computer, my dad's 8 tracks and how excited we were when cassetts came along. My first record album ever was the Bee Gees Greatest Hits. I still love that album. My first CD was Pink Floyd's The Wall. I wanted to start with the essentials. I remember that I used some of the money my parents gave me for school clothes to buy it.
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