hummingwolf | (no subject)

If people ask me what was the first album I ever acquired, I usually answer with The Carpenters' Ticket To Ride, which I won at a school fair in the fifth grade when the people running the cakewalk ran out of cakes and decided to give away records instead. While I did have other records to listen to when I was small, they were Disney read-along things and LPs specially made for kids, not music I still listen to today.

If I'm asked about the first album I ever bought, I say Nik Kershaw's Human Racing, which I simply had to get after my friend Jenny told me it was impossible to find. (Okay, the fact that I loved the six Nik Kershaw songs she'd forced me to hear had some influence as well.)

But by some quirk of the mind, a word in another person's LJ post triggered a memory of going with my parents to Amway conventions when I was a child (yes, really), which reminded me of going to this ranch the summer before seventh grade. The ranch was (and is) run by Skip Ross, who was an Amway Crown Direct (rich guy, in other words) and still is a motivational speaker. Now that I remember, he was also the first person I ever bought an album by, though I can no longer tell you which one of these it was. (Why do they have no CDs on that page? Cassettes? What century are they living in?) Yes, my first music album purchase was by a motivational speaker. Scary, isn't it?

For the record, the first record (non-album) I ever bought was the 7" single of Carole King singing "Pierre" and "Chicken Soup with Rice," with lyrics and cover art by Maurice Sendak.

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I lived when very young with a stepbrother and stepsister. They were both incredibly hip-- I remember seeing lps by strange bands such as "U2", "UB40", "The Police", and others back in grade school. Their collection was fostered by some older patron, or perhaps, several.

As for myself, I usually opted for my parents' Beatles and Beach Boys albums when I was little.

I grew up with some odd musical influences, I think. My father loved classical music and some folk music; my mother had the radio tuned in to either easy listening (of the instrumental/Mantovani Strings type) or country; one of my brothers listened to Christian Contemporary music till he moved out in the '70s; and the other brother listened to the Beatles, Frank Zappa, and more obscure stuff I have since forgotten. Oh, plus it was always a treat when someone took out the recording of Switched-On Bach and played it at high volume!

When I was little, I mostly did not interfere with my mother's listening habits, so I learned all about mutilated versions of pop standards. Later, I started getting into top 40. And then in about tenth grade, I made it my mission in life to get to know every single radio station from the Washington DC and Baltimore markets which we could get in at our home. And then I got my first shortwave radio and started listening to hit music from all over the world. Every time I got my allowance, I would buy another LP, CD, or collection of singles--and I'd make people (mostly Dad) take me to record conventions so I could find more obscure things.

Music is fun. :-)

That's awe inspiring! Thanks for sharing.