My walk home from college this evening was embellished (as always) by the random playlist on my phone's built in MP3 player. Its 4GB card holds over 1000 tracks, yet it has an uncanny knack of repeating certain favourites more often than others in its supposedly shuffled state. Maybe it's not really that random. Maybe they're only favourites because they come along more regularly and I've grown to love them more than the less frequently heard tracks.
Anyway, a certain hit single from the 1980s came on, and it started me wondering about how you define the first "record" you bought. Since my first vinyl purchases (on 45 and on 33) in the mid 80's, I've kept a mental bookmark of "my first record was...". The kind of fact that you carry round in your head -along with your birthdate and name of first pet - that is unique information that never changes. And comes in handy for all those Facebook quizzes.
However... tonights walk made me wonder - how do we approach different music formats? A quick discussion with Bidie In (my personal fount of all knowledge including "How To Use The Little Known Features of Microsoft Word", "Spelling and Grammar For All Occasions" and "What Shoes Go With This Frock?") informs me that, strictly speaking, your first music purchase was the first music release you consciously went out and endeavoured to purchase - of your own free will and decision.
It is, in his words, the "defining moment of self-determination in terms of your musical taste".
And as long as the purchase was a pre-recorded release (ie not a home recorded tape or mix made by someone), the format isn't important - what is important is the moment when you decide to invest that (huge) portion of your pocket money (for it usually is a purchase at that pre-earning time in ones life, is it not?) in the item of music media that you have decided is "IT" for you.
So this has caused me a little bit of personal confusion, trauma even, yet pleasure this evening. For after all these years of stating, categorically, what my First Album was ... I'm now realising that it was something different all along, and (in my current musical opinion), in a good way.
But now I'm also thinking, surely if format is an important factor (and it must be - look at all the people who still profess unending love for vinyl over CDs), then maybe we should think about all our firsts on an equal footing?
So here's a wee run down of all my various first purchases and their formats.
1983: "Duran Duran" & "Rio" by Duran DuranPre-recorded cassette (remember them?)
I wanted to buy these first two Duran albums, because (surprise surprise) they were very big at the time (No 1 with Is there Something I should Know?) and I was embarking on a "Who IS Going to Get To Marry Simon Le Bon?" contest with my best-schoolfriend-worst-enemy. They were reduced to clear in Boots the Chemist, probably because they were both "old" albums by then. Even once the "phase" was over (and I was professing love for Steve "Sax Player" Norman from Spandau Ballet) I still really liked both albums, particularly the first album, as I could (even then) tell it was less commercial than Rio. Go Me and my Discerning 12 Year Old's Musical Taste.
1985: "Darkness On The Edge of Town" by Bruce SpringsteenLP
Sigh. I bought this because I had a shortlived but intense teenage crush on an Italian boy a year or two older, who in our very limited and brief conversation had told me he liked Springsteen. He probably didn't mean anything particularly musically deep (this was the Born in the USA era) but I decided that I had to make a display of "Look I like the same things!". Thankfully for me, I at least opted for something obscure to start with. And then bought "Born to Run" which is, quite rightly, a genuine classic, and which I'm glad to say I could tell even then was head and shoulders over the Boss's then current output...
But why vinyl?
Because I decided "it was about time". It forced my mum to get our record player (a lovely 1960's Bush with all 4 speeds) repaired, which was really another definitive moment in my musical growing up.... as it set me on the road to building my record collection.
1985: "Change" by Sparks7 inch Single
I am so proud of my 13 year old self in deciding that this was going to be my first single purchase. Although.... I do remember buying "Walk of Life" by Dire Straits around the same time so for the sake of my own cool I do hope my memory is not playing tricks on me. [A bit of Googling tells me Change was released June 1985, Walk of Life not till 1986, so that's lucky!]
I heard Change played on Peter Powell's show on Radio 1 one Saturday morning, and decided It Was About Time I started buying singles. The other song I liked on the show was called "Five Minutes" by a band called MainFrame, but they didn't have it in the Virgin Megastore, so I opted instead for Sparks.
I should point out that I'd never heard of either band before- it was entirely a decision based on what I'd heard on the radio, bought for the sake of it. When I showed the single to my Mum, she had heard of Sparks and remarked she thought one of them was a "bit creepy" and that they'd been on Top of the Pops years and years ago.
They're still one of my favourite bands, ever.
1990: "Greatest Hits ... & More!" by DonovanCD
In the summer of 1990, I purchased my First Proper Stereo With CD Player. What is actually much cooler is that I actually bought it over the
internet.
In 1990? you ask?
Why yes. Towards the end of my first year at uni, my various geek friends on various Computer Science or IE (Information Engineering) courses were all urging me to acquire something known as a "Vax" account. This, I was assured, would change my life as it would give me an "Electronic mail address" which was Really Cool. Well, yes, they were right, of course. I'm just sorry I didn't get it sorted four months earlier, before the end of the 1980s. That would have been Even Cooler.
Anyway, my computer account gave me access not only to the university's internal messageboards (imaginatively called "Notes") which hosted the same varieties of bores and trolls you find all over the internet today, but also to the wonderful world of Multi User Gaming. Which I enjoyed more for the social networking (yes, even waaaay back in 1990, we were talking pish online under assumed pseudonyms).
So cut to the chase - bloke I knew from MUD (Multi User Dungeons) was selling a stereo for affordable money and I jumped at the chance.
It was AMAZING. Speakers! Wires! Vinyl! Tapes! Twin Tapes! Radio! Remote control! AND CD! Of course, never having had the capability, I didn't actually own any CDs. So after setting it all up, trying out all the buttons and dials, I headed out to Echo (RIP) in Byres Road and picked up the First Reasonably Cheap CD That Appealed To Me.
Which, given that this was at the height of my long-haired, patchouli-scented, incense-burning, any-music-post-1975-is-crap era, just had to be Donovan. The CD became a firm favourite in my various student flats, and I even got the CD cover signed when we saw Donovan at the Pavilion at Mayfest 1991.
The final format is of course MP3, but somewhat ironically, I have retained no memory of my first download. Maybe that says something about the importance of having a piece of physical media, something to hold in your hand in the shop and then clutch in the bag to take home and play (to death) as quickly as possible.... or maybe it's just that kind of attachment is less important to me as I get (shudder) older.
