smoe.org mailing lists
ivan@stellysee.de
| From | bob_hutton@standardlife.com |
| Subject | Re: First Record purchased |
| Date | Wed, 25 Jun 2003 13:56:00 +0100 |
[Part 1 text/plain us-ascii (2.7 kilobytes)]
(View Text in a separate window)
I was in the unusual position of not having a record player or cassette
player in our home until I was well into my teens (say around 15, in 1976).
Then my dad (God bless 'im) decided we needed a "music centre". This was
like a primitive version of the combined HiFi unit, but with pretensions of
also being a piece of furniture, so what you got was a HUGE laminated
mahogany box, housing a record-player, a radio and a cassette deck. My
dad, being working class decided at first we'd have one of the cheaper
models, but on visiting the shop, he somehow managed to allow the
salesperson to convince him to buy the most expensive one in the shop: an
immense Hitachi top-of-the-range cocktail cabinet sized model which was
almost bigger than our sitting-room. It had twin VU meters with needles
that flicked into the red and a strobe effect on the side of the turntable
so you knew the deck was playing at the right speed.
Thus armed for sound, I went shopping. Like Dave Bash, I plumped for the
Beatles '62 - '66 cassette for starters (the '67 - '70 one came a few weeks
later), although unlike Dave I didn't have to wrestle with the cassette v.
stop-watch dilemma (you can always ask someone else what time it is).
First vinyl items were probably The Ramones "Rockaway Beach" and The
Rezillos "My Baby Does Good Sculptures" singles. I can clearly remember
that the flip side of The Rezillos single was called "Flying Saucer
Attack". It opened with an enormous descending bass line which panned
right across the stereo spectrum. My dad was furious every time I played
it because the left hand speaker of our music centre would rattle wildly.
He called out the Hitachi engineer who attempted to pass the buck by
telling me my Rezillos record was "inappropriate material" to play on such
a quality piece of Hi-Fidelity equipment. Luckily, even at my tender age I
was not quite as gullible as my dad and soon we had a new speaker which
worked perfectly.
The first albums I bought, all on the same day I think, were the Sex
Pistols debut, the Jam's "Modern World" and "Get Stoned", a 40-track Stones
compilation with really really weedy sound.
I don't know if any out there have read it, but there is a great book by
Giles Smith called "Lost In Music" which perfectly describes the lifestyle
of pop-obsessed music fans. There is a chapter in which he describes how
the question "What was the first record you bought?" invariably turns
people into revisionist historians, who always pick something cool (or at
least acceptable), conveniently forgetting the embarrassing truth of their
actual first purchase. Have any of the auditeers who have posted already
been guilty of this revisionism? Be honest now.
B^)
For assistance, please contact
the smoe.org administrators.