The DVD version of Queen live at Wembley Stadium in 1986 was one of the first “albums” I owned myself that wasn’t pirated. That DVD made me truly understand the hype around Queen (I was just a 12 y/o kid back then).
4 Likes
I think my very first album was a K-Tel greatest hits kind of thing. My first rock album was bought at the age of 13 (1973) and was Machine Head by Deep Purple. Needless to say, I played that thing to death. 
4 Likes
The first album I went to purchase with my own money was Wu-Tang Clan’s Wu-Tang Forever. A landmark and transformative album for my 8th grade ears when it came out. Like @MRHifiReviews, when the sales clerk saw it had a Parental Advisory sticker on it, he refused to sell it to me without a parent present so I had to get my Dad to come and approve it. I’ll never get forget the 
face my Dad had at the register. Trying to explain to my Dad that Wu Tang was truly for the children was one of the more significant challenges of my young life up until that point.
I took that CD home and listened to it over and over. “Triumph” is truly a song for the ages. I put the CD in my computer and perused the “Enhanced CD” content (remember those?), walking through the virtual Wu Mansion etc.
Good times.
3 Likes
1962 Green Onions Booker T. & The M.G.'s & Surfin Safari – The Beach Boys. Guess that indicates my age or close to it. Mowed a lot of yards to buy those.
5 Likes
Clearly he knew that the Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nuthing ta f’ wit? 
I remember a friend from the UK visiting me in the US; we used to share music with each other and he bought me a copy of Kanye West’s College Dropout. Only when we got home and put it on did we realize it was the PG version - we’d never come across versions of CDs with the naughty words removed.
And your impeccable taste from an early age! The same applies for you, @pow-low. (Wish I could say the same for myself).
4 Likes
“Now you go to Germany, you’ve got your bach
Your Beethoven, your Brahms
Here in America you’ve got your Fred McDowell
Your Irving Berlin, your Glenn Miller and your Booker T & The M.G.'s”
Elwood Blues
https://genius.com/Booker-t-and-the-mgs-green-onions-single-version-lyrics
2 Likes
Ha! The salesman did not want to let me try my Wu Tang style.
And I don’t think there’s a bigger buzzkill in hip hop music than getting all pumped to listen to a release you’ve been hyped about only to find out you accidentally got the clean version. I struggle to think of any examples where the clean version of a rap song outdoes the OG dirty version.
2 Likes
@pennstac please tell me that is a Led Zeppelin II first pressing mastered by Bob Ludwig (RL/SS)? It took me a while to find a playable copy and boy what a difference it makes!
1 Like
I suspect it is. Whole Lotta Love was climbing the top 40 chart when I bought it.
1 Like
How high did it climb? Mere inches? Every inch up the chart?
2 Likes
Look for “RL SS” in the deadwax.
Led-Zeppelin-II first pressing
The story behind it is rather funny:
The textbook example of good mastering gone bad is the 1969 Atlantic Records release of Led Zeppelin II . The first pressing, mastered by a young Bob Ludwig, beats every other pressing and reissue by a wide margin. This record is easily identified by scanning the matrix, a product code located in the run-out area next to the label. There, etched in the dead wax are the letters “RL/SS,” shorthand for Robert Ludwig/Sterling Sound. Known among dealers as the “hot mix,” it has such energy and dynamic range that when it was released it caused the needles on cheap record players to literally jump out of the grooves. This happened when Ahmet Ertegun, the president of Atlantic Records, brought a copy home to his daughter. Judging the record defective, he immediately ordered a new pressing with the signal dialed down and compressed. Ludwig would later lament that this version “sounded puny and aghh!”
4 Likes
When I was still a young man living at home, I awoke one Saturday morning to the sounds of canon fire. My father’s den was below my bedroom and that was where his stereo was. It was very early days of CDs and he was listening to a new release of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture that featured actual canon fire as part of the performance. The story is that this could not be released on vinyl as the canon fire would cause the needle to skip. Reportedly it was also a very expensive recording to make because the canons blew out many of the windows of nearby buildings.
Tchaikovsky, the OG of metal 
5 Likes
If I remember correctly I had been purchasing 45s up to the point I bought my first album. It was Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall.. I remember first listening to it at a friend’s house and he went on and on about how I had to have it. I absolutely loved that album. I still remember the day I banged into my book shelf and a little ceramic duck my mother had made fell onto the turntable and cracked the record. I begged my mother to lend me money to buy a replacement copy. She was nice enough to take me and get a new one. I still have both copies.
8 Likes
Am a Jamaican, so as youth growing up bob Marley music was embedded in my DNA lol. so first album was the king of reggae bob Marley. Irie
7 Likes
Loving all these first records! You guys rock
4 Likes
We’ll have to start a Calypso, Ska, RockSteady, and Reggae thread discussion. Love Jamaican music. Marley rules.
Or at least a World Music discussion. I’m an Alpha Blondy fan.
5 Likes
Jackie Mittoo is a favorite - The Keyboard King at Studio One was my introduction to his music. Soul Jazz Records is great for re-releasing these gems.
And here’s one of the finest covers ever:
3 Likes
Ernest Ranglin, Below the Bassline. Excellent fusion of jazz and reggae.
2 Likes
OK, I made the World Music topic. Now please @TylersEclectic move these wonderful off topic posts there fast.
3 Likes
The first album I ever bought was a tape of The Specials by The Specials, in 1979.
I’d just bought a “radio cassette player” (I don’t think the term “boombox” had been invented yet, or at least hadn’t crossed the Atlantic yet) and didn’t have anything to play on it other than a copy I’d made of my Dad’s Red album by the Beatles. The Blue album was a bit too revolutionary for my Dad, so that was all I knew about the Beatles for many years, until I went to college, and discovered that the Beatles had recorded actual albums. I’d keep pestering my musically savvy college friends with “I liked Beatles album X, is Y any good” until they pointed out that I should stop annoying them and buy them all.
My first vinyl was Kings of the Wild Frontier, by Adam and the Ants, in 1980.
And for the life of me, I can’t remember why I bought the vinyl, because I didn’t have a record player. 
So I had to make a tape of it on my Dad’s “hi fi”. I can only guess that whatever store I was in (probably Woolworths!) didn’t have the tape, so I bought the record.
My first CD purchase was Hysteria by Def Leppard, in 1987.
I was so excited about that album coming out, and I wanted the best sound, but didn’t have a CD player, so the week before it’s release, I rummaged through my pile of old “What Hi Fi” magazines (which was the equivalent of internet research in the 80s) and bought whatever their top budget CD player recommendation was.
My tastes have broadened a lot since those 3 purchases, but I still listen to all of them.
10 Likes