The Music Express – ME NEWS Bi-Monthly would like to reach out to you, the reader. Starting with this issue, we will pose a simple question to you about your music tastes (with a few celebrity answers), and for the second ME NEWS of the month, we will print a select number of your responses.
The first question is…
What was the first single/album you purchased with your own pocket money?
Please feel free to respond by sending your answer to this corrected email address here info@themusicexpress.ca, and feel free to expand on your answer. Check some of the initial responses below.
Awesome question….are you ready??
Andy Curran: Coney Hatch
Yummy Yummy Yummy by the Ohio Express
I went to the local TOWERS dept store in Mississauga. They had a record/music area and posted the weekly CHUM charts, and had a shelving system with the numbers 1 through 20; if I recall, you would look at the song on the CHUM chart and go to the shelf with the number and grab the 45 RPM vinyl of your choice etc. That was my choice my sisters loved Bubblegum music…and so did I!
Crosby Stills & Nash début album…. (no Young yet…)
Jean-Marc Pisapia: The Box
Just after having seen the movie Woodstock in 1970.
A song off of Rubber Soul. It was definitely a Beatles title.
Nick Gilder: Sweeney Todd.
When I was a young girl, the radio station at the college where my dad worked decided to switch to 8-track, giving away their entire vinyl library. My dad said, “My daughter LOVES music,” loaded up his car and brought about 50 LPs home. Amongst them, was GoodBye Yellow Brick Road. It was the first double LP I’d ever seen. I was absolutely enamoured by David Larkham’s artwork on the cover and all throughout the gatefold. The problem was, the cover was quite beat up and a couple of the tracks skipped pretty bad, so…eventually, I cobbled together enough allowance money to buy a brand new copy. I just had to have it. I spent hours laying in the middle of our rec room floor with these old Koss headphones on listening to that album over and over again. It was a totally immersive experience. That album made me convince my parents to buy me an old Heintzman upright so I could learn to play piano and start writing songs.
Lee Aaron
I remember it like it was yesterday. It was late summer 1967, and my mom drove me down to Sam The Record Man at Yonge and Dundas so I could buy a couple of singles. I picked up Light My Fire by The Doors and The Letter by The Box Tops. I believe they were 66 cents each and I still have them in my record collection. It’s funny how early music preferences tend to stay with you. I became a huge Doors fan and bought all of their albums, and I followed Box Tops lead singer Alex Chilton throughout his career from the Box Tops to Big Star to his solo records, and back to the Box Tops when I finally saw the original band members play a reunion show in 2000.
Roman Mitz – Music Express
We had just immigrated to Sault Ste. Marie from Manchester England in 1967. My dad bought a record player and said he was buying an album and I could select one of my own. He bought one of those horrendous K-Tel Country Music records (God knows why???) but I selected The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour because I had to have a Beatles’ album and that was their latest at the time. I wasn’t happy with just one record so out of my own pocket I bought three 45’s; “I Can See For Miles” by The Who, “Pictures Of Matchstick Men” by Status Quo and for my Mom, I bought “To Sir With Love” by Lulu.
Keith Sharp – Music Express
Slade Live LP
Alan Frew: Glass Tiger
The first 2 singles I purchased simultaneously, (w/$ I made teaching classical guitar) were Percy Sledge’s “When a man loves a woman,” and B.J. Thomas’s remake of the Hank Williams classic, “I’m so lonely I could cry.” But I thought B.J. was singing “I took a ride,” and not “I could cry.” I did a show with the late great B.J. Thomas in Tokyo in 1989 (great guy) and told him my mishearing the words story. #3rd single I purchased was Neil Diamond’s “Solitary Man.” I heard this song on my transistor radio during my grade 6 recess and it left me breathless and devastated
DAN HILL
Remember it as if it was yesterday
Ed Sousa: Classic Bowl Mississauga
First single – Kiss You All Over by Exile
First album – Hemispheres by Rush
The first record I purchased was Queen’s Bohemian Rapsody single from the local Stedmans in Newcastle, Ontario
Chris Tait: Chalk Circle
The B -side was Bicycle!
“My first album was The Beatles: Revolver. In fact, I won it in a local music competition at the Simpson’s Department Store in Scarborough. 1st Prize was any one album, of your choice, currently in stock. I was a very happy eleven-year-old on that day!
Lawrence Gowan: Styx
The first album I actually took money from my pocket for was: Jimi Hendrix: Are You Experienced. $2.99 at Sam The Record Man. At those prices, who needs to shoplift?!”
So, there you go, everyone! Music Express – ME News would like to hear the stories behind your first album/single selections. Please email your responses to info@musicexpress.ca.
