As many of you will never meet me in person, I thought I’d give you all a bit of insight into my personality by way of a journey through my musical history.  So I’ve taken a few minutes out of my day to treat you to some of my musical firsts, in what I think is chronological order.  For added hilarity, given that we’re covering a quarter-century of music here, I decided that it was worth checking out some of these retro music videos!

So with no further ado, here it is… (brace yourselves!):

The first vinyl record I ever (kinda) owned:

One (Sir) Paul McCartney, Rupert the Bear  And a bunch of Frogs!  It was a picture disc shaped like the frog chorus, gifted to me as a toddler by my parents.

The first single I ever bought (on cassette):

The Fresh Prince’s on screen baby cousin.  Purchased in Woolworths, before they went tits-up!

The first concert I was ever taken to:

The Mavericks.  This song was huge at the time.  I still vividly remember the concert at the Royal Albert Hall.  It was the day Manchester United beat Newcastle United in the FA Cup Final.  I wore a stetson and an awesome shoelace necklace with a silver stallion.  I still have the stallion somewhere!

The first CD singles I ever bought:

I bought two at the same time.  Back when Our Price Records were a high street name and everyone knew who the Appleton twins were!

The first albums I ever bought:

I bought Appetite for Destruction, Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II by Guns’n’Roses and Echoes, the Best of Pink Floyd all on the same day.  But as I can’t post videos for it all, I have made an executive decision to brighten your day with one of my favourite videos ever made, EVER!  It’s track 10 on Use Your Illusion I.  I think it deserves a bigger window! (Oh, and you might have heard it once or twice! ;-P )

The first gig I ever went to without parental supervision:

A momentus moment in any angsty teenager’s life.  Sadly, my best friends were lined up along the front row of the pit.  And I had seats right up at the far corner of the arena, and Billy-Joe Armstrong looked like little more than a colourful dancing toothpick.  There had been a tube strike that day, and Billy-Joe tried to make us all feel much better about the problems we’d had getting to Wembley by telling us he could make it better by asking us to repeatedly chant “One, Two, Three, Four”.  Then they played this record, and it actually did make us all rather happy! 🙂

My first iTunes download (when I eventually got bitten by the Apple bug):

I didn’t own an iPod until rather recently, and all my prior MP3 downloads had been *ahem*, well… yes…

Anyway, when I did eventually get round to downloading music through iTunes, I had recently been introduced to Cee Lo Green’s The Ladykiller album on a trans-atlantic flight.  That was my first purchased MP3 download.  And here’s my favourite song from the album, performed live on Later…with Jools Holland…

The last album I bought:

I’m not including charity shop purchases here, which are plentiful and normally happen a dozen at a time.  This was the last album I strolled into HMV, picked up a pair of headphones, fell in love with and decided I must own.  It’s the latest Gym Class Heroes album, The Papercut Chronicles II, and is well worth a listen when you get a chance.  A brave, eclectic fusion of punk, pop, rap and rock, this album contains some absolute corkers, including this 2011 international chart-topper featuring Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine:

And with that, I’d say we’re just about up to date.  I could go on like this forever, and I should probably stop somewhere, but I’d love to hear about some of your musical firsts, especially if they’re as embarrassing as a few of mine.  Leave a comment and share your stories with the world! x

**Footnote**

For fans of the book or film High Fidelity, you may recall the protagonist Rob Gordon arranging his albums autobiographically, and commenting that he finds it “reassuring”.  I finally know what he means! 🙂  Dan x