The first record I ever bought was a 7" single of
The House That Jack Built by
The Alan Price Set. That must have been about 1965. I remember I went into Palings Music in Queen Street, Brisbane with my Dad and paid the princely sum of 10 shillings for the record. I still have it.
My first LP record was The Beatles'
Magical Mystery Tour. Bought that in 1967, in post-decimal Australia for exactly $3.45. It was actually the first time I ever ventured into the city on my own. I was only 10 years old. I went to the city specifically to buy this record, from Newspaper House in (I think) Adelaide Street. (The Courier Mail had a special offer). My Mum drew me a map of where to go. Alas I no longer have this record. No idea where it went. I still buy second-hand vinyl occassionally. I have about 500 records in storage, but no functioning turntable these days...
The first CD i ever purchased was Stravinsky's "Le Sacre de Printemps". That was in 1988.
Was talking to a Canadian friend this morning and he mentioned 8-tracks. I have never even seen an 8-track. I don't think they were ever common in Australia.
I have bought very very few pre-recorded cassette tapes - they just never seemed like a good medium to me. I think the first I bought was probably "Sacred Songs" by Daryll Hall. It was cheap and I was intrugued by it as it has a different song order to the record, which I already had. I bought the cd recently too - it's a great album, one a trio of albums produced by Daryll Hall, Peter Gabriel and Robert Fripp - all of them guesting on each other's recordings. Fripp was at the height of his
frippertronics period and many songs got his etherial treatment (the other 2 albums in the trio were
Gabriel 1, and Fripp's
Exposure)
I messed around with mini-disks for a while there but never bought a pre-recorded one.
I clearly remember the first music i ever downloaded. I used the old napster to download a miraculous set of mp3's of Asad Ali Khan playing
Raga Darbari Kanada on Rudra vina. The Rudra vina is a dhrupad instrument, kind of like Indian baroque music (ie: older than classical) and recordings are hard to find. Asad Ali is an incomparable genius and his recordings are mind-blowing (and scarce as hens' teeth!). Anyway i was so stunned to find it on napster that i downloaded the whole thing (about 50meg via dial-up connection - took 2 days) and revelled in the windfall for years. I never saw it again online in any form. Guess I was lucky that day...
I lost the Asad Ali mp3's in "The Great Hard Disk Crash Of 2005" and wept bitterly that I had not backed them up somewhere. Returning to australia recently I was over the moon to discover a backup CD tucked away in a box containing the precious Rudra vina music... I HAD backed it up - I'd just forgotten!
I have never paid for an mp3 like from iTunes, but I do still buy physical media. I find the stuff that interests me is simply unavailable any other way. Where do i download Irish psychedelic outfit Dr Strangely Strange's "Heavy Petting"? Or aboriginal Tom E. Hall's latest album? I end up buying the cd....
