So What Was Your First Record?
What was the first record you bought with your own money? I’m convinced that the distance in time between the purchase and now affects what you tell people. Memory plays tricks, but so does mood. How cool, naff, honest or sophisticated do you want to be? Are you trying to impress? Give people a laugh, or are you unbearably sincere, honest and down to earth about your bygone tastes?
Over the years I have told people that my first record was “Those Were the days” by Mary Hopkins (slightly sophisticated, after all Paul McCartney wrote it, but also naff because it was a winner on ‘Opportunity Knocks’). Sometimes I have said it was “Ernie, the Fastest Milkman in the West” by Benny Hill (good fun, but then slightly dodgy in these politically correct times). It could have been Peter Sarsted’s “Where Do You Go to My Lovely?” (bit more bedsit studenty that one, shows the awakening of an adult conscience). Then again it might have been “Sugar Sugar” by the Archies (shows a fondness for a good pop tune).
Actually it was none of the above in my case. I know for a fact it was “Get it On” by T. Rex. I can be sure of this because one friday I was in my local corner shop and I heard Margaret Johnson the shopkeeper’s daughter, talking to her mates in between blowing bubbles of chewing gum. She said “Have you heard T. Rex’s new record? It’s like really cool y’know”. It was the best sentence I’d ever heard spoken. I rushed out next day to buy that record from a shop in Pontefract indoor market. It cost 7/6d in old money. It was on the ‘Fly’ record label and the B side was “Life’s a Gas”. I never hear it on the radio now without thinking about Margaret Johnson blowing bubbly gum.
To read Ian’s latest article, “What a Wonderful World,” visit www.northernmusiconline.co.uk
