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I know we have a few music threads here, so I think this would be an interesting discussion for fellow music junkies on here. I was inspired because on Facebook the Record Store Day asked a question for their fans inquiring about the best album you ever bought. I found that a hard decision so I chose some of the first CDs I bought that really influenced my musical tastes and interests. So I thought it would be fun to hear some of your picks for albums that were your first, or most influential in your lives.

I guess I'll kick things off then.

The first CD I ever got was when I got a cheapish boombox as a birthday present from my grandma and grandpa. They also got me the soundtrack to the Disney film Tarzan (This was probably 1999 or 2000 when the movie was newish, and I was probably 7 or 8 years old, I reckon) and I remember even back then being like....gee thanks...ugh...this CD sucks (even as a kid I had knowledge enough to know that Phil Collins sucked!) I remember my parents always having an expansive music collection that I was too young to really understand (I remember when I was about 3 seeing a copy of Green Day's Dookie album and thinking the drawing on the cover was silly, and there is an old home video with Black Sabbath and the Ramones playing in the background!) but the first CD I remember ever paying money for was "Weird Al" Yankovic's Dare to be Stupid at a Kmart. My parents had the old vinyl that I was jamming to, but dammit I wanted it on CD! I got a few other "Weird Al" CDs and eventually my parents got all the other albums by him on CD that they didn't have yet. So "Weird Al" was one of my first musical interests as a lad. that started me really enjoying and loving music.

The most influential CD I probably bought was around the same time in 2005 I bought a bunch of albums online through Amazon and Tower Records website. I got an Import CD of two Devo LPs on one CD (Oh No! It's Devo and Freedom of Choice) the first four LPs by the Ramones and AC/DC's High Voltage album. This started a downward?/upward? spiral of discovering serious music on my own and I turned into a Hard Synth Metal Punk Rock geek going through discovering all of the old classics. When I make music for my own entertainment and fun it goes back to synth/punk sounds of Devo and The Ramones and the fun of AC/DC.

I bought a good many tapes and so forth when I was in elementary school, but like most people I didn't really get "into" music until junior high. Most music when I was a child was purchased for me (sometimes by request) and so I listened to that stuff or (more often) listened to the radio and to mixtapes that I made from recording stuff on the radio (an odd combination of Top 40 music and late 80s/early 90s Christian Rock).

So, that said, three answers here.

First one I bought was a cheap used CD single to make a "CD clock" in 7th grade shop class. I later took it off the clock and listened to it when getting a player. It was this:



Here's the kickass song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAujjvWCXc4

About a year later, in eighth grade, I had my first CD player. Before I had a CD of my own, though, I borrowed a CD from one of my parents' 30-something friends and played the shit out of it for a week or two regularly until I could purchase my own CD. I liked it enough that I "bought" it for a cheap rate of some yard work/babysitting or some such:



When I did purchase my own "first album" in a store with my own money it was this:



^oh, and all of this shit still holds up, in my opinion.

Quickly thereafter I joined BMG and/or Columbia House (I had many, many canceled and renewed subscriptions to them under variations of my name through all of HS and into college), got into "alternative music" and pretty much got immersed in the 90s rock cannon as well as all the classic rock stuff that those artists cited...and started amassing the giant CD collection that a few people on here have now seen.

The first LP I bought when I was young was the Superman soundtrack.
The first tape I bought was Led Zeppelin IV
The first CD I bought was the Nine Inch Nails single of Sin. I had Pretty Hate Machine and Broken on tape and I bought the single for Sin before I owned a CD player just so I could one day listen to it.

Hmmm.
I think I gave someone 5 bucks for the melee Orchastreated soundtrack....
I never really bought CDs but the first one I bought other than that was Homework by daft punk at a music specialty shop.

I was 6 and bought Saturday Night Fever by the Bee Gees and a Batman Book & Record set that I listened to waaay more than anything else at the time.

Have a listen

Wow. I would have never guessed that the person asking "what was your first album" would have had a CD as their first album.

My first cassette was the Ghostbusters soundtrack. I don't recall my first record. It would have either been The Cars, or a Duran Duran 45 (The Reflex).

Like JT, I bought my first CD before I had a CD player. I knew I was going to get one soon, so I started buying my music on CDs, even though I had no way to play them. My first CD purchased was Naughty By Nature. I believe I traded for a few CDs before that (2 Live Crew was one).

Nirvana's Nevermind on tape. Oddly enough I meant to buy Weird Al's Off the Deep End. I still enjoyed the hell out of it and it probably made me a better person haha.

If you look at the two covers you can see how a kid could have easily made this mistake

I remember the first CD I actually went into a store and bought on my own, without parental guidance, was Static-X's Wisconsin Death Trip back when I was in eighth grade (1999).

When I was in high school, I joined the Columbia House music club and built up a pretty impressive collection of music for myself, primarily 80s metal, as that was my taste at the time.

As for the most influential CD I ever bought, it was probably They Might Be Giants' Flood. That was the album responsible for causing my musical tastes to drift away from heavy metal and move towards weirder, more fun types of tunes. Nowadays it's very rare for me to be in the mood to listen to metal, but TMBG is something I'll always be in the mood to hear.

I remember buying and receiving loads and loads of vinyls from my mother and fathers record store when it was still open. I do remember the first record I bought was.

Bought it at Goodwill for $3 last year. Yep, I never paid for music in my life until last year, and haven't since. Youtube and the radio do me just fine for the most part.