New thoughts on old records

I saw on Facebook the other day a thread on a friend's page which asked, what was your first record? I began to offer a response there then thought, why waste such profundities on a mere internet post? I'll blog about it.

If you care to define ownership as simple possession of a record I'll lay claim to a lesser know Carl Perkins number, Dixie Fried. It was I'm sure originally owned by me Pops. I still sing it often when on the road, perhaps because it binds me to those childhood days. It was an old 78 on the Sun label, the label which launched many rock and country careers. Elvis, Perkins himself, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash all started out at Sun Records. The flip side was I'm Sorry I'm not Sorry, not a bad little ditty itself. That one had great piano riffs.

The first single I actually bought myself was either Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels' Too Many Fish in the Sea/Three Little Fishes medley, or the Beatles' Nowhere Man. Why either? I don't really know anymore. Likely as not I was enamored of 'Detroit' being on any such thing as a record, and to Nowhere Man I have to imagine that I had some idea that the Beatles were somehow important and that I should listen to them. I never bought anything else of Mitch Ryder's (although I still like that particular recording a lot) but I became quite enamored of the Beatles. They are definitely my favorite group ever.

The first whole album I bought was Paul McCartney's Band on the Run. Talk about an album that starts and finishes strong: Band on the Run, the full version, opens it, and in closing we have Nineteen Hundred Eighty Five, my personal favorite non-hit track on any album which I've heard all the way through. It builds fantastically and ends marvelously abruptly in the style of A Day in the Life. The fact that the actual 1985 was twelve years away when I bought the record ( 1985 is 33 years in my rear view now!) may have influenced my taste. Still, I'll argue it's a great closing track.

Other than the Perkins' one, which truly regret not having, I still have them all somewhere. Band on the Run is on a shelf behind me, while Mitch and the Nowhere Man are in a box in a third floor closet, having not seen the light of day since 1981. None of them were bad first picks in my mind.