If you’re here, chances are you love music more than most people. But when did that love affair begin? That’s the question the Popdose staff asked itself not long ago, and the answers range from Air Supply to Iron Maiden. Walk down memory lane with us — and tell us what your first album was in the comments! For some reason, my first record-shopping experiences are the ones I remember best. Maybe that’s because of the huge variety of places you could pick up a record when I was a tween during the mid-’70s, even in a one-horse town like the one where I grew up. Even the department stores (both five-and-dime and upscale) had selections of at least the top 50 singles of the week. I remember buying “Rhinestone Cowboy” at a Sears store, only to trade it away a few months later in a fit of moralist pique because Glen Campbell had stolen Mac Davis’ wife. Hey, I was a 10-year-old in southwestern Virginia – what do you want from me? At Christmastime in 1971, when I turned six, my brother and I had jointly received one single and two albums from our parents – a double-sided re-release of the Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “For All We Know,” plus the Jackson 5’s Greatest Hits and the Partridge Family’s Up to Date . Those albums remain among my favorites to this day, but by spring 1975 I finally decided it was time to use my allowance to expand the collection (instead of buying one more Captain America comic book). So one Saturday my friend Stuart and I walked to the local mall and the National Record Mart, and for the first time I plunked down 79 cents of my own cash … for Elton John’s “Philadelphia Freedom.” (Stuart came home with an “oldies” 45 of the year-old “Band on the Run,” with “Helen Wheels” on the flip.) After playing the A-side a few times, I turned Elton’s single over – and heard a live version of “I Saw Her Standing There” by some guy I’d never heard of

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Popdose Remembers: Our First Records

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