What was the first album you ever bought? I'm old enough, of course, that my first record was on vinyl. I'm certain it was a 7" 45-rpm single likely bought at Rutledge's Music Store, then in St. George's Square in Guelph, Ont. (Rutledge's -- or perhaps Routledge -- sold drums, guitars, pianos as well as sheet and recorded music. Today, if you know Guelph, there is a Canada Trust in that corner of St. George's Square) As this was very early in the 1970s, I'm sure my first vinyl was likely a pop hit of the day -- perhaps something like Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again Naturally" which, being all of eight or something, I thought was tremendously clever.
But the first album I ever acquired was purchased up the street from Rutledge's at Records On Wheels. R.O.W. was a regional chain that is no longer in Guelph, so far as I know, but when it was, it was the hippest record stores in the city. For most of its life, R.O.W. Guelph's home was on MacDonnell Street but when I was 11-years-old Records on Wheels was a second floor walk-up on Wyndham Street across the street from the Odeon Theatre.
Guys with long hair and vests -- they might have been bikers to my 11-year-old sensibility -- ran the place. Later, as a 19-year-old DJ spending a few hundred bucks a week at their store, those guys with long hair and vests became my friends.
Anyhow -- sometime around Christmas 1975, I walked up the stairs with a few dollars I'd earned delivering Toronto Stars, and walked out with Supertramp's Crime of the Century. I remember it was the Christmas season because I was supposed to be spending that money I'd earned on gifts for my family but I was just so nuts about the single off that record, "Bloody Well Right", that I had to have it. And so I did.
Now, more than 30 years and about 5,000 albums later, I still get a kick out of that record. It happened to be on the digital turntable tonight and YouTube had the video of Rick Davies and his friends performing it a few years after its initial release.