At what age did you start listening to music?

swears

preppy-kei
Even though I enjoyed the occasional song on the radio or TV, I don't think I actually sat down and listened to an album until I was about 11, when a friend made me a tape copy of Nirvana's Nevermind. Most people I've spoken seem to say 11-12 was around the time they "got into" music as, opposed to passively hearing it now and again.

Anyone sooner than that? Or later? One friend of mine didn't buy a CD until he was 19.
 

bun-u

Trumpet Police
Good q. Apparently I was mega-obsessed with a portable toy radio given to me when I was two - I wouldn't let go of it. Though I really didn't get into my own personal music until I was 14.
 

Poisonous Dart

Lone Swordsman
Really?

I was 3 (1978) when I used to sneak off and start listening to my mother's 45's and 8 track cassettes (Jackson 5, The Trammps, Brothers Johnson, Sly & The Family Stone, Isley Brothers, Isley/Jasper/Isley, Rick James & The Stone City Band, Jimi Hendrix, etc.). When I was 4 my cousins upstairs were DJ's and they taught me how to use the record player...I could already read so I would go through all of the records with weird covers (Parliament/Funkadelic, Santana's Abraxis, Ohio Players' LP's, etc.) and play them and then go downstairs and play my mothers old dusty 45's and ask permission to play her Jazz records (my older brother would make sure I didn't mess 'em up...I respected records at an early age...Plus it was the 70's and Ma would've whupped my ass). By the time I was 7, I was a damn R&B/Soul/Jazz and breaks master and I was recording Hip Hop off the radio. One.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
I was 3 (1978) when I used to sneak off and start listening to my mother's 45's and 8 track cassettes (Jackson 5, The Trammps, Brothers Johnson, Sly & The Family Stone, Isley Brothers, Isley/Jasper/Isley, Rick James & The Stone City Band, Jimi Hendrix, etc.).

Damn you had cool parents:cool:

I was obsessed with TV pop from an early age (about 5-6) and loved listening to chart countdowns but didn't really start buying till i was about 11-12.
 

smn

Well-known member
The first record I bought (and it was actually a record) was some old Walt Disney soundtrack compilation. I remember being told by the lady over the counter 'what a lucky boy' I was so I guess I was pretty young, 7 or 8 or so :D I remember playing it to some other kids on the estate I grew up on but they weren't too interested and shared none of my enthusiasm, which I remember finding quite disappointing.

The key moment though was when I was 11 and hit the school disco for the first time. The jock played New Order's Blue Monday and that was it... hooked and bye-bye pocket money!!!

God I can't wait to have kids :D
 

martin

----
Since forever. All you could hear round our place very early on was Irish folk, C&W, punk, new wave, new romantic, Donna Summer, til my older brother and sisters left. My first band was Adam and the Ants, they just blew me away, I used to be punished in infant school because I couldn't stop singing their songs. I just thought they were the most exciting thing in the world, and I wanted to run away from home and join some sort of wandering gypsy-pirate ensemble, robbing palaces and rolling around in haystacks with catwomen. But I also liked Chas n Dave, Madness, Soft Cell and whatever embarrassingly shit chart act it was who did that single with the bloke in the cowboy hat and the woman writhing around in the cage (I can't even remember how it goes).
This was mostly when I was 6 or 7. Then it was mostly radio or my dad's Irish records or my sister taping me Pogues records. Pretty sure first tape I ever bought was 'Electric' by The Cult after I saw them on that Muriel Grey show on TV, which would've made me 11. I still love that album, it's so over the top.
 
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gumdrops

Well-known member
dont know what age i started, probably really young. my parents used to listen to a weird mix of things like, er richard clayderman, the beatles, bob marley and various indian music (gazals, classical and film stuff). but my cousin used to listen to loads of pop like wham and lots of american R&B like and electronic stuff like jean michel jarre (i can play oxygene on the keyboard lol) and jan hammer. i started buying records properly (mainly singles, although i did like various artists comps a lot) when i was about 9-10 although as i couldnt afford that much i would tape a lot off radio.
 

borderpolice

Well-known member
Pretty sure first tape I ever bought was 'Electric' by The Cult

Great record, one of the first i ever got. I started listening to music for real at about 15. I didn't have much money as a teenager, so mixtapes were my prime source of music then. I had no serious interest before, although there was always music of some kind playing in my family's home (usually classical). I always sang as a child when i was on my own.
 

tom pr

Well-known member
I used to get up early, go downstairs and play my dad's Sex Pistols vinyls (bizarrely, it wasn't Never Mind the Bollocks but the more obscure Some Product and Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle when I was seven or eight. He used to play me The Jam, XTC, Elvis Costello and The Stranglers, which led to me buying my first ever single... 'Cecilia', by Suggs. He must have been gutted.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Even though I enjoyed the occasional song on the radio or TV, I don't think I actually sat down and listened to an album until I was about 11, when a friend made me a tape copy of Nirvana's Nevermind.

Haha, snap! Except I was 13, I think. I remember being in Year 9.
It was also the first CD I bought. God, I used to love that band.
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
some of the first music i remember =

chuck mangione, "baker street"
supertramp, "breakfast in america"
stuff by paul mccartney's wings
donna summer, "bad girls" and "hot stuff"

(plus tapes of the church choir that my father sang in)

first album that i purchased was styxx, "paradise theater"

went into a heavy metal phase around ages 11-12, def leppard, ozzy osbourne, but also new wave music on mtv

heavily into the beatles and stones at ages 13-14 (85/86)

the cure, the smiths, early U2, fine young cannibals circa 15-16 (87/88)

guns'n'roses at 17, plus depeche mode

then house music at 18 . . . .
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
I used to sing Donny Osmond's 'Puppy Love' to my mum when I was two, first record I bought ( cos they didn't have the Doctor Who theme tune on 7 inch, I started crying and so got 'Keep On Wombling' by The Wombles instead, I got my sister to front the extra cash. That woulda been 1975. You couldn't keep me off our Dansette.

First tape was 'Kings Of the Wild Frontier' when I got a portable tape player.

First Cd was ' The Rich Man's 8 track' by Big Black lol.

I do know people who've never been in to a record shop in their lives, but they generally ride horses and fuck teenagers instead.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
When I was about 16 I entered a serious Zeppelin phase which I've never really emerged from. Got the fourth album on my mp3 player at the moment (STAIRWAY!!!). :)

Then got majorly into Devin Townsend (Canadian singer/musician/producer, sort of alternative metal for want of a better word) about nine years ago. He's not for everyone, but people who like his music tend to REALLY like it.
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
I hated music up to the age of 15. Refused to listen to any of it, argued vociferously against its ability to communicate anything...
 

adruu

This Is It
I'm glad I don't really remember this album much, but it was probably the first album my parents had bought for me. I was probably 5 or 6. I just looked at the Wikipedia for it, and I guess it had something to do with "The Fruits of the Holy Spirit" (ha!, that was hard to type)

Musicmachine1.jpg
 

mos dan

fact music
I remember being a big fan of my dad's John D Loudermilk records when I was still in single digits... and then I started having my 'own taste':

first single bought: Queen - 'Breakthru' (aged 10) (second one Paula Abdul - 'Straight Up' !!)
first album bought: GnR - 'Appetite for Destruction' (aged 11)
first gig: Radiohead touring the Bends in March 1995 (aged 13)

I still enjoy lording the last one over my indie-fan mates to this day.

I think for me Nevermind was definitely the most formative record in my early music-listening life as well. True for so many mid-20-somethings I think...
 

dHarry

Well-known member
Hearing the Bay City Rollers' Bye Bye Baby on my cousins orange and white (k-tel?) portable record player when I was about 3 or 4 really opened my ears/brain to the thrill of pop; those Beatles-lite harmonies (as I called them at the time ;-) and soaring chorus really were a new concept for me compared to the Walt Disney records we'd play at home.

After that I'd listen to the "Top 20" charts every Sunday with my older sister and read her Smash Hits - the first swear word I read was I think an interview with Jimmy Pursey (Sham 69)!

And my father brought home a new "3-in-1" hi-fi with those two Beatles blue/red compilations and Status Quo's 12 Gold Bars.

My first 7" single was Queen's Don't Stop me Now, followed by The Police Can't Stand Losing You (picture sleeve! - guy on a block of ice with a noose around neck on front cover / ice melted, hanged dead on back!), followed by Status Quo's Living On An Island.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
My sister was thrown out of the house because I used to go around singing Tom Robinson's 'Glad To be Gay' at the top of my voice when I was seven lol.
 
I bought my first records when I was about 5 or 6, got more serious when I was 10 and "tour de france" by kraftwerk was in the charts, "rock it" by herbie hancock, bought my first 12" aged 10 in 1983 - Pointer Sisters "automatic followed next year by Cameo "Word Up" , Chaka Khan "I Feel For You", then Paul Hardcastle "19". I went to WHsmiths every Monday for weeks before the release of Axel F by Harold Faltermeyer, and bought it on the day of release!
I liked the thing of really really wanting a record and having to save up for it and then getting it. I still have all my old records, my 7" of tour de france it totally battered, I used to just listen to it over and over again. also still got my cassette of "the man machine" with my name in where i took it to school!
Of course i bought lots of uncool shit when I was a kid too but i'm not gonna admit to what it all was....:cool:
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
I bought my first records when I was about 5 or 6, got more serious when I was 10 and "tour de france" by kraftwerk was in the charts, "rock it" by herbie hancock, bought my first 12" aged 10 in 1983 - Pointer Sisters "automatic followed next year by Cameo "Word Up" , Chaka Khan "I Feel For You", then Paul Hardcastle "19". I went to WHsmiths every Monday for weeks before the release of Axel F by Harold Faltermeyer, and bought it on the day of release!
I liked the thing of really really wanting a record and having to save up for it and then getting it. I still have all my old records, my 7" of tour de france it totally battered, I used to just listen to it over and over again. also still got my cassette of "the man machine" with my name in where i took it to school!
Of course i bought lots of uncool shit when I was a kid too but i'm not gonna admit to what it all was....:cool:

sounds like Kajagoogoo you're not admitting to then.
 
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