Wasn't sure if this belonged in GD or since I'm not talking about a specific act or song, so mods please move if this is in the wrong forum.

Anyways, what is some of your earliest memories involving music? What was the first song you fell in love with? Your first concert? Things like that.

I'm a youngin by the way, I'll be 21 next week.

Here's mine:

It was the summer of 1996, I was four years old. My family had taken a rode trip to Atlanta, GA to see the '96 summer olympic games. Keith Sweat's "Nobody" had just come out and they played that song EVERY 10 MINUTES I swear! Every time it would come on me and my cousins would sing our little hearts out! "And who can love you like meeeee!! Nobody baaabaayy!!" Those were some good times, I tell yah.

Nowadays, I can't stand that song. I heard it way too much growing up lol.

What's your's?

James Brown: Night Train................loved that song back then and still do.

My teething ring was a james brown 45. (I'm serious)

My first musical memories would be the early 1970s hearing songs either on the radio or on 8 Tracks that my mother would be playing from folks like Percy Sledge, Al Green, Tammy Wynette, Tanya Tucker, etc. She was into a little R&B and also a lot of country back in the early 1970s and the stuff she would play in the car on the way to kindergarten would be extremely sad sounding stuff. We were already crying our eyes out in the car every morning because we didn't want to go to kindergarten in the first place and the sad songs made us bawl even more.

My first musical memories of when I got into music myself was the late 1970s. One Christmas, I got a Snoopy AM radio and disco was all the rage and I instantly fell in love with it. Shortly after that, I got a Snoopy record player, the kind that looks like a little suitcase when it's closed. Then I started wanting records. I can't remember what my first album was but it was either the "Grease" or "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack. Then I started getting 45s. Hot Number" by Foxy and "Shake Your Groove Thing" by Peaches and Herb are the first two I remember buying. Then, I got Donna Summer's "Live and More" album and a little while later Donna Summer's "Bad Girls" album. My first four albums were all double albums so I was a little disappointed when I got my first single album which was Fatback's "Hot Box", not because of the content, but because I was used to double albums and I didn't think it was long enough.

I got a tape recorder one Christmas and I used to place the microphone up next to the Snoopy radio onto tapes. Then I loved the way they used to segue the songs at the skating rink so I used to get my Snoopy record player and my sister's Raggedy Ann record player and put the microphone up to them and try to mix. All very primitive and cheap ways of mixing but I was into it even back then. Shortly after that, I got my first stereo. It was a Grand Prix brand combo with AM/FM radio, 8 Track player, and record player on top. Then I used to put the tape recorder microphone up next to the stereo speakers with the volume up loud enough for the tape to get a good recording and tell everyone in the house to "Shhhhhhh....I'm recording". I used to have many recordings with my grandmother in the background hollering "Turn that shit either down or off!".

This is the first record I heard when I was a kid. By the way, The Pointer Sisters will also be celebrating 40 years in music this year.

Michael Jackson/Jackson 5/Jacksons. A little bit of James BRown and Bobby Brown, but mostly the Jacksons. I'd say about 90% of my earliest music memories are Jackson related.

"Backstabbers" by the O'Jays is the first song that I remember hearing as a kid....back in 1972.

Watching Mariah Carey's video for Honey and being obsessed with her voice -- still am. I was six or seven years old. I also remember being fascinated by Madonna's Ray of Light video and I remember being shocked when I learnt that she was almost forty.

Alej said:

Watching Mariah Carey's video for Honey and being obsessed with her voice -- still am. I was six or seven years old. I also remember being fascinated by Madonna's Ray of Light video and I remember being shocked when I learnt that she was almost forty.

I Remember when Ray Of Light came out! i feel old now i was only 7... but that song and Doo-Wop by Lauryn Hill were played non stop everyday it seemed.

Gunsnhalen said:

When I was real little I lived with my grandparents in the country. My grandfather only listened to blues, and he played guitar and sang blues songs too. My grandmother had some gospel records and would watch this local gospel show every Sunday morning called Hallelujah Train. Some of the acts on there sounded similar to the blues records but with a Ink Spots/doo wop type of singing. Right before Hallelujah Train came on was a children's show that I liked called Jolly Bible Time. From what I remember, I guess you could say it was sort of a church version of Sesame Street. I wonder if the tapes for those shows still exist. Later she had this CL Franklin sermon album. I think my mom bought it for her. It was a 2 record set, each record had a different sermon. I heard it so much, I had it memorized.

My grandmother had some soul records and 8-tracks too. But she called any music that wasn't gospel, "the blues". Today, I don't think that most of the acts were that well known, singers like O.V. Wright, Ella Washington, The Consolers (a gospel group), and Clarence Carter. But at the time I didn't know anything about hits or whatever, so they were famous records to me. She had this one 45 of a song called The Death Of Kennedy. I didn't know who Kennedy was at the time or that the song was about somebody, but when I got a little older I realized that one of the pictures she had on the wall was JFK. I also remember watching Hee Haw on Sunday evenings. So that's mostly what I heard until I moved in with my mom. The first records that were my own was a Big Bird 45 called Everyone Makes Mistakes and a Flintstones storybook record. My mom bought those. I don't know what happened to them. I guess they broke or something, but I still have some of my other kiddie records.

aardvark15 said:

Gunsnhalen said:

I Remember when Ray Of Light came out! i feel old now i was only 7... but that song and Doo-Wop by Lauryn Hill were played non stop everyday it seemed.

Those were the days. Celine was my music obsession back then. Although I loved Cher, Lauryn, Madonna, and Mimi at that time. I was a gay kindergardener if there ever was one

I was just getting into Motley Crue, Metallic and Ozzy

But i dabbled in Aaliyah, Madonna, Lauryn Hill & R. Kelly.

Oh and i only knew Celine cause of My Heart Will Go on & I'm You Angel(Which was totally not overplayed at all in 1998)

Gunsnhalen said:

Earliest musical memories: Driving back with my dad from the swimming pools during the summers jammin and BLASTING Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, J5, James Brown, Stylistics, Dells, Delphonics, Sly Family Stone, Marvin Gaye, Bob Marly ETC. My dad NEVER played the radio whenever I drove with him. He ALWAYS played HIS records and I would get in trouble when ever I tried to change the song

I exactly remember my FIRST favorite MJ song, its was PYT because my dad would always play the Thriller C.D specifically and I danced to that song in 3rd grade at a talent show at my school and I won!!! I was BLOWN/mesmerized when I saw MJs performance of Billie Jean (Bucharest 1992 concert I believe) and from there I really became a big fan. I just thought it was so cool when I was young

I think from there, I branched off and got heavy into MJ and Jacksons/Janet and at one point, MJ was the only thing I listened to heavily but then I branched out from there and got even more into oldies like Prince, Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, Earth Wind and Fire etc

[Edited 2/5/13 19:54pm]

vainandy said:

I got a tape recorder one Christmas and I used to place the microphone up next to the Snoopy radio onto tapes.

My first cassette was one of those plain cassette recorders, that I would call "church tape player" because I used to see the women at church with them recording the choir or the preacher. There were different brands, but they all pretty much looked similar to this:

[Edited 2/5/13 20:13pm]

The first song I fell in love with was Michael Jackson's "Greatest Show on Earth." My sister had the 45 rpm, and I used to play it constantly. One day I pissed her off, and she intentionally scratched the heck out of that record.

Now ain't that just pure evil?

aardvark15 said:

Gunsnhalen said:

I was just getting into Motley Crue, Metallic and Ozzy

But i dabbled in Aaliyah, Madonna, Lauryn Hill & R. Kelly.

Oh and i only knew Celine cause of My Heart Will Go on & I'm You Angel(Which was totally not overplayed at all in 1998)

Forgot about R. Everyone loved him back then

My mom didn't!

I borrowed R. from a friend when i was young and she saw and said ''0_0 R. Kelly? oh hell no you are to young'' And everytime he would come on MTV she would change the channel

She did the same with Mariah as well

But she did let me listen to the Purple Rain album when i was young so i appreciate that

Graycap23 said:

MickyDolenz said:

When I was real little I lived with my grandparents in the country. My grandfather only listened to blues, and he played guitar and sang blues songs too. My grandmother had some gospel records and would watch this local gospel show every Sunday morning called Hallelujah Train. Some of the acts on there sounded similar to the blues records but with a Ink Spots/doo wop type of singing. Right before Hallelujah Train came on was a children's show that I liked called Jolly Bible Time. From what I remember, I guess you could say it was sort of a church version of Sesame Street. I wonder if the tapes for those shows still exist. Later she had this CL Franklin sermon album. I think my mom bought it for her. It was a 2 record set, each record had a different sermon. I heard it so much, I had it memorized.

My grandmother had some soul records and 8-tracks too. But she called any music that wasn't gospel, "the blues". Today, I don't think that most of the acts were that well known, singers like O.V. Wright, Ella Washington, The Consolers (a gospel group), and Clarence Carter. But at the time I didn't know anything about hits or whatever, so they were famous records to me. She had this one 45 of a song called The Death Of Kennedy. I didn't know who Kennedy was at the time or that the song was about somebody, but when I got a little older I realized that one of the pictures she had on the wall was JFK. I also remember watching Hee Haw on Sunday evenings. So that's mostly what I heard until I moved in with my mom. The first records that were my own was a Big Bird 45 called Everyone Makes Mistakes and a Flintstones storybook record. My mom bought those. I don't know what happened to them. I guess they broke or something, but I still have some of my other kiddie records.

Are you sure you aren't from Mississippi or one of the surrounding states because "Hallelujah Train" sounds very familiar to me. I'm thinking I heard that title from one of the old gospel records commercials on TV though.

We had a lot of local music TV shows also. There was "Teen Tempos" before my time from my mother's teenage years which from what I've heard was a local "American Bandstand" type show. Then in the 1970s and 1980s, there was "Black Gold" which was a local "Soul Train" type show and those dancers put the "Soul Train" dancers to shame because there was none of that modeling, posing, and simply "walking" down the line. The Black Gold dancers got off hard. Also in the 1970s and 1980s was "The Hour Of The 50s" which was a local dance show that played rock and roll from the 50s and had dancers that dressed like the 50s. There was a lot of local programming back then with local news shows, talk shows, and even children's shows. That was long before the age of infomercials. When the national shows weren't on the networks, the rest of the airtime was either taken up with old reruns of TV shows or local programming. That's when TV was great.

As for old tapes of the local shows, I'm sure they probably exist because I see local dance shows pop up on youtube all the time from Detroit's "The Scene". I bet Lee King, the host of our local show "Black Gold", has tapes of the old show because they did a "Best Of" special right before it went off the air in the early 1990s and showed clips from a lot of the old shows. I absolutely LOVED that show but I'm thinking he's like Prince sitting on those tapes in a vault somewhere. I see there's a documentary DVD about him coming out some time in the future....

.

.

.

[Edited 2/6/13 2:46am]

The earlisest memory I have of my beginning obsession with music when I was really little…my sis and I dancing to The Peppermint Twist at a cookout at the Lockheed Missile Base where my stepdad worked in Goose Creek, SC. I even have a pic of it somewhere. I used to listen to my stepdad play Elvis records and The Kingston Trio but never really fell in love with music until I heard the Peppermint Twist and “Tequila.”

From then on I was hooked. My sis went on to become an Elvis fanatic but I never did. At about 10 I got into the Doors, Hendrix, and I idolized Janis. I tried to dress and act like her. I got into Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Cream…I would take little pics of Jim Morrison and Steppenwolf I’d cut out of a magazine advertising those Columbia House albums to the Kingdom Hall with me…hiding them in my pocket so no one would see. I wasn’t allowed to listen to any of that music. I was forbidden to watch Soul Train or American Bandstand. I sneaked and watched anyway. Got beaten with a belt if I was caught.

Although I WAS allowed to go up to the little store in town to buy 45 singles (.49 at the time) as long as they were G-rated...the first record I ever bought was ABC by the Jacksons. My sis bought something by The Monkees. Loved the Jacksons ever since.

I remember riding in the backseat of our Rambler on the way to a JW convention who knows where and the song, Runaway Child (Runnin' Wild) by the Temptations came on the radio and I jumped up and screamed because I loved the song so much. I was quickly backhanded and landed on the floor of the back seat. I learned to keep my musical enthusiasm to myself after that.

As a JW I never went to a concert until after my divorce and leaving the religion. Lo and behold it was Prince & Rick James. Ironic, huh? I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. After that I was hooked and went to many concerts and danced and sang and made love and karaoke-ed to all the music I loved. No one could stop me from listening to what I wanted to hear anymore.

I’ve seen Lakeside, The Barkays (3 times), The Brothers Johnson, Cameo twice, Rick James twice, Chaka, Public Enemy, Eric B & Rakim, Teena Marie, REO Speedwagon, The Ojays, Teddy Pendergrass, The Emotions (on the same tour), Atlantic Star, GQ, LL, Salt & Pepa twice, Heart, Doug E Fresh twice, Big Daddy Kane, Kool & the Gang, Gap Band, Vanilla Ice, Slave, Chocolate Milk, Parliament/Funkadelic/Bootsy…New Edition, George LaMond…the list goes on and there’s so many I’d wish I’d seen and more I want to see.

noimageatall said:

I’ve seen Lakeside, The Barkays (3 times), The Brothers Johnson, Cameo twice, Rick James twice, Chaka, Public Enemy, Eric B & Rakim, Teena Marie, REO Speedwagon, The Ojays, Teddy Pendergrass, The Emotions (on the same tour), Atlantic Star, GQ, LL, Salt & Pepa twice, Heart, Doug E Fresh twice, Big Daddy Kane, Kool & the Gang, Gap Band, Vanilla Ice, Slave, Chocolate Milk, Parliament/Funkadelic/Bootsy…New Edition, George LaMond…the list goes on and there’s so many I’d wish I’d seen and more I want to see.

mynameisnotsusan said:

noimageatall said:

I’ve seen Lakeside, The Barkays (3 times), The Brothers Johnson, Cameo twice, Rick James twice, Chaka, Public Enemy, Eric B & Rakim, Teena Marie, REO Speedwagon, The Ojays, Teddy Pendergrass, The Emotions (on the same tour), Atlantic Star, GQ, LL, Salt & Pepa twice, Heart, Doug E Fresh twice, Big Daddy Kane, Kool & the Gang, Gap Band, Vanilla Ice, Slave, Chocolate Milk, Parliament/Funkadelic/Bootsy…New Edition, George LaMond…the list goes on and there’s so many I’d wish I’d seen and more I want to see.

Damn I forgot about Instant Funk, Denise Williams, & Zapp...

Sadly I never saw Madonna or Michael.

[Edited 2/6/13 3:34am]

A lot of early 80's artists, but the most vivid were mj tossing his hat and me getting excited, being terrified of Thriller, mj dancing among colours (DSTYGE), and a bunch of Madonna, Prince and Wham videos along with others.

[Edited 2/6/13 4:43am]

noimageatall said:

The earlisest memory I have of my beginning obsession with music when I was really little…my sis and I dancing to The Peppermint Twist at a cookout at the Lockheed Missile Base where my stepdad worked in Goose Creek, SC. I even have a pic of it somewhere. I used to listen to my stepdad play Elvis records and The Kingston Trio but never really fell in love with music until I heard the Peppermint Twist and “Tequila.”

From then on I was hooked. My sis went on to become an Elvis fanatic but I never did. At about 10 I got into the Doors, Hendrix, and I idolized Janis. I tried to dress and act like her. I got into Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Cream…I would take little pics of Jim Morrison and Steppenwolf I’d cut out of a magazine advertising those Columbia House albums to the Kingdom Hall with me…hiding them in my pocket so no one would see. I wasn’t allowed to listen to any of that music. I was forbidden to watch Soul Train or American Bandstand. I sneaked and watched anyway. Got beaten with a belt if I was caught.

Although I WAS allowed to go up to the little store in town to buy 45 singles (.49 at the time) as long as they were G-rated...the first record I ever bought was ABC by the Jacksons. My sis bought something by The Monkees. Loved the Jacksons ever since.

I remember riding in the backseat of our Rambler on the way to a JW convention who knows where and the song, Runaway Child (Runnin' Wild) by the Temptations came on the radio and I jumped up and screamed because I loved the song so much. I was quickly backhanded and landed on the floor of the back seat. I learned to keep my musical enthusiasm to myself after that.

As a JW I never went to a concert until after my divorce and leaving the religion. Lo and behold it was Prince & Rick James. Ironic, huh? I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. After that I was hooked and went to many concerts and danced and sang and made love and karaoke-ed to all the music I loved. No one could stop me from listening to what I wanted to hear anymore.

I’ve seen Lakeside, The Barkays (3 times), The Brothers Johnson, Cameo twice, Rick James twice, Chaka, Public Enemy, Eric B & Rakim, Teena Marie, REO Speedwagon, The Ojays, Teddy Pendergrass, The Emotions (on the same tour), Atlantic Star, GQ, LL, Salt & Pepa twice, Heart, Doug E Fresh twice, Big Daddy Kane, Kool & the Gang, Gap Band, Vanilla Ice, Slave, Chocolate Milk, Parliament/Funkadelic/Bootsy…New Edition, George LaMond…the list goes on and there’s so many I’d wish I’d seen and more I want to see.

Oh hell naw, I couldn't be no Jehovah's Witness. All that goofiness about not being able to listen to particular music, they would have ended up killing me or either I would have ended up killing them. That would have been a fight every single day.

And damn you, you were at the Rick James/Prince "Fire It Up" concert. I am now officially jealous. That's the one I was dying to see and bugged my grandmother so much that she and my uncle were going to take me, that is until she called the coliseum box office to buy the tickets. They heard this elderly white woman's voice over the phone and said ....."Uh....ma'am, do you know what you're trying to buy tickets to? You'll probably be the only white people there except for the employees. (And at that time, they were right.) I know there's no way I'd take my kids to something like that and I work here and am scared when we have those type of shows. Let me suggest a better show that's coming next month, The Commodores. The music is a lot softer and there will be some white people at that one."......Well, that's all she needed to hear to scare the hell out of her and she told me she would take me to see The Commodores the next month but there was no way in hell I was going to this one. I hit the damn roof and was mad as hell and told her I didn't want to see no Commodores with all that slow mess ("Three Times A Lady" was big back then and even though I had heard some Commodores funk before, I didn't know that it was The Commodores singing them at the time because I was just getting into music back then.) Honey, I pitched a hissy fit and a major temper tantrum. When I look back though, it's a good thing they talked her out of buying the tickets because if she had and we had gotten down there, first of all, when she saw nothing but black folks going into the coliseum, we wouldn't have made it inside because she would have been scared for her life and left. And if we had made it inside and she saw the content of both Prince and Rick's show, along with the weed smoking in the audience, she would have never bought me all the records she bought me throughout the years.

1st grade.

[img:$uid]http://www.uppersearch.nl/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/michael-jackson-cassette.png[/img:$uid]

1st album I bought with my money. Still have the cassette to this day.

listening to my mom's stuff (basically stuff from the late-50s, 60s and early-70s)

listening to my sister's stuff (basically 80s and early-90s stuff)

being mesmerized by videoclips and TV concerts of Madonna, Prince, GNR, etc

vainandy said:

Oh hell naw, I couldn't be no Jehovah's Witness. All that goofiness about not being able to listen to particular music, they would have ended up killing me or either I would have ended up killing them. That would have been a fight every single day.

My grandmother wasn't a JW, but if I was playing records or watching TV and it started raining or a thunderstorm, she'd always say turn it off and sit down, that you're not supposed to do anything while the Lord was doing his work.

I went to school with some JW's and they listened to the same music the other kids listened to. They just didn't participate in the Pledge Of Allegiance/national anthem or holiday stuff.

vainandy said:

We had a lot of local music TV shows also. There was "Teen Tempos" before my time from my mother's teenage years which from what I've heard was a local "American Bandstand" type show. Then in the 1970s and 1980s, there was "Black Gold" which was a local "Soul Train" type show and those dancers put the "Soul Train" dancers to shame because there was none of that modeling, posing, and simply "walking" down the line. The Black Gold dancers got off hard. Also in the 1970s and 1980s was "The Hour Of The 50s" which was a local dance show that played rock and roll from the 50s and had dancers that dressed like the 50s. There was a lot of local programming back then with local news shows, talk shows, and even children's shows. That was long before the age of infomercials. When the national shows weren't on the networks, the rest of the airtime was either taken up with old reruns of TV shows or local programming. That's when TV was great.

That's when it was only 3 networks, plus PBS and 2 or 3 UHF channels, and the channels would go off the air around 11 PM and midnight. NBC, ABC, CBS, & PBS were on VHF. I watched a lot of variety shows like Sha Na Na, Donny & Marie, The Jacksons, Bob Hope, Carol Burnett, Gong Show, Barbara Mandrell and The Mandrell Sisters, and others. Then there was American Bandstand, Soul Train, Solid Gold, and Dance Fever. I remember some acts had a TV special like Natalie Cole and the Doobie Brothers were on What's Happening!!!.

vainandy said:

noimageatall said:

The earlisest memory I have of my beginning obsession with music when I was really little…my sis and I dancing to The Peppermint Twist at a cookout at the Lockheed Missile Base where my stepdad worked in Goose Creek, SC. I even have a pic of it somewhere. I used to listen to my stepdad play Elvis records and The Kingston Trio but never really fell in love with music until I heard the Peppermint Twist and “Tequila.”

From then on I was hooked. My sis went on to become an Elvis fanatic but I never did. At about 10 I got into the Doors, Hendrix, and I idolized Janis. I tried to dress and act like her. I got into Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Cream…I would take little pics of Jim Morrison and Steppenwolf I’d cut out of a magazine advertising those Columbia House albums to the Kingdom Hall with me…hiding them in my pocket so no one would see. I wasn’t allowed to listen to any of that music. I was forbidden to watch Soul Train or American Bandstand. I sneaked and watched anyway. Got beaten with a belt if I was caught.

Although I WAS allowed to go up to the little store in town to buy 45 singles (.49 at the time) as long as they were G-rated...the first record I ever bought was ABC by the Jacksons. My sis bought something by The Monkees. Loved the Jacksons ever since.

I remember riding in the backseat of our Rambler on the way to a JW convention who knows where and the song, Runaway Child (Runnin' Wild) by the Temptations came on the radio and I jumped up and screamed because I loved the song so much. I was quickly backhanded and landed on the floor of the back seat. I learned to keep my musical enthusiasm to myself after that.

As a JW I never went to a concert until after my divorce and leaving the religion. Lo and behold it was Prince & Rick James. Ironic, huh? I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. After that I was hooked and went to many concerts and danced and sang and made love and karaoke-ed to all the music I loved. No one could stop me from listening to what I wanted to hear anymore.

I’ve seen Lakeside, The Barkays (3 times), The Brothers Johnson, Cameo twice, Rick James twice, Chaka, Public Enemy, Eric B & Rakim, Teena Marie, REO Speedwagon, The Ojays, Teddy Pendergrass, The Emotions (on the same tour), Atlantic Star, GQ, LL, Salt & Pepa twice, Heart, Doug E Fresh twice, Big Daddy Kane, Kool & the Gang, Gap Band, Vanilla Ice, Slave, Chocolate Milk, Parliament/Funkadelic/Bootsy…New Edition, George LaMond…the list goes on and there’s so many I’d wish I’d seen and more I want to see.

Oh hell naw, I couldn't be no Jehovah's Witness. All that goofiness about not being able to listen to particular music, they would have ended up killing me or either I would have ended up killing them. That would have been a fight every single day.

And damn you, you were at the Rick James/Prince "Fire It Up" concert. I am now officially jealous. That's the one I was dying to see and bugged my grandmother so much that she and my uncle were going to take me, that is until she called the coliseum box office to buy the tickets. They heard this elderly white woman's voice over the phone and said ....."Uh....ma'am, do you know what you're trying to buy tickets to? You'll probably be the only white people there except for the employees. (And at that time, they were right.) I know there's no way I'd take my kids to something like that and I work here and am scared when we have those type of shows. Let me suggest a better show that's coming next month, The Commodores. The music is a lot softer and there will be some white people at that one."......Well, that's all she needed to hear to scare the hell out of her and she told me she would take me to see The Commodores the next month but there was no way in hell I was going to this one. I hit the damn roof and was mad as hell and told her I didn't want to see no Commodores with all that slow mess ("Three Times A Lady" was big back then and even though I had heard some Commodores funk before, I didn't know that it was The Commodores singing them at the time because I was just getting into music back then.) Honey, I pitched a hissy fit and a major temper tantrum. When I look back though, it's a good thing they talked her out of buying the tickets because if she had and we had gotten down there, first of all, when she saw nothing but black folks going into the coliseum, we wouldn't have made it inside because she would have been scared for her life and left. And if we had made it inside and she saw the content of both Prince and Rick's show, along with the weed smoking in the audience, she would have never bought me all the records she bought me throughout the years.

Well there WERE fights every single day when I got older. I imagine if I was allowed to have some headphones then my mom wouldn't have heard 'Touch Me' or 'Pusher Man' or 'Come Together' coming from my room and burned my records in the back yard. Yes, they believed the Beatles records played backwards had to do with Satan.

But you reminded me that I saw the Commodores when they had the song Brick House out. That's the only song I really liked by them. I wasn't a fan of the slow stuff either. I remember they brought this lady on stage wearing a black swimsuit and she was gyrating and the crowd was going wild. Probably would be considered really tame today.

That's funny about Prince & your grandma. But how dare that ticket-seller try to dissuade your grandma! That's not his job to tell people what to buy.

That Prince/Rick concert was IT for me. I'd seen Prince on his album cover and Soft & Wet was the first song I ever heard from him. But when he walked out on stage I was dumbfounded. I just stood there with my tongue hanging out and couldn't move. My 'date' got pissed at me. Sure, Rick was amazing with his 'joints' and antagonizing the cops by the stage and throwing joints into the crowd but PRINCE???? OMG I was in love. From then on all my 'boyfriends' tended to look or act like him.

I can see why Rick was pissed.

Had to be around 1973 or so when I was between 2-3 years old? It's a tie between Aretha and Elton, my mom played both these 45s on the record player endlessly. I would break out singing Benny and the Jets before I would even think about talking to people. My mom says I was a singing toddler, but was moody and didn't like people