Casual Conversation

Weird Al Yankovic in 3D.

Polka Party! by “Weird Al” Yankovic

Green Day. Dookie.

Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. Funny story time - it seemed like everyone had or wanted to have that album when it came out. We did not have it though because it was hard to find in my village. A boy I knew had the album and agreed to make a recording for me on cassette. I was super pumped and got the tape from him on Friday at school before a slumber party with my besties. Saturday morning we’re all sitting around the table with my friend’s huge family and they pulled out a cassette player and set it in the center of the table. The first three tracks played while we’re monching pancakes and I was so chuffed to have brought this sought after album. Then “Thriller” came on - the song - which is nearly six minutes long. Everyone knows the song and it’s ramping up but then suddenly the music cuts out with a click. It was the boy who recorded it speaking in to a mic saying, “Elaine, I recorded this for you because I love you.” Mind you, I’m ten so the entire room - adults and kids are dying of laughter while I was desperately trying to crawl across the table to shut it off. Someone grabbed the tape player from my reach and I died instantly. This is my clone typing this in 2024.

Ænima

Weird Al Yankovic - Off the Deep End

When I was ten Master of Puppets and Slippery When Wet were both released and awesome.

That said, and as a fan of the wierd and heavy, Graceland by Paul Simon was also released and is one of the best albums of all time.

The Offspring - Smash

Machine Head, Deep Purple.

Comes down to one of two, and to varying degrees they both hold up.

1. Dare to be Stupid by Weird Al. Not a single miss, Al possibly at the height of his powers, and that’s saying a lot.
2. The Top Gun soundtrack. Whammy bar intensifies: wah wah wah, wanna wanna wah wah, wanna WAH wanna WAH, wanna WAH wah.

Nevermind

Brandy's first album. Or TLC's. Both of those tapes got played to deaaath. But my real favorite was probably whatever mixtape my sister and I had most recently made from the radio because that shit was custom. No skips.

The Kick Inside by Kate Bush

It was my Dad's CD and he made me a cassette tape for my walkman. It's still one of my all time favorites.

https://open.spotify.com/album/5NKTuBLCYhN0OwqFiGdXd1?si=rq5Oqcb0S6-wxhpJGQ5Uww

Ten?

Gonna be a tossup, because I was listening to two in heavy rotation on casette. The first was a couple of years old at that point, Alabama's Mountain Music. Still a great album.

The other was essentially brand new, Joan Jett's Glorious Results of a Misspent Youth, again on cassette.

My parents had the Alabama on vinyl, which got worn the hell out by the time I got the tape. The Joan Jett wasn't something they had gotten for themselves until after I bought it with birthday money at the same time as the Alabama tape. Then they got it on vinyl.

I still listen to both albums in their entirety here and there, and have multiple songs from each in multiple playlists.

I think, at the time, I probably favored GROAMY (what a horrible initialism lol) a bit most of the time, but it would have been a narrow margin. As full albums I favor Mountain Music now, it's just more consistently good songs across the album. Not that Jett's album has any stinkers, it doesn't; it's just that Alabama really nailed every track.

And yes, I'm fucking old lol

When I was 10 I didn't listen to music because my parents didn't listen to music. Sometimes we were listening to the radio and I specifically remember liking this one song "Lady Pank - Mniej niż zero" (which means less then zero and I was always wondering how something can be less then zero).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc-26SnSmok

Either Billy Joel's Glass Houses or the Flash Gordon soundtrack by Queen. Both were in heavy rotation.

(What's the Story) Morning Glory?

That was a time where a young kid listened to anything his older siblings were jamming to. So Oasis was one of my favorite bands at that age.

Has to be Jesus Christ Superstar (original 1970 album version). I got into all sorts of other artists a little bit later, but that was the first bit of music to really hook me. I remember walking around the schoolyard alone listening to it on a cassette tape walkman around that time.

The Gorillaz self-titled album

The first album I had was Complete Madness by Madness. It's still a banger but the vinyl is at my parents because I never owned a record player of my own.

There is so much weird al in this thread, which is great

Probably running with scissors (weird al) or no strings attached (nsync)

I hadn't really developed any musical taste at that point. The first favorite would've been Nirvana's Unplugged in New York.

Styx - Paradise Theatre

(And no wonder I've always spelled it like a Brit! Learn something new everyday.)

Backstreet Boys - Millennium

CDs were too expensive for my ten-year-old self, and my parents didn't trust me with their vinyls yet.

I had a Taj Mahal tape, a Raffi tape, and a Doris Hall tape.

When I was 10 I hadn't really had the chance to explore music on my own and discover music outside of my parents' preferences. I think about that age I listened to one album by an acapella group called The Bobs.

A few years later I stumbled upon a video on Youtube that had You're Gonna Go Far Kid by The Offspring as the audio track and was immediately hooked, and finally saw them in concert about a year ago

Thanks to growing up around trash (the people, not necessarily the music), I hated music for a long time. So when I was 10, nothing. But when I was 13 or so ('95 or '96) I was walking down the street and found a CD in the road. Green Day's dookie. That was that. Still listen to that album at least every few months.

The Police - Reggatta De Blanc

Oof, it was a different time, okay?

Smash Mouth - Astro Lounge

Foo Fighters - There Is Nothing Left To Lose

The Slim Shady LP. It was the censored version and I was a kid so I assumed every censored word was "fuck".

I was a weird kid and didn't like music - any music - until I was 12, 13 years old.

War of the Worlds, Jeff Wayne. My dad recorded the Dutch narrative radio version on reel to reel so I could understand the story. He would listen to the original double album.

I wasn’t into music at that time, but I was crazy about the fairy tales my dad recorded from various radio plays.
I had several cassettes to listen during long car rides and it was great imagining the scenes in my head as the stories played out.

Wishbone Ash - Argus

I have an incredibly awkward story to tell concerning my first experience with one particular track on that album...

MIKA - Life in Cartoon Motion
Kate Nash - Made of Bricks

Brit Pop was the shit to 10 year old me.

When I was ten I wasn't listening to albums yet. My taste in music didn't really form until I was around 13 or 14. I grew up in that weird space where mp3 players were just starting to be a thing but my family lived in a rural area and didn't have good access to commercial stores, so we had like the shitty mp3s that were only like 256mb of capacity. And since we grew up in the country I couldn't go to the music store and browse CDs, so my mp3 was loaded up with whatever CDs my dad had lying around. It was a weird mix of stuff I liked and stuff from some random mix CD a friend burned for him at some point.

My first real feeling of having ownership over my taste in music was the first time I played guitar hero 3. That was around the same time I moved from country to city, and so I had better internet access as well as could go to more music stores. And also got an mp3 with effectively infinite music capacity.

Honestly I think the first album where I appreciated it as an album rather than as just random singles loaded in my shitty mp3 might be Poodle Hat by Weird Al Yankovic.