Your first childhood memory of sound making you go WOW!

[juicylime]

My first was when my mother first bought a decent quality sound system and I sat there, age 8 or 9, tuning in stations and as the stations arrived the sound was like nothing I had ever heard. It blew my mind that something I couldn't touch or eat could excite me so much. I would sit there for hours toggling the switch between stereo and mono fascinated by the difference between two.

The second was when I got an organ for my 10th birthday and I wanted the sound of my voice and more than one instrument so I borrowed two cassette recorders and in the privacy of my bedroom I invented what I thought would revolutionize the world of music; Overdubbing! Oh the innocence!

What were your first exciting expereinces with sound?

[idylldon]

1961. I was listening to the vocal harmonies in the song "Michael (Row the Boat Ashore)" by the Highwaymen on my new portable radio that I had just received for my sixth birthday. I'll never forget walking down the street with that radio glued to my ear.

Cheers,
--
Don

[Matthew Murray]

I think the first time with modern music was around 8 or 9. I can't remember anything before that anyways... I've got a terrible long term memory. My mum used to only play records, and one day I guess she decided to stray from her usually classical and pop on "Between the Buttons" by the stones... I can remember sitting in front of that record player whenever that album was on, just watching the damned thing spin ... I could always hear her singing "Ruby Tuesday" in the kitchen along with it... and I remember the shelf that the record player was on smelt like vanilla cigars, even though no one in my family smoked them.

Damn, that's a good, rare memory ... even though I hardly ever listen to the stones anymore.

Thanks for jockin' my memory, juicylime.

[ResonantFilter]

Dr Who at age 5.

Tom Baker with K9, some very badly dressed aliens, and AMAZING stuff from the BBC Radiophonic workshop.

Just needs that opening sweep to set my "must start to synthesize" urges...

[PopIsNotDead]

I think the most vivid memory I have of realizing what music can be is when I was about 13. I played bassoon and hated it, all the parts I was given in junior high were like "bum, bum, bum, bum", you know, quarter note patterns, really boring stuff. Then I heard Smokey Robinson's "Tears of a Clown" for the first time, and heard that bassoon line, and it suddenly dawned on me that I could use that instrument in front of me for whatever the hell I wanted to. It started me down a long and costly path of wanting as much "stuff that makes noise" as I could get my hands on. Still one of my favorite songs.

[AlexLakis]

Beach Boys' Endless Summer LP.

My father used to put it on and I'd spin around in circles until I passed out.

Originally Posted by PopIsNotDead

Then I heard Smokey Robinson's "Tears of a Clown" for the first time, and heard that bassoon line, and it suddenly dawned on me that I could use that instrument in front of me for whatever the hell I wanted to.

That was always onna my favorite songs growing up too.

[swankdoc]

Originally Posted by juicylime

What were your first exciting expereinces with sound?

About age 9 or 10, listening in its double album entirity, to Jesus Christ Superstar (of course on vinyl) with my parents new Pioneer headphones through an old Fisher tube amp.

Still remember that.

[C/G]

I was about 5 years old, listening to Kiss Alive one, while my brothers and sisters were at school. I used to flip around with an old tennis raquet and air guitar to that LP for hours, until my siblings came home and knocked the crap out of me for touching their records. fuuck

[TEMAS]

Originally Posted by ResonantFilter

Dr Who at age 5.

Good call.

More vivid for me though at that age (in 1978) is ABBA, at kids' parties.

[vernier]

Hearing strings in a store that had muzak in the background. Also, Little Richard "Tutti Frutti", ..sounded good then, and still does ..out-rocks anything recorded since.

[macr0w]

I remember being a kid of about 8 years old, hanging out at my friend Rob Hunnicutt's house playing "BrickHouse" on his drumset over and over. When this older kid who had taken lessons and played in the marching band came over and did a solo that killed us. Rob and I just looked at each other like "what in the hell was that?" I think that is what made me really want to play the drums.

Later when I was about 15 or 16 and had spent the last few years listening to Zeppelin and Van Halen along with all the other "classic" rock bands, I heard Frank Zappa play "Rat Tomango" which is on Shiek Yerbuti. I had never heard anyone play the guitar like that. With that one song: Page, Clapton, Van Halen, whoever I was listening to at the time just went right out the window. That definitely changed my life. 22 years later and I'm even a bigger Zappa fan than ever.

[macr0w]

Originally Posted by Colin Gaucher

I was about 5 years old, listening to Kiss Alive one, while my brothers and sisters were at school. I used to flip around with an old tennis raquet and air guitar to that LP for hours, until my siblings came home and knocked the crap out of me for touching their records. fuuck

[redrue]

It was 1968 or so... I was 4 or 5... I heard a little girl
on the preschool playground singing 'Leaving on a Jet Plane'.
I was entranced, enthralled, maybe a little bit in love. I knew
that I JUST HAD to learn how to do that (sing)... I think
it was a little beyond my capacity at the time to be able
to recall a melody and recreate it but I kept at it. The following
spring 'Sweet Caroline' became a hit and I went around singing it for days...
I had learned how to do it. Music and I have been together ever since.

Later in life I went to find the sheet music for '...Jet Plane'
and had no idea that it was John Denver who wrote it. Still
one of my favorite pop melodies.

[lordnielson]

7-8 years old. Beatles "revolution". Sometimes the intro would suffice, everything saturating. The scratches in that single were as loud as the music, at least.

I think it's Hey Jude on the flipside, but that one was a little too nice.. except for the outro that is

[danno812]

Glen Campbells - Rhinestone Cowboy

I was probably 4 or 5. It just sounded so huge by comparison to everything else on the radio. I'd sing the chorus at the top of my lungs. My parents got it for me on a 45. My very first record.

[warhead]

The deep flange near the end of "(Just Like) Starting Over" / John Lennon. That is one of my earliest memories of being completely sucked into a moment sonically. I was probably 8. It is still one my favorite songs to play REALLY LOUD in the car.

War

[C/G]

Originally Posted by lordnielson

7-8 years old. Beatles "revolution". Sometimes the intro would suffice, everything saturating. The scratches in that single were as loud as the music, at least.

I think it's Hey Jude on the flipside, but that one was a little too nice.. except for the outro that is

Revolution/hey Jude was my first 45 ever. Same era as my Kiss post a few above this, but the Hey Jude 45 was mine and I recieved no beatings from brothers and sisiters for listening to it.

[max cooper]

My dad always had a pretty good stereo. When I was about five, he had a McIntosh/Quad ESL system. I remember hearing Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, the White Album and Abbey Road a lot.

[softwareguy]

Great thread, love the responses!

My first huge experience was with my folks big phillips 50's-era all-in-one piece of furniture record player that they had inherited from my grandfather (who in retrospect must have known something about sound).

When I was about 5 I figured out how to work it from watching them. Then, when they were gone I would:

put on any one of Beethoven's symphonies from their classics-of-the-month music collection,

turn it up REALLY LOUD and

jump all over the sofa to it.

I will never forget that feeling.

http://gearslutz.com/board/images/smilies/nu/061.gif

[overclock]

sound = star wars

music = allan parsons 'lucifer'

can't really put exact age in there, but definitely both occured before i was 5.

[compo]

The first childhood memory of SOUND making me go wow, would have been something like Ultravox - Vienna when I was about 2. It'd been released in 1980, when I was born, but my brother used to play the record a lot on his first record player ... which he was given in about 1982.

Other early SOUND favourites were ...

Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls
The Tweets - The Birdie Song
Europe - The Final Countdown
Opus - Live Is Life
Diana Ross (and Bee Gees) - Chain Reaction

See, I was a synth boy then, and I still am now. Guitars are nice, but synths are better :-)

Cracking idea for a thread !!! :-)

---- Oh, and a recent "wow that's cool" sound moment was hearing Nizlopi play live when they did a gig at Manchester's "Life Cafe" on the 31st May 2005. They were on stage, ready to start playing, when one of them whispered over to the other, and they both walked off stage over to the bar area, with acoustic guitar and double bass ... and they proceeded to sing, beatbox, and play their instruments totally acoustically, inside a circle of people over by the bar. The whole room fell silent, and just respected the fact that they had tried to make the gig intimate rather than sing from a stage, yards away from everyone. It really worked too, because both guys are great aco musicians. Beautiful moment.

[ArcCirDude]

1969....I was 4. Dad bought a new Chrysler with an 8 track player. It came with a "sampler" (like the chocolates, not the Emu {the company, not the bird}) and it had the theme from "Born Free" and "Don't Sleep in the Subway". Those took me to another place. Then mom bought the album (tape) "Promises, Promises" by Dionne Warwick. THAT blew me away. The trumpet solos on that album are why I'm playing trumpet 37 years later. Great Don Sebesky arrangements, too.

[No4PCs]

Mine was Giorgio Moroder "From Here to Eternity" vinyl .
I was a dumb child, i think.

[C/G]

Originally Posted by No4PCs

Mine was Giorgio Moroder "From Here to Eternity" vinyl .
I was a dumb child, i think.

I listened to the Grease soundtrack so don't worry about it.

[theblue1]

I think it would have to be when I first heard stereo. (I may be a wee bit older than the average GS habitue )


We were at a friend of my folks. It was at least '58 or so because he put on a tape of Arthur Lyman's Taboo, which came out that year and which we had at home.

I'd heard the guy was a "hi fi buff" and I'd been fascinated by tape recorders ever since some neighbors captured my performance of Mary Had a Little Lamb a few years before.

But this was something different. I had no idea there was such a thing as pre-recorded tapes and when I saw the familiar cover repro'd on a 7" box, I was transfixed.

THEN he turned on his first-generation stereo. (This was just about the time of the introduction of the first "Westrex" stereo LP on Audio Fidelity in the US and on Pye in the UK. It would take a few years for stereo records to achieve critical marketplace mass. Even into the mid-60s, a lot of pop records weren't even originally released in stereo. [Hence the wack mixes on later stereo releases of early Beatles, Byrds, etc.] )


It was... like... wow.

A whole different kind of thing.

In the next couple years there'd be a number of radio and radio-TV stereo simulcasts where one "side" would be on the TV and the other would be on a nearby radio. (Of course, in the 70s we'd get stereo simulcasts using FM stereo with mono on the TV audio. But by then, stereo was what most people knew and it was paradoxically hard to get them cranked up about it.)

But, yeah... that first time I heard Taboo in stereo (on what was no doubt a very killer hi fi, er, stereo) was pretty damn amazing.


The next time I was floored by sound was probably the first time I saw the LA Symphony... I'd seen a few school and small, regional symphonies before -- but when all the players are in sync you get a hell of a lot more impact!

[max cooper]

Originally Posted by Colin Gaucher

I listened to the Grease soundtrack so don't worry about it.

Hey, I just bought that a couple of weeks ago at a used record store.

Some great songs; "Hopelessly Devoted", "You're the One that I Want" and especially the BeeGees-produced Frankie Valli theme.

Grease rules.

[3rdeyeKnight]

When Kraftwerk's "Trans-Europe Express" came on, nothingelse mattered at the time.

[ArcCirDude]

Originally Posted by theblue1

....captured my performance of Mary Had a Little Lamb a few years before.

Tom???? Tom Edison??? Is that you????

Originally Posted by theblue1

The next time I was floored by sound was probably the first time I saw the LA Symphony... I'd seen a few school and small, regional symphonies before -- but when all the players are in sync you get a hell of a lot more impact!

Players in sync!!!! When I was 9 I first heard Charles Ives "Washington's Birthday" live. Fantastic! (For those who aren't familiar, Ives wrote it so that it sounded like a parade, with two marching bands playing two different tunes at two different tempos. Incredible.)

[Watersound]

Hearing "let it be" for the first time when I was 7 or 8. Also hearing Steve Miller Band and ELO- shaped a lot of my early views of what great sound was...I can remember hearing "Fly Like an Eagle" for the first time with all those trippy synths- what memories!

[gm5k]

i was pretty old for my first "wow" with music, being around 11 or 12. but this really was the first time i was ever truly floored musically by anything.

without a doubt, it was the first time i heard Dream Theater