But don't worry, that doesn't mean I'm gonna pick Jonas Brothers or some other tosh.

Mine was The Bends by Radiohead, and Disintegration by The Cure (Who I had the honour of seeing live at the O2 in February!)

Can't Buy A Thrill.

Or maybe Joni's The Hissing of Summer Lawns.

Or perhaps R(and L)T's Pour Down Like Silver.

Or possibly this: http://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Big-Wheels-Of-Motown/release/491786

All purchased around the same time in 1976. (A little slow off the mark, perhaps, but I like to think I hit the ground running.)

for I believe it may have been 'The Doors' by The Doors after hearing 'Light My Fire' on the radio and I found the LP to be more strange and exciting than I could have dreamed. My father used to make tapes for parties and sometimes asked me for suggestions - something like 'Caroline' by The Quo, for example, would be accepted. I offered 'Break On Through To The Other Side', I genuinely thought he would go for it. He wasn't impressed. Didn't ask me again.

Warrior

Thick as a Brick. I immersed myself in its Baroque glory and it marked the point when I got serious about music. I still love it to this day.

...and it was Billy Joel's An Innocent Man. When I heard it for the first time I thought it was the greatest record ever. I have spent 25 yearsand bought many records trying to recreate that feeling...

Close to the Edge.

I was listening to Bowie, Roxy, Slade, etc., age about 13 I suppose

One summer I and a few friends spend the whole summer holidays playing poker for matches, and raiding Muttley's big brother's record collection. That summer, I heard the aforesaid CTTE, Minstrel in the Gallery, The Inner Mounting Flame, Romantic Warrior, Angels Egg and countless others - never looked back!

But CTTE really lit up something in me which has never quite been put out...

and I still get the same feeling when I play it - thirty-odd years later.

A bargain - the best I ever had.

1st single was Dreaming by Blondie bought with my communion money and !st album was Motorhead by Motorhead. Both were brilliant although Blondie has stayed with me

The Number Of The Beast

Prior to that it was all singles round my way.

It was 2001. I was 13.

Before that all I'd heard was pop music on the radio. Then my friend gave me this album on minidisc and it blew my tiny mind.
I know they have better albums, but this will always be the one that got me in to rock music.

that for most of us it was something equally as embarrassing as Metal Rendezvous" by Krokus.

Of course in interviews most musicians will insist it was the first VU album or similar - they are lying!

Mine was Rainbow Rising! I couldn't believe how brilliant Stargazer was!

how would you explain that to any sane thinking 16 year old?

it was 2002, I heard a track off "Blood Money", so bought "Rain Dogs" for £2 in HMV. My brain nearly exploded it was so good.

I had discovered the new sound.

Their first album. Bought it in a tiny second hand shop in Kingston station[the shop's not there anymore, don't bother looking.]
Still love that record nearly 40 years on

Michael Jackson and it is still fantastic, despite the fact he's crazy as a loon.

...in the fall of 1969. A neighbor across the alley had had a fight with his girlfriend or something, scarpered, and left a small pile of albums next to the garbage bin. One of them was CCR's Willy and the Poorboys. I guess it had been sitting out for a while by the time I found it, because there was a bit of fungus or something on the cover. The record itself was in less than perfect condition; only by getting my brother to adjust our family console stereo's tonearm to maximum pressure was I able to play it. But play it I did. I didn't think "***k me" because such usages were not yet in my vocabulary, but I played that record probably more times than any record I have ever owned. It remains, to this day, one of my five favorite albums ever.

...albeit some 15 years after release

L.A.Woman was the 2nd LP I owned and first I bought, the earlier Sgt Pepper being a gift from big sis. I am still quite self-satisfied and smug about that purchase, it being still a favourite. Then I bought Pictures at an Exhibition....

Has never been bettered. Even the cover used to fasinate me

Electric Warrior

As I was too young to know of such language - especially as I was living in Karachi at the time. Anyway, my parents had an old Revox-type reel-to-reel tape machine, and my memory is telling me that it was on this machine that I heard Abbey Road and Bridge Over Troubled Water. Could this be possible? I do remember looking at the sleeve of the Beatles album and quizzing my father who wrote one of the songs. "John Lennon" he replied. "No, it was Lennon McCartney!" my 7 or 8 year old self riposted triumphantly.

The first time I can remember the stirring of some kind critical faculty and realisation of hearing something truly great was a couple of years later, back in London, when I heard Born To Run on the old Capital Radio. I knew it was the business. As to the first album I really loved, it would have been either Bat Out Of Hell or Rebel (John Miles).

Adam and the Ants - still listen to it, still a classic and twelve gold bars by quo - had 'living on an island', 'mystery song' and 'wild side of life', 3 quo classics, not mention 'caroline' etc.

Mine was Kings of the Wild Frontier

I was 11....and that switched me on. Think it was the first time I'd heard the word "sex"

already had the antmusic and kings of the wild frontier 7"'s - still can't think of a better pop group to start off with.

by The B-52's

Still does it for me.

...age 13, and on came Going For The One by Yes.

Blew me away!

... Rainbow's "Difficult to Cure" on a mono Thorn cassette player, in my parents back garden. Summer 1981 I think, and from memory the weather was glorious, we spent most of it outside chilling out and playing board games, listening to that album.

Sometime in 1979...I probably didn't say "F*** me" either as I was quite a well behaved child. Grease soundtrack, Abba and ELO were consigned to mum and dad's record stash, no more trumpet in the school orchestra and the trousers got narrower and the school tie shorter and skinnier!

In about 1983. I was 13 or 14. Let's Dance had just come out, and I remember wanting to like it, but not really doing so. Then a neighbour lent me Ziggy. F*** Me. I just totally fell for it. Five Years, Moonage Daydream and Rock'n'Roll Suicide were my favourites, and the final chorus of Moonage Daydream still brings teenage memories flooding back. Good days.....

I was into 10CC , then I discovered Genesis...whoaaa!

When I was 15 a mate at school lent me a tape with some bits and bobs on it, things like a Wedding Present Peel session (the one with Felicity which was quite nice) and the like; he was was a total indie kid and hardcore Smiths fan.

Then I turned the tape over...

"What did God give us Neil?"
"God gaves us life Nigel"
"Sure did! 1..2..3..4, John the Baptist knows the score..."

That was the first time I ever heard Back In the DHSS by Birkenhead's finest, Half Man Half Biscuit. Alright, the playing was shambolic and it sounded like it had been recorded in a toilet (because it pretty much had been), but lyrically it was just like being belted with a cattle prod. I just couldn't stop laughing.

But the most important thing was that here was someone whose brain seemed to be wired like mine, because I just 'got' it as soon as those first bars started playing. I still love that album, and even now and go back to it quite often.

20 Greatest Hits. It was 1988, I was ten, it started with She Loves You and I haven´t landed since.

Want to say something worthy but I fear it is Cheap Trick's 'Live At The Budokan'. Recently got the 2cd unexpurgated version and that just made me happy as hell.

http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/The_Muppet_Show_(album)

I was seven years old & even then I knew it was all killer, no filler!
This was my fave track, it would take years of deep therapy to discover why...

You can learn a lot from Lydia!

Mainly for "Harry's House/Centrepiece". Which led to the discovery of Jazz. Mmmmm nice.

Actually, I found the soundscapes of Hejira and Mingus - particularly The Wolf that Lives in Lindsay - unlike anything else in the Rockular hemisphere too.

i could say high tide and green grass in particular little red rooster

but compilations are sort of cheating

declares war, for me was so original - the english burdon and the seriously funky war , roland kirk tribute , loudermilk's tobacco road , lee oskar's harp playing and a hit to boot with spill the wine

still got it , still play it

The first albums I bought / loved were ELO's 'Out of The Blue' and Queen's @A Night at The Opera', thanks to my Dad's tutelage.
But the first time I listened to something new with a sense of discovery, joy and "f**k me" awe was the start of my 'heavy rock' phase. I was about 12, and so it included things like

AC/DC - Highway to Hell - pure stripped-down rock. 'Walk All Over You' is still pretty freakin' awesome.
Iron Maiden - Killers

and soon after the more elaborate works of RUSH (2112, Exit-Stage Left) and (euurgh, the shame of it) MARILLION (Script for A Jester's Tear)

...which one of these hit first - but each one fascinated and thrilled; made me feel young, fearless, full of yearning.This was 25 years ago so I guess I was all those things! Yet these records crystallised those sensations for me - named them. Most still get me daydreaming and dancing, and have remained life long friends:

OMD - Electricity
ABC - Lexicon of Love
Japan - Tin Drum
The Dame - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
The Doors - The Doors

…and it was perhaps the third, maybe fourth, album I’d ever bought. But I recall being comprehensively astounded when I heard Close To The Edge by Yes for the first time. I can’t remember exactly why I bought it, but it certainly wasn’t because I’d heard any of it on the radio. Perhaps the sleeve’s fetching shade of green caught my eye. Either way, I’d never heard anything like it in my life. Decades later, with my original copy long gone, I was listening to an American classic rock station on the net at work, and heard ‘And You And I’ followed by a glorious Proustian rush. I went out and bought the CD that evening. And you know what? It still sounds good.

Miss Piggy (see above) made the wise observation - never eat more than you can lift

I remember where I was and who was there. It changed my life. Previously I was into Genesis and had long hair. I cut it off, declared 'new wave' as my music and never looked back. My listening lineage starts from that day.

Couldn't imagine being an angst struck "sensitive" adolescent without this to see me through. At my worst I was listening to it 3 or 4 times a day and ALWAYS before bed as I secretly smoked and agonized about the injustice of it all.

I still think it's a belting record despite still not liking "Love Calls You By Your Name".

First serious album? Has to be Elvis No2 on the HMV label with Elvis on the front in a Daily Sketch picture, him wearing the green velvet he wore in the famous Memphis show, but the outfit has been hand coloured; I forget what you call that process. The album is still in mind condition and I believe it could be worth more than £300/£500 if I wanted to sell it ... which I don't. I got it at the age of 16, I think, and I've still got it at the age of 65. A treasure.

....it was something sexy, but in remote west Wales at age 13 and trying to compete with my uber cool older brother, my first f*ck me album was Split by The Groundhogs. Thinking about it (for the first time in years), I probably still like it!

One of the first albums I bought and the 'wow' album was Elton's Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy from 1975. I've kept the lp - flash packaging and all. It was one of the few that survived the cull when I traded my 'rock' albums in for punk (only to buy them all over again on cd) and it still sounds great.

Kilimanjaro by the Teardrop Explodes... What an album!

One of the worst cover pictures of all time; everyone involved, even Julian Cope looked monumentally uncool, something I find immensely endearing. All the songs played very fast, everything very strange.

What exactly DID he mean by:
"So how's yer second head? / Is it the first one you started out with?"
"The poppies are in the field / But don't ask me what that means"
Was he weird? Was he on, you know, drugs??

For the next ten years, I watched in a sort of horrified admiration as Copey torched his pop "career", made increasingly tuneless and demented solo albums, and turned into a mad pagan druid. With a Beard. And a German army helmet.

And I still think "When I Dream" is possibly the best pop record of the 80s.

So there.

the first album I ever heard in its entirety - and which completely blew me away - was "Disreali Gears" by Cream. We had a maroon leatherette covered Marconi gramaphone deck and some singles my parents had bought ("Green Door", "return to sender") but an older cousin lent me a few albums to listen to. First one up was Disreali Gears, it opened my ears to a whole universe of music I never knew existed(until that point anyway)and I have never looked back since.

by Aerosmith. Mick n, Keef clones beating a by then redundant Stones at their own game. Still kicks ass.

By the way what does Disraeli Gears mean ? I know who he was but what the gears about ?

The first brudda's album blew me away alright, at first I thought it was a Jonathan King type pastiche/joke, but as punk was just being born, what was it a pastiche of?
Still think that it's a work of genius, as long as you whack the bass up and play just above 11.

Radio Birdman were a home grown garage punk rock from Sydney Australia. Their first album was only available as a special order pressed on heavy vinyl and presented in a heavy cardboard two colour sleeve (black and red on white). This album tore the roof off. It will always be the ultimate rock-out. These guys were the proverbial sh*t. Two of my friends at school got copies and we spoke of it in hushed tones...these days, you would say it was "awesome", back in 1977, it was the sound of God.

I came to it late, probably 1977 when I was 13 when I should have been listening to The Damned obviously. Prior to that I'd dabbled in Slade, Queen etc - I blame the lack of an older brother to set me straight.

Anyway, I saw this weird looking sleeve in the window of the small record shop in my home town, reduced to £1.49. I'll have a bit of this I thought, not knowing anything about Genesis.

As soon as I heard The Musical Box, about a young boy having his head knocked off by his croquet playing sister then coming back as a geriatric pedophile, I was hooked. They really dont write them like that any more. That mix of the surreal, of folk music, weird English humour, some truly great playing and - every bit as important and something tragically lost these days - that glorious album sleeve, dressed up like a Victorian photo album, I was lost. Genesis can still reduce me to a state where time stands still and there's nothing but that music going on, 30 odd years later.

And, saddo that I am, a limited edition lithograph of the Nursery Cryme cover still hangs above my desk from where I'm typing thisdrivel now. Now that's a record with lasting impact.

I lived and breathed Grunge for the next few years after buying this album - it gave me my teenage identity... my parents hated it, of course. Big bonus. I count it as one of my top 5 favourite albums ever and still feel a atrange loyalty to the band, buying every new album even though I feel they have somehow lost their way a little bit.

My favourite lyrics ever are on this album.

Absolutely fantastic, especially if you were growing up in a small village 15 miles outside Middlesbrough. Isn't it about time Stuart Goddard was given a bit of kudos for being a rather brilliant pop star?

I was, mmm, 15 I think

Tarkus by ELP. 15 and I thought it was the greatest sound ever. I soon learned better

Bought it from Millets in Chester when I was 11. Loved it. Still get a chill when I hear the ringing soft guitar intro to Man In The Cornershop now.

The first album. I heard Chuck E's in Love on the radio, saw the cover portrait of her smoking a cigarillo and knew it was for me. I was convinced it would make me seem mysterious, romantic and cool to all the beautiful kooky girls in my hometown. 25 years on I know better but her voice still gives me goosebumps.

I was in a small town called Auch in the south of France in ?May 1976. My friend's flatmate, Christine, had this album. It just blew me away - every bit of it.

Yep, as a teenager I was introduced to the album 'Do It Yourself' by a school friend and thought it's mix of catchy choruses and the odd air guitar was an absolute winner. Blew my socks off at the time.

The first truly monumental album, consistently good from A to Z, was Ghost In The Machine by The Police (including the cringe of sitting in the back of my parents' car when Sting rhymes "Billy joined the National Front, he always was a little runt, he's got his hand in the air with the other c*nts" on Rehumanize Yourself).

But, to be honest, the album that first blew me away was Rio by Duran Duran. I was 12 - just about to turn a new corner in music, having been woken up to the Giorgio Moroder sequencers of Japan - and the (very similar) blend of styles, the groove, and the electronic effects of Rio dazzled me. So much so, that as soon as the arm came off side one of the record, I had to go back to the beginning again.

Regardless of what the beard-y Word massive say, I shall hold my head up with pride on that one.

Flipping forward, the most recent album that I've thought was consistently good from start to finish was... Future Chaos by Bomb the Bass last year. In truth there aren't that many of them around anymore.

Lifted (Or The Story Is In The Soil Keep Your Ear To The Ground)

got me into music that wasn't what my brother liked.

I nearly levitated, I was 14, it was on vinyl and The Kiss was probably the bestest track I had ever heard in my life!