My early years (early/mid 60's) had a ritual where we would visit my Grandparents on the Weekend. On Sunday we would set off home at about 6.30 listening to the charts on the radio.

So you are maybe thinking I'm going to say 'Please Please me' came on and I was transfixed. Nope can't remember any of that. What is burned upon my memory like a scar is the theme music of the next programme from 7.00p.m. An ascending harmonica preceding someone like the Mike Samms singers winding up dirge-like into...."Sing something simple"...They never got beyond the first line before my father would utter an expeletive under his breath and switch the radio off.

Ah you can't buy memories like that; and if you could, why would you?

Yes, TV and Radio themes seem to hold vivid memories too. I remember sitting in out kitchen listening to "Listen With Mother".

My Dad made loads of tapes for parties that then got relegated to the car. I remember him playing Oh Boy by Buddy Holly over and over again, at my request. The first year that I remember very clearly for music was 1978. Ian Dury, Brotherhood of Man (Figaro - I haven't heard it in thirty years, and the melody is still with me note for note. God knows why), the Grease soundtrack and listening to Lonnie Donegan, courtesy again of my Dad and car journeys.

Although, as I mentioned in another thread, he told me that I was very keen on Mud's Tiger Feet; and that was January 1974, so it predates everything I can remember.

my grandmother's mop, shaking it wildly and going 'She loves you yeah yeah yeah' in front of a highly appreciative audience.

listening to "Ommadawn" by Mike Oldfield in my parents' living room. I remember I loved the atmosphere of it, it seemed strange and beautiful to me at the age of 6. Still does, actually...

Very vivid this one. Picture the scene.

1964, at home with my mum. 5 years old.

Chimney sweep hard at work in the parlour. Young Paul looking on avidly. Never seen the like. Radio (presumably the 'Light' programme) playing one of the hits of the day in the background. Chimney sweep humming along softly as he worked.

Suddenly the song reaches the 'hook' and the sweep turns around, caked in soot from head to foot, thrusts a sooty palm in my direction and bawls..

'...I Wanna Hold Your Hand....'

Actually this should have gone under the 'scariest things ever' thread below.

Tiny Tim, on the radio, singing "Tiptoe through the Tulips." I was three or four at the time.

...but when I was a nipper, I used to pester my parents constantly to put on my favourite tape, which was an album by the one, the only...

Jason Donovan :(

the relatively embarrassing Me & You & A Dog Named Boo by Lobo, or Wichita Lineman, both of which I would have heard on 2YA, a New Zealand radio station that very rarely played any music at all, but was my parent's station of choice.

But not quite - first memory is "Champion the wonder horse", closely followed by a couple of singles of "The Lone Ranger"...

Trivia (from the relevant website): Although Frankie Laine made a recording of the 'Champion the Wonder Horse' theme, it was Norman Luboff, the writer of the music, who sang the theme for the introduction and over the credits of the series, due to Frankie Laine's unavailablility for the recording session.

My Mum bought "She loves you" when it came out and I do remember it - I'd have been 5, but I fear it wasn't the first memory.

BTW - bringing my new born son home from the hospital I sat his chair in front of the stereo and played him "Willin'" off "Waiting for Columbus" - no fuken Frankie Laine substitute for my boy!

I can't pinpoint an earliest musical memory. It's all rather mixed up. As far as records in the house went there was a pile of 78s (all bar one-Elvis' My Baby Left Me) pre rock and roll, a few 45s some of which I'd asked for and still have: Manfred Mann's Do Wah Diddy Diddy/What You Gonna Do, Sha La La/John Hardy (2 fine B sides that I grew to like more than the A sides), Wayne Fontana's version of Um Um Um Um Um Um (the composer credit reads Curtis & Mayfield), some that were passed on by relatives etc: Twinkle's Terry, The Everly's Cathy's Clown. I also remember liking Val Doonican's comedy numbers such as Paddy McGinty's Goat (which is on the 13 Lucky Shades of Val Doonican along with a song written for Val by Paul Simon under the psuedonym Paul Kane). I remember liking The Beatles but not enough to own any records.
The Monkees were later favourites. As was the England World Cup Squad's Back Home.

My next door neighbours, the brothers MacKenzie, had matching Watkins Rapier guitars and played the Shadows constantly, even throwing in the synchronised foot steps. Toe Tapper, Kon-Tiki, The Savage, Wonderful Land. They did this all day every day except Sunday afternoon when their dad reserved the phonogram for Wagner's The Ring Cycle. My babysitter, Hilary Hawthorne, brought piles of 45's by the Fabs and Dusty. The Beatles were thus so early ingrained in my psyche that I never felt the need to champion them later in life.

you're sure of a big surprise.

Today's the day!

Okay, then, here goes.

My first musical memory is a tangled compendium of Billy Cotton's Band Show, The Black and White Minstrels, Acker Bilk and Val Doonican, all fused into a goateed Irish bloke in a vast jumper and spangly waistcoat, his face caked with boot polish, screaming "Wakey, way-kay!" at me and whistling with malice aforethought.

Joe "Mr Piano" Henderson, Russ Conway, Liberace and Mrs Mills merge similarly into something so unprecedently hideous I'd best go no further.

Mr Tambourine man, is the clearest early musical memory I have, and much as I could choose to say it was Dylans original I heard, it was clearly the Byrds that I sang along with, in the breakfast room (do houses still have these?) I had always hoped it would be something earlier, as time tells me I was 5, maybe 6, but I still feel pleased it wasn't something naffer.
Later my 2 first singles of "Living in the past"/J Tull and "Si tu dois partir" F'port suggest that even at 12 I was a lost cause.....
Albums: "L.A. woman"/Doors and "Pictures at an Exhibition"/ELP, both aged 13. Even allowing for historys revision of the latter pop group, I must have been an insufferable b******.......................

The Rocking Horse Cowboy. My introduction to alt.country.

Tv programme "Handful Of Songs" with a catchy theme tune, my sister playing Donnie & Marie Osmond "Morning Side of the mountain" on her record player and the radio playing "Y Viva Espana". Grim.

My dad had a wonderful old wind-up gramophone (HMV style, but without the dog) in our shed, together with a stack of old 78's and a couple of tins of needles. The only record I remember playing, probably because I played it several times a day, was Lonnie Donegan's Putting on the Style/Gamblin' Man.

with Uncle Mac. The Runaway Train; Nellie the Elephant; Ringo... I've seen there's a CD for those of us old enough to remember all thats, but I don't want to revisit it.

My first memory is imitating a high-kicking "Little" Jimmy Osmond in imitation of his performance of "Long Haired Lover From Liverpool" on Top Of The Pops. That's not good is it?

And then some years later, having missed out on it first time round, I went out bought the re-recorded album with Rory Galagher, Brian May, Leo Sayer and Elton John. What a night that was (kertishhh). I don't recall a similar dues-paying Pinky and Perky album, but I may have missed it.

Lonnie Donnegan - Tom Dooley, My Old Man's A Dustman, the 10" LP Lonnie Donnegan Showcase, all on Pye Nixa.

Loads of 78 rpm singles on the Happy Time label. I'm Popeye The Sailor Man, for one. Coloured vinyl ahoy!

Cliff Richard's Living Doll/Apron Strings 45 on green label Columbia.

Shirley Bassey At The Pigalle album on Columbia. I've just bought a copy of this on CD. It's taken me years to find. I could burn it for you, but that would be illegal. But you need to hear it! It's amazing. Forget The Who Live At Leeds. Never mind Kick Out The Jams. Ditch Live At The Lyceum. Get Bassey at The Pigalle.

Ken Dodd & The Diddymen LP on MFP. Groovy.

Lots of children's singles on HMV. The Tale Of Jemima Puddleduck. In yellow vinyl, of course.

Nat 'King' Cole singing I'm Hurtin'. I'd love to say that this was a Capitol original 78, but it was merely part of a bog-standard World Record Club L.P.

It wasn't all good - I can remember when The Light Programme had to employ orchestras and singers (i.e. Danny Street and, believe it or not, Mark Murphy) to record ghastly knock-off versions of recent top twenty hits. Needle time and some bizarre MU rules prevented them playing too many records per hour. Mind you, this gave rise to the BBC recording thousands of hours of sessions (notably for John Peel) for the very same reason - that they couldn't afford to play the actual records.

Actually, I could probably live without an awful lot of the Peel Sessions. Those recorded after 1977, anyway.

Give me Shirley!

Listening under the covers at night.

And talking of horses and TV there was this:

.... I used to rock myself in my pram to Herman & The Hermits & shout Noonie at the tv a little later in life. Cringe. Thankfully it isn't my memory, one from my mum.

I suppose my first memory is of my dad playing Jim Reeves & Johnny Cash, my mum playing her big band stuff (Joe Loss, Johnny Dankworth etc) & Elvis. Lots of Elvis.

Like so many here, sitting patiently for Champion the wonderhorse to begin, I loved that!

The only other theme to move me since is Smallville - Remy Zeros 'Save me'

I'd completely forgotten them. But now recall I wouldn't come in and get dried in front of the fire when they were on Ready Steady Go (had to be, bathnight was friday and TOTP was thursday) because I knew Peter Noone would see my willy. Cos' he seemed to always be looking at me. Oh, the horror, the horror.....

...it's listening to 'The Baby Elephant Walk' in the car on the way to my Grannie's house some time in the mid-1970s. Thinking logically it was probably one of my Mum's Cliff Richard tapes, but me peering over the window sills in a Humber Hawk with that keyboard 'doo dah doo dee doo dee doo dee doo dit' melody is the one that has the emotional resonance.

Which, now I come to think of it, explains my mid-90s loungecore obssession.