well i grew up listening to les mis and phantom...my parents were big fans. but the first obc i bought myself was fiddler on the roof. i still love that show.
Ummm...I don't think I can remember the first one I bought, although I think it may have been Into the Woods(Peters version) and The Secret Garden OBC. I remember those I bought on the same day. The first thing my parents bought me was the OLC of Les Miz.
"The weight of this sad time we must obey, Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most; we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long"-Edgar in King Lear
My first ones were pretty much given when my dad worked at Sony, like ByeBye Birdie, Annie, Camelot and some cds with dif Bway songs. The first one I bought I think was Once Upon a Mattress or Joseph...
"Have a child for warmth and a baker for bread and a prince for... whatever!"
Technically, Rent was the first cast recording for me, 7th grade. First show I really came to obsess about and probably started the course for me as a Broadway freak...
But what's really interesting is my aunt used to drive me to nursery school and everyday we would listen to some of her Cabaret movie soundtrack tape. First, we would only listen to Wilkomenn and Money, Money. Then we expanded to include Mein Herr and Two Ladies. Eventually, we'd listen to the whole thing. Then a couple of years later, when I was obsessing over the movie, I made my mom buy me the Sound of Music soundtrack tape. So though neither were cast recordings, I guess the ground was laid early for me to a BWWer.
"If there was a Mount Rushmore for Broadway scores, "West Side Story" would be front and center. It snaps, it crackles it pops! It surges with a roar, its energy and sheer life undiminished by the years" - NYPost reviewer Elisabeth Vincentelli
What a fun thread! I grew upmin the 1960s and my parents had a large collection of cast albums. Hits (MY FAIR LADY, SOUND OF MUSIC, THE MUSIC MAN) and flops (SUBWAYS ARE FOR SLEEPING, THE HAPPIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD) The first one I remember listening to all the way through was MY FAIR LADY.
The first one I saved up allowance money and bought when I was about 10 was the Decca OCR of CAROUSEL ("enhanced for stereo" it said in a pink band across the top of the jacket. That meant that they added a lot of echo and made it sound tinny and hollow!) After that, I saved up for FLOWER DRUM SONG, GYPSY, DAMN YANKEES and the complete 3 LP set of MOST HAPPY FELLA.
The first CD I bought was SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE (before I even had a CD player to play it on.) When Cd's came along I vowed not to let any titles slip through my fingers, So I got every disc in the Broadway Angel series, the Sony Broadway series and the RCA Victor series. Now I am finishing off my Decca Broadway series. I have Lps, Cd's, 78s, 45s plus books posters playbills all fighting for space in my apartment. I spend hours answering e-mails from collectors all over the world, reading playbill-on-line and Broadwayworld, and going to 3-4 plays/musicals a week. Am I out of control???
Cast albums are NOT "soundtracks." Live theatre does not use a "soundtrack." If it did, it wouldn't be live theatre!
I host a weekly one-hour radio program featuring cast album selections as well as songs by cabaret, jazz and theatre artists. The program, FRONT ROW CENTRE is heard Sundays 9 to 10 am and also Saturdays from 8 to 9 am (eastern times) on www.proudfm.com
frontrow - it sounds to me like you are fabulously involved with what your passion in life is - and there is NEVER anything wrong with that. Follow your bliss!
Not realizing that is was the OBCR my first was a vinyl LP of The Best Little Whore House in Texas. I was 11. I was a huge fan of the movie and plus I liked the art work on the front. I was so disappointed when I got it home and opened it and put it on the record player and didn't hear Dolly Parton singing. I don't know what happened to it. I have the CD now and I love it.
The first cast album that I bought as a theatre fan was Les Miserables. The year was 1991. I was 19 and it was a cassette.
Updated On: 3/3/05 at 02:22 PM
The first CD I bought was WICKED last April, but the first CD I received was Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. I have since then bought many of my favorite shows on CD. I am obsessed with listening to Broadway and that is pretty much all I listen to. What a great thread. I am so glad people are creative.
"There are times when were dirt broke, and hungry and freezing and I ask myself why the hell am I still living here?...And then they call!" ~ Mark Cohen RENT movie
My first one was Annie because I was in it back in middle school when I was 14... I was Mr. Bundles but I count Fiddler or Wicked as my first because they truly got me into musicals
The first cast recording I can remember buying with my own money, was the London Cast Recording of MY FAIR LADY, after seeing the show in 1959. We had just gotten a stereo (very new thing and very expensive), and the London recording was in stereo, so I bought it. I don't believe I've listened to the OBC, since! We had lots of cast recordings, however, including the OBC of MFL. The first one I can remember listening to was the original cast recording of OKLAHOMA!, which was in a real album of records.
I grew up listening to the tape of "The Phantom of the Opera" (yes, a tape, this was the 80s). Then when I was 12, and CDs were just starting to become the new thing, my uncle, who's a music critic, gave me the CDs he had received of the Anthony Warlow "Jekyll and Hyde" and the Vanessa Williams "Kiss of the Spider Woman." So those were my first...