I recently was at Amoeba Hollywood and overheard a customer telling an employee Davy Jones had died. I hadn’t heard the news yet. She brought it up because she was buying Katy Perry records for her daughter. She said her daughter didn’t even have a record player — she just wanted every bit of Katy Perry merchandise she could get her hands on.
 
The only artist I can ever remember being that obsessive about was The Smashing Pumpkins, but that was in high school. But it got me thinking about those first tapes, records, singles etc. that everyone got as a kid.
 
For me, the first album I ever bought on my own was Ace of Base’s The Sign on cassette. I had always liked music, but at 11, I had just started to pay attention to what songs were on the radio. A friend made me a tape from the radio and “The Sign” was on it. I loved it. In the coming weeks and months, albums by Nirvana, Guns N’ Roses, Stone Temple Pilots, Green Day, and my beloved Pumpkins would follow, but really it all started with Ace of Base for me. Though if I’m being technical, I had a cassette single of Paula Abdul’s “Promise of a New Day” that I listened to constantly when I was like 9, but I didn’t buy that — I won it at a cousin’s music-themed birthday party, at which my dad dressed himself and me as Simon & Garfunkel. I had no idea who they were. I think I was Paul Simon.
 
While I’m embarrassing myself, I thought I’d extend the question to the other Amoeba bloggers: What was your first album? Not kids’ music, but not just the cool stuff, either — the tapes we once listened to repeatedly and then put away in a drawer somewhere once we realized how lame they were, though I’m still on the hunt for The Sign on vinyl. Here are their answers:
 
Eric Brightwell
My first record was Luciano Pavarotti's My Own Story, a compilation of “musical highlights of his spectacular career.” They used to heavily advertise it on TV when I got home from school, and I was hooked. My first cassette was Peter Gabriel's So. I'd liked the singles from it, but when “Big Time” came out, I was obsessed. My first CD was The Cure’s Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. I was introduced to it by a German exchange student named Ina. Before she left I rode my bike into town to a Wal-Mart to get a blank cassette to dub it. I loved it so much, I thought it warranted being purchased on CD. 
 

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Maybe it's because this is a leap year that Black History Month 2012, which ended two days ago, seemed a little out of whack. Or maybe it was because it was a Black History Month that started on a really bad note when, on the morning of Feb 1st, the tragic news that Don Cornelius of Soul Train fame had taken his own life was the first thing we were to read about. That was bad enough but this tragic news came hot on the heels of the world losing a string of other black music/cultural icons, including in just the preceding two weeks both Etta James and JImmy Castor.  And then, of course, ten days later, on the eve of the Grammys, the whole world was taken aback with the shocking news that Whitney Houston had died at age 48. Not exactly a great time to joyously celebrate black history!

      

Iconic pop singer/actress Whitney Houston died today around 4:00pm PST in a hotel room at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles. She was 48. According to a statement from Houston's publicist Kristen Foster who reported the singer's passing at a press conference, the cause of her death is, as yet, unknown. Afterwards it was reported that she was found submerged in the bath tub of her hotel room and that a variety of prescription drugs were found in her room. She was scheduled to perform Saturday evening at a pre-Grammy party for Arista's Clive Davis - her lifelong mentor. The death came as a major shock to everyone since Houston had been making a strong comeback of late after years of reported drug abuse (that famously affected her voice and derailed her career for several years). She was seemingly in good health and spirits right up to hours before her death, according to those who saw her in another pre-Grammys performance with Kelly Price (see fan video here) in which they sang a duet of  "Jesus Loves Me."

It is now likely that Sunday's big Grammys event, which was scheduled to have tributes to other recently deceased music industry figures such as Etta James (on the Amoeblog) and Don Cornelius (on the Amoeblog), will now have a last minute tribute to Houston - one of the biggest pop stars of recent decades. Houston will be remembered for the string of non-stop pop hits she put out in the 1980s and 1990s, including "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" and for her acting roles in such films as The Bodyguard (featuring the hit song "I Will Always Love You." See  video below.) and Waiting to Exhale, as well as for her family's rich musical background. Her mother, legend Cissy Houston, had her own successful gospel singing career and was a backup singer for Elvis Presley. Whitney's cousin was Dionne Warwick, her aunt was Thelma Houston, and her godmother was Aretha Franklin. 

We've all had that moment...the moment when you are in the grocery store or the bank or the donut shop, somewhere completely banal, where you are hidiously bored and spacing out...when, suddenly, something glorious happens...

A few months back I got a real chuckle out of friend who has years of experience working some big time gigs at a couple of major labels. He thought the sticker blog featuring multiple Janet Jackson stickers was a riot.  He had helped with the albums design, including the stickers, but really didn't recall designing different stickers for it.  Here's a whole gallery of sticker variations, none of which are as fun as the Janet example, but they do provide anecdotal details regarding the chronology of hits, attempted hits, awards, milestones etc...