…when I said “Sheer Heart Attack” was the first album I bought I really meant it was the first proper album by a proper group and all that. I think the actual very first long player I ever purchased was “Hot Hits 15″ which I’d forgotten all about until I came across its sleeve online and it all came back to me.

It was 1972 and my sister and I had each gotten 50p record tokens for Christmas so we went down to our local Woolworth’s intending to buy a single each (they cost 45p back then.) But then we saw the above album packed with a dozen chart hits for only 99p! What an amazing deal we thought, all those songs for the price of two 45s! So we pooled our record tokens and bought it, thinking we’d struck pop gold. Sadly, when we got it home we discovered to our dismay that the tracks weren’t the orignal versions at all but dreadful sound-a-likes performed (I assume) by anonymous session singers.

Even though we thought it was rubbish and a swindle we didn’t take the album back, being English we were cursed with not wanting to “make a fuss” and also thought you couldn’t take something back simply because you didn’t like it. No, we’d paid our money and made our choice and were stuck with it. Sadly, I don’t have it anymore, otherwise I could have treated you to a really bad cover of “What Made Milwaukee Famous.”

For more on the the Hot Hits albums and a really great cover gallery (“Vol. 6″ is particularly good) visit Easy on The Eye.