I remember the first time I saw the ‘Sugarhill Gang’ on Soul Train. I was 11 or 12. I was like, ‘What’s going on? How did those guys get on national TV?’ And then, when I was a little older, a rapper from the neighborhood got a record deal. I was shocked.
Television has given Pakistan a truly open national forum for the first time in its history. Ideas are debated, leaders are assessed and criticised, and a nation of 170 million people is finally discovering, together, what it thinks.
The first time I met Beyonce she was about 18 years old, sitting in a makeup chair eating fried chicken, and I knew it was only a matter of time before everyone would know her name.
With songs, it doesn’t matter what song it is; every time I go out and perform it, it’s like the first time I’m performing it, the first time I wrote it. If it’s not, then I’m not going to do it that night.
I would say Tracy Chapman was the first time I obsessed over an entire record. I knew every song; I knew the exact amount of seconds between each song. That’s the level of obsession that I had.
It’s the first time an exoskeleton has been controlled by brain activity and offered feedback to the patients. Doing a demonstration in a stadium is something very much outside our routine in robotics. It’s never been done before.
Listening to my dad playing guitar along to ‘Sleepwalk’ by the Shadows was probably the first time I discovered emotion in music.
I grew up watching those blaxploitation movies. Ron O’Neal, Richard Roundtree, Jim Brown, Pam Grier. For the first time, I saw ‘The Negro’ get one over on ‘The Man.’
The first time I saw the Rodney King video, I remember thinking, ‘Wow, these cops just got 100 years in jail.’ Obviously that didn’t happen.
The loss of the American colonies was the first time the process of British empire building had been put significantly into reverse, and became the starting point for a nostalgic yearning for lost colonies – and the wealth and global influence that came with them – that has become part of our national psyche.
The first time I wore a head scarf, I was 16. I looked and felt like a nun. I missed the wind in my hair. For me, it was not a comfortable thing to wear.
My first flight was to Majorca as a 17-year-old and I went to Seattle to visit a friend after that. But the first time I really ventured out abroad to Canada and Japan as well as to Europe, to France, Spain, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands, was to promote my first album.
I had wanted to play drums since the age of 9 when I saw a drum set in the window of a music store for the first time. We took lessons at a local music school and began playing together after about 6-9 months of lessons.
The first time I ever played the trumpet in public, I played the Marine Hymn. I sounded terrible.
In the year 1857, passing through Washington on our return from the annual visit to Philadelphia, I had the distinguished honor of visiting a President for the first time.
The first time Stuart Broad walked into the dressing room, with his flowing blond hair, striking blue eyes and perfect figure, I thought: ‘My God, she’s beautiful.’
The first time that I performed as an actor was the first day on the set of ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.’
‘Blue Valentine’ was a really sad movie, but I loved the moments when they’re discovering each other for the first time.
Usually, if you have a new idea, you very rarely break through to anything like recognizable development or implementation of that idea the first time around – it takes two or three goes for the research community to return to the topic.
You’d look out and there’d be little babies watching the show, and boys and girls. They loved the cowboys, and they loved Annie. There were young people seeing the show for the first time. I stayed for two years because I enjoyed it so much.
Better treatment and detection methods have also improved the survival rate for people with cancer, and for the first time in history, this year the absolute number of cancer deaths in the U.S. has decreased.
I had been a fan of Gene Wilder’s for many years, but the first time I saw him in person, my heart fluttered – I was hooked. It felt like my life went from black and white to Technicolor.
I can remember being at Sandringham, for the first time, at Christmas. And I was worried what to give the Queen as her Christmas present. I was thinking, ‘Gosh, what should I give her?’. I thought, ‘I’ll make her something.’ Which could have gone horribly wrong. But I decided to make my granny’s recipe of chutney.
These scenes deal with what happened before Hannibal Lecter was captured for the first time.
The world is very lucky to have America. It’s got to be the first time in the whole history of the planet that a country has been the dominant force in the world and it has actually been a force for good… America really deserves more credit.
The first time I had disposable income, the two things I cared most about were a television and a couch.
I got to work with my wife, Lena Olin, for the first time, which was great. I thought it might be difficult in some way to talk to one’s wife in a different way but it was so not forced.
Our coaches want to be a part of South Carolina football when they win it for the first time. When they win the division, when they win the SEC, win a major bowl game, etc. The opportunities to do it all for the first time here make it extra special.
Similarly, many a young man, hearing for the first time of the refraction of stellar light, has thought that doubt was cast on the whole of astronomy, whereas nothing is required but an easily effected and unimportant correction to put everything right again.
There was no music at all during my childhood. The first time we heard music was when my eldest brother bought a tape recorder. Even then, only he was allowed to touch it. But in our house, we listened to legends such as Muhammad Rafi, Mehdi Hasan, Noor Jehan, Attaullah Khan Esakhelvi.
I remember joining a boarding school in the sixth grade. I was lazy, complacent, and fat. Suddenly, I realised that I had to fend for myself. That’s when I discovered this drive within myself. For the first time, I ranked first in class, which was a miracle in itself. However, it didn’t matter to my family.
I was in my thirteenth year when I heard a voice from God to help me govern my conduct. And the first time I was very much afraid.
‘Jaws,’ first time I saw it, I forgot I was in it. True. Totally forgot, and got as scared as everybody else, and it’s a great movie.
My father was a promoter of Fresh Fest, and they needed an opening act. He got me a slot as a dancer. We tried it out the first time in Atlanta and the crowd went crazy. I was the opening clown.
Everything always looked better in black and white. Everything always looked as if it were the first time; there’s always more people in a black and white photograph. It just makes it seem that there were more people at a gig, more people at a football match, than with colour photography. Everything looks more exciting.
This has not changed: always like the first time, very, very nervous. But when the music begins, you are in the music, it’s a sort of transformation. Your feeling for the music is greater and has nothing to do with your nerves. You go out of yourself.
I always tell people I’m grateful for my cancer diagnosis because it was the greatest gift because it completely changed my life. I was able to stop and let my whole life and world just crash over me like a wave. And I stood there and went, ‘Wow.’ And for the first time, I stopped everything. I had to.
I did green screen for the first time! I wouldn’t like to do a whole movie of green screen, though. You kind of forget the plot a little – like being in a Broadway play and doing it over and over and forgetting your line halfway through.
I was miserable in West Side Story. They really miscast me. I came from the Midwest; what they really needed was a guy that was street smart. The first time I saw the movie, I had to walk out. I looked like the biggest fruit that ever walked on to film. My character was so weak.
The first time I went to the cinema was with my father. He was a huge fan of Peter Ustinov, so we went to see ‘Death on the Nile’ at the Hampstead Ionic.
Every time a consumer walks into a retail store, experiences the Nokia experience for the first time and purchases that product. Those are the moments where you say, ‘We’ve hit it. We’ve nailed it.’
America has been the country of my fond election from the age of thirteen, when I first saw it. I had the honour to hoist with my own hands the flag of freedom, the first time it was displayed, on the Delaware; and I have attended it with veneration ever since on the ocean.
Everybody has to learn for the first time.
I remember feeling all right with myself until age 13. Then, I was getting off the bus one day and this guy called me Miss Piggy. That was the first time I ever really felt like I wasn’t okay.
A girl didn’t get an athletic scholarship until the fall of 1972 for the very first time.
I remember, in 1999, the first time I met Steve Cram, I didn’t know who he was. It was only later, on YouTube, I started watching Seb Coe, Ovett. So it’s nice to be recognised as one of the best guys in the world.
I was staying with my sister and messing around with the guitar every day for my own amusement. Then she took me around and introduced me to Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, Little Walter, and the first time I saw that onstage, it inspired me to play. I thought that was the world.
