Welcome to The Sodom and Gomorrah Show!
One of my all-time favorites. I went out today after PT in search of a couple Laura Branigan CDs albums I had in iTunes but not in physical format. Yeah, I could’ve cut corners and ordered directly from Discogs, but why not support a local business if I can?
My first stop was BookOff. I was certain they’d have them, but alas, not a single Branigan CD was to be found. It was there I noticed Fundamental. I was reasonably certain I already had this in my collection considering how much I liked it, but I still double-checked my database to make sure before plopping down seven bucks at the counter.*
Anyhow, my next stop after leaving BookOff was Zia Records. Twenty years ago it never failed me, but It’s been so long since I was there I wasn’t even sure it was still in business.
It is. And business was booming. (This was one aisle that was not packed with shoppers.)
Again, no Laura Branigan. WTF? Granted, I didn’t search any of the numerous bargain bins as I wanted to get home, but there was nothing in the regular racks.
It turns out my timing was impeccable. Within a few minutes after returning home, DHL arrived to drop off a package from Quebec, the other item in the photo above.
“What?” you may ask, “Another CD player?!” Yes, Virginia. Another Discman. I found this in an eBay auction three weeks ago. I put in a reasonable bid—no more than I was willing to pay if the bidding heated up—never expecting to win.
I’m starting to think I should buy a lottery ticket because yet again, I won the auction.
It took weeks to get from Fermont to the international border, but once it passed customs, it arrived here overnight.
Now I hate to have two “Wow” posts in two days, but I have no other word for this. The D-7 was the very first Discman I ever owned, and this one isabsolutely flawless. No scratches, no missing pieces, no corrosion on the chrome bits…it makes me wonder if it was sitting in a hermetically sealed box, unused, for the last 40 years. The seller indicated that “the batteries in BP-200 battery pack have been replaced,” indicating the unit has received service, because it requires some very specialized skills to swap out the original cells with modern replacements, and it’s behaving like it was given a complete going over.
So how does it sound? Perfect, as I expected. Yeah, like the other players from the 80s that I own, you look at it wrong and it skips, but that’s to be expected since there was no anti-skip technology at the time. And unlike the other models I have from the era, the mechanism on this D-7 is absolutely silent. Kudos to whoever serviced this thing.
*Well fuck. It turns out I did already had it. The reason it didn’t show up in the database was that I inadvertently searched for “Fundamental ” (with an errant space at the end of the name) and not “Fundamental” (no space).
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