Category: Compact Disc Life

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Ah, Memories…

It was a simpler time. Groceries this week or five new CDs? Decisions, decisions! So…ramen it is! (I had my priorities, after all!)

(Yes, I tagged this in the Decline and Fall of Civilization category because as a society we lost something when music stores died.)

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We All Remember Our First

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This is the device I spent many a summer afternoon listening to Miami Sound Machine on—not the one in my photo the other day. That was my second portable, and as near as I can remember, I didn’t get that one until after I’d moved to San Francisco—although I have no memory of where or when exactly I acquired it. Getting old sucks.

(As cringeworthy to read as they are now, I’m so glad I kept journals of my adventures in The City from 1987 thru 2001. It’s almost as if I knew at the time at some point they’d be the only way for me to verify when shit happened.)

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Why Did An Inveterate Disco Dolly Like Myself NOT Have These In My Collection?

Yeah, I have them on vinyl (of course), but while I thought I had replaced most of my collection of late 70s Cerrone goodness on CD, I went to play Cerrone’s Paradise the other day and realized that I had not. Sure, I had his seminal work, Love in C-Minor, and even a couple of his later releases (Supernature Symphony and Disco Symphony) on CD, but these two (along with The Golden Touch and Cerrone V) were absent. I opted to replace these two now and wait on the others.

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Spring 1986

Almost period-appropriate for the player this morning.

I remember the drummer Enrique “Kiki” Garcia always give me the tingles down there. It’s funny how I realize now that for the most part, all of the actors and musicians who had such a profound effect on me in my 20s and 30s were my peers in age.

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Released 41 Years Ago Today

Dire Straits: Brothers In Arms (1985)

On May 13, 1985,  Dire Straits Released Their 5th Album, “Brothers in Arms.” It spent 9 weeks atop the Billboard 200 album chart, and has sold over 30 Million copies worldwide. It was also the first album to sell over 1 Million copies in CD format.

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Peak Design

Sony D-10

I’ve always thought that the Sony Discman models from the late 80s through possibly the early 90s was when Sony hit peak design. For the most part they were still heavy, all metal cases and high quality components throughout. Sure, this was before the “g-force” technology came into existence so all you’d have to do is give one some side-eye and it would skip, but you couldn’t fault their aesthetic. While Sony marketed them as on-the-go machines, they really weren’t. Portable? Yes—portable as in they weren’t 18-inch wide units you’d find in a home stereo. They were—and still are—perfect for desk use, which is where I use mine. I remember taking my Discman to work and jamming out to Miami Sound Machine on many a hot summer afternoon while drafting construction documents at Kim Acorn Associates in Tucson, Arizona..

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So Much For Nostalgia

So much for nostalgia. Lately I’ve run across a few—admittedly very few—CDs that glitch out when played on my vintage player that I was gushing over a few short weeks ago. (Honestly, with everything going on in the world should I be surprised?)

So I hauled out the Yamaha player I bought new in 2023, and of course it played anything I threw at it. I prefer the looks of the older Yamaha, but what I really prefer is that whatever unit I use works.

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Further Praise For The Humble Compact Disc

I was chatting with my friend Ken earlier today about our mutually-shared passion for hifi equipment (he was the one who got me hooked on all this shit back when we were in high school), and after him sending me some reviews for impossibly high-end equipment (including the latest Technics turntable), I remarked that since I’ve gotten back into CDs and MiniDiscs over the past couple years, despite my huge vinyl collection, I’ve played maybe two records in that entire time—and that was to dub the records onto MD.

As the discussion progressed, I went on to say that even though I rationally understand how optical digital media works, to this day I’m still amazed that it does at all—especially when considering the level of precision engineering and miniturization  that went into MiniDisc equipment. It’s no wonder that in my nerd world I still sit back in wonder whenever I put on one of those shiny discs and music comes out the other end.

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43 Years Ago The Way We Listened To Music Changed Forever

I honestly don’t, but it was probably something on the Private Music label. I only say that because they were being sold at the same audio salon where I bought the player. The one CD that left a lasting impression when I first got it (maybe a year later) was Ammonia Avenue by The Alan Parsons Project.

The video’s from 1982, but CDs were first released in the US on this day in 1983.

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New Acquisition

After stumbling across that Erasure video the other day, I realized that I didn’t have this in my collection—or even in iTunes. I’ve corrected that.

I remember buying this back in ’92 when it came out. At the time I was an ABBA purist at heart and absolutely hated it. But after seeing that video the other day, I realized that over the past thirty years I’ve…mellowed. Now the only thing that disappoints me about this is that this isn’t a full-length album; it’s just an EP, barely clocking in at a bit over 17 minutes total..

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Well, That’s A Relief

When I got my new old Yamaha CD player back in December, I was kind of disappointed to discover it didn’t like playing CDs over 74 minutes in length (the original CD standard) or CDRs of any length.

I wrote it off due to the vintage of the machine. Built in 1990, 80-minute CDs were just starting to show up, and CDRs were still a couple years away. Yamaha can be forgiven, I kept telling myself.

But it nagged me, y’know?

So the other day I pulled out the stack of CDRs I’d burned prior to my MiniDisc obsession to take with me to work. I tried playing one (a different one than I’d tried initially when I got the CD player) and wouldn’t you know…it read the table of contents and played just fine. I threw in another. And another. And yet another—and they all played just fine. It was only that one particular disc that I’d initially tried that had issues.

It was more an experiment than anything else, because I don’t have anything on CDR that I don’t have an original CD copy of—with the exception of that one disc that wouldn’t play (a mix CD sent to me by a friend several years ago).

All this got me thinking about the commercial 80-minute CD issue this afternoon. I don’t have that many; in fact, they’re all from the Euphoria house/dance music series. I threw the original disk I’d tried back in the player, and yeah, it still lost its mind somewhere around track 14 (which pushed it past the 74-minute mark). The same thing happened with Disc 2 from that particular release.

But then I tried a different release: Ibiza Euphoria And wouldn’t you know, both CDs in the set played perfectly from beginning to end. I tried another Euphoria recording, and yup…played perfectly. So it wasn’t the player at all; it was just that particular release and it affected both discs in the set. Factory pressing issue? Who knows.

All I know is that I’m relieved that it’s not hardware, but in this case, the software is what’s at fault.