Twenty-five years ago yesterday saw the production of the first batch of compact discs. Ah, technology!
It wasn't until much later that the shiny, shiny discs began to have an impact. I stubbornly refused to join the CD revolution, even as it became harder and harder to find vinyl LPs. But when it was announced that The Carl Stalling Project would not even be issued on vinyl, I broke down. I actually bought the CD the day it came out, then bought the player a few days later, a mid-range Yamaha.
The second disc I ever bought was Richard and Linda Thompson's Shoot Out The Lights, a replacement for my LP, which I had played so much it was starting to deteriorate. Then, let's see, I immediately bought Stratas Sings Weill, Abbey Road, The Legendary Westerns Of Ennio Morricone and Donald Fagen's The Nightfly. Clearly, my tastes haven't changed much.
Now, of course, after supplanting LPs, the dominant form of recorded music for so much of the twentieth century, CDs themselves are becoming an obsolete technology. Irony's a bitch, isn't it?
