Musical History Lesson

As a child of the 70’s/teenager of the 80’s, I feel I should begin with a confession: I grew up in a house with no record player.

This is not to imply that there was no music in my house. Far from it, as most days my father would immediately turn on the stereo upon arrival at home. It just so happened that his system didn’t contain an LP player. Instead, it contained a tuner, an equalizer, an 8-track deck (later replaced by cassette when available), and his prized reel-to-reel player, which he still has connected today.

This wasn’t something I thought of as unusual until my teen years, when my friends would all start showing me their hand-me-down record players and the albums that went with them. By then, I did have my own system that I received for Christmas when I was thirteen in ’84. This was simply a tuner, a cassette deck, and two speakers. So where my friends music collections all contained nice LP’s with their great cover art and inner sleeves with all of the information as the band had intended, mine was cassette tapes, which, if you’re unfamiliar with their packaging, usually had the minimum required artwork back in those days that would allow customers to identify the album. Plus they were tiny and hard to see.

Beyond the visual component was the audio. I believe a big thing with LP fans is the crackle & pop noises that records would make as they played being incorporated as part of the sound. Growing up without them, I know that I have heard it, but when I do it isn’t something I count as part of the actual sound of the album, so I’m not nostalgic for it. In its place there was the occasional tape hiss, but really, that was gone when cassettes were released for the most part.

I still remember the day in 1987 when, after having saved up for a few paychecks, I was able to buy a Technics CD player for my system. I don’t remember the exact date, but it was shortly before school began, so late August I believe. For someone who grew up with cassettes only, the CD player was amazing, not just because of the “best possible sound reproduction” they offered (as printed inside the booklets which came with every disc), but the ability to skip around to random tracks if I wanted to. I remember being extremely excited because I was also able to afford 5 CD’s on that first day. They were:

The Beatles Abbey Road ( my personal favorite album of theirs)
Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here (my friends were all buying Dark Side of the Moon, so I thought I would be different. Plus I really love this album.)
Guns N Roses Appetite for Destruction (fairly new at the time)
The Cult Electric (also fairly new, plus they had recently been through town with Billy Idol on his Whiplash Smile tour. Love is a better album in my opinion though, but this one is great too.)
Metallica Ride The Lightning (not sure what to say about this one, but I do like their albums up to the self-titled one with Enter Sandman on it. Master of Puppets is probably better though.)

With the exception of Abbey Road & Wish You Were Here, both of which I have replaced with remasters contained in the recent (well, within the last 5 years) box sets, I still own the original CD versions of the other three. Over the last 27 years I have added many albums to my CD collection, which now numbers just over 3000. While some of the albums I have may mean more to me than a couple bought on this first day, I don’t think I can place when exactly I bought any of them (excepting those bought on their actual release date of course, which would require me looking that up anyways).

I believe it was about 2005 when I bought my first IPod. I’m not sure, as even though buying digital has been an option for a few years now, it’s not something I have jumped on. I do occasionally purchase an album digitally if it is out of print but available online or if I really want to hear it right away. In these cases though I tend to always go back and purchase a CD version when I can. Having lost 2 hard drives without being smart enough to have backed up my music directory both times caused me to re-rip my entire collection onto my PC 3 times in total. I have now wisely backed it all up. I guess I’m just trying to say I really love having the physical CD and hopefully they really won;t go anywhere any time soon. The recent re-emergence of the LP gives me hope that this is true, as it looked bleaker a few years ago, but only time will tell I suppose.

That’s a (not so) brief relation of my musical history. I’m sure I omitted many important parts and went on about things not-so-important, but that’s what the edit button is for. 🙂 Now to find some decent images so future posts won’t be unbroken walls of text.