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For Those of a Certain Age, What Was the First CD You Bought?


Rick N. Backer
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We were gifted our first one- I still have it somewhere.  My mom bought us a CD player in 1988, I think for Christmas, and gave my husband "Dulcimer Deluxe" by David Schnaufer (I don't know who he is either :biggrin:)  because husband played the hammered dulcimer a lot at the time, very Americana stuff. 

 

The first one we actually bought- :biggrin::biggrin:   You guessed it, Slippery When Wet by Bon Jovi.  It has disappeared somewhere over the years, which is ok.

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First CD I bought with my own money might've been the last Van Halen album, which was around when streaming (Spotify, etc.) really took off so I honestly don't recall buying other CDs.

 

A Different Kind of Truth wasn't a bad album tbh, I was actually impressed how much I liked it. It's a shame Roth really went off the rails live. The Tokyo live album is unlistenable because of it.

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I bought my first cd player in 1984. I had just received a bonus in work and I got one in a hi-fi specialist in Belfast.

What I hadn't accounted for was the fact that, as cd players had only just been introduced in UK. the actual discs were thin on the ground.

I searched all the record stores in Belfast and apart from classical cds, the only two rock/pop discs i could get were -

Paul Young - No Parlez and Ultravox - The Collection. They became the first discs I purchased.

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54 minutes ago, zepphead said:

I bought my first cd player in 1984. I had just received a bonus in work and I got one in a hi-fi specialist in Belfast.

What I hadn't accounted for was the fact that, as cd players had only just been introduced in UK. the actual discs were thin on the ground.

I searched all the record stores in Belfast and apart from classical cds, the only two rock/pop discs i could get were -

Paul Young - No Parlez and Ultravox - The Collection. They became the first discs I purchased.

Where are those discs now?

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My first CD was Kate Bush and "Hounds of Love"  back in 1985

 

I think it cost somewhere around £14.99 from Virgin Megastore, Birmingham

 

71eDl4OeBrL._AC_SY355_.jpg

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1 hour ago, Turbine Freight said:

I was a holdout like treeduck too. I wish I'd kept all my old vinyl. I'd be minted now.

Last week I stopped in a record store, because they're so rare now.  I had so many albums on vinyl, all lost when my parents moved out of the house in which I was raised.  :sad:

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2 hours ago, Sonatine said:

My first CD was Kate Bush and "Hounds of Love"  back in 1985

 

I think it cost somewhere around £14.99 from Virgin Megastore, Birmingham

 

71eDl4OeBrL._AC_SY355_.jpg

Great choice!

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8 hours ago, zepphead said:

I bought my first cd player in 1984. I had just received a bonus in work and I got one in a hi-fi specialist in Belfast.

What I hadn't accounted for was the fact that, as cd players had only just been introduced in UK. the actual discs were thin on the ground.

I searched all the record stores in Belfast and apart from classical cds, the only two rock/pop discs i could get were -

Paul Young - No Parlez and Ultravox - The Collection. They became the first discs I purchased.

This is something I was also thinking about when I started this thread.  For those of us old enough to remember the transition, there were 2 significant elements at work.  1, not everything was available on CD.  2, we had many beloved albums on vinyl or cassette already, and you didn't know how this new technology would pan out.  So it didn't make sense at first to buy everything again on CD.  So make that 3 things, because you couldn't afford to purchase everything again at about $12- $15 a pop.

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7 hours ago, treeduck said:

Where are those discs now?

Still got them ...tbh i never listen to either artist now but it was all I could get at the time.

Within a year there was much more choice.

It was amazing (and sad) to see how quickly vinyl reduced and CDs just took over.

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2 minutes ago, Rick N. Backer said:

This is something I was also thinking about when I started this thread.  For those of us old enough to remember the transition, there were 2 significant elements at work.  1, not everything was available on CD.  2, we had many beloved albums on vinyl or cassette already, and you didn't know how this new technology would pan out.  So it didn't make sense at first to buy everything again on CD.  So make that 3 things, because you couldn't afford to purchase everything again at about $12- $15 a pop.

Yeah .... I kinda went into hybrid mode for a bunch of years, running both vinyl and CD. 

But I started to replace vinyl with CD (by then I was working so had greater spending power - most of my vinyl was bought when I was at school or university so I couldn't really afford  to buy loads of records).

Eventually my turntable and vinyl collection was consigned to the attic.

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When c.ds were starting to become popular, and for my Technics home stereo system, I bought my own Technics c.d. player, which I still have.  There are some c.ds I bought at first, around the same time.  For me, from my dad, I received "Rush - Power Windows" after he bought it in Toronto.  Some of the first c.ds I bought for myself, and have are: "Yes - Big Generator", "Genesis - Invisible Touch", "Def Leppard - Hysteria", and "Queensryche - Operation: Mindcrime".   

Edited by Derek19
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My best friend in high school was an early adopter of CDs, but I was a holdout. When we went to college as roommates, he brought his system, which was nice, but at that point (1988) I had so many cassettes that the idea of moving on from them seemed crazy. Plus, for several years thereafter, CDs and tapes were both widely available -- cassettes did not seem to be going the way of 8-tracks, so I kept going. I had lots of them, they were affordable, they were highly portable.

 

I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that Soundgarden's Down On the Upside was the last cassette I ever bought, and that same year (1996) when my wife and I got a desktop PC with a CD drive, I remember buying Blues Traveler's Live From the Fall. That was my first CD. I got several more that Christmas, including Test for Echo and James Taylor's Greatest Hits.

 

In 1997, I bought a new stereo system with a six-CD changer and I used that to make mixtapes to play in my car!  In 2002, I replaced that system with one that allowed me to record onto blank CDs from my tapes, and I began converting my collection. 

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2 hours ago, Derek19 said:

When c.ds were starting to become popular, and for my home stereo system, I bought my own c.d. player, which I still have.  There are some c.ds I bought at first, around the same time.  For me, from my dad, I received "Rush - Power Windows" after he bought it in Toronto.  Some of the first c.ds I bought for myself are: "Yes - Big Generator", "Def Leppard - Hysteria", and "Queensryche - Operation: Mindcrime".   

Hysteria was probably somewhere in the first 15 to 20 CDs I bought.

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37 minutes ago, Nova Carmina said:

My best friend in high school was an early adopter of CDs, but I was a holdout. When we went to college as roommates, he brought his system, which was nice, but at that point (1988) I had so many cassettes that the idea of moving on from them seemed crazy. Plus, for several years thereafter, CDs and tapes were both widely available -- cassettes did not seem to be going the way of 8-tracks, so I kept going. I had lots of them, they were affordable, they were highly portable.

 

I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that Soundgarden's Down On the Upside was the last cassette I ever bought, and that same year (1996) when my wife and I got a desktop PC with a CD drive, I remember buying Blues Traveler's Live From the Fall. That was my first CD. I got several more that Christmas, including Test for Echo and James Taylor's Greatest Hits.

 

In 1997, I bought a new stereo system with a six-CD changer and I used that to make mixtapes to play in my car!  In 2002, I replaced that system with one that allowed me to record onto blank CDs from my tapes, and I began converting my collection. 

A running joke among some friends of mine and me is the fact that I'm too tightly wrapped (imagine that :laugh:) and that I never lose or break anything.  A college friend, with whom I lived for a couple years in my 20s, in particular used to say I was bad for the economy.  A symbol of that joke is my copy of the cassette of Ghost in the Machine I bought in 1981.  I still have that, even though I don't own another cassette and haven't owned a cassette player in probably around 20-25 years. 

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4 hours ago, Rick N. Backer said:

Last week I stopped in a record store, because they're so rare now.  I had so many albums on vinyl, all lost when my parents moved out of the house in which I was raised.  :sad:

Most of our vinyl was lost as well. So sad because my husband had an awesome Pioneer stereo setup and a great record collection. We lived in an apartment and the water heater above broke open and soaked all our records. (System still ok, though, we still have it) We were away at the time and came home to soaked moldy albums and carpet.  We took the renters insurance and bought cds to replace stuff. I have always liked the sound of vinyl better and have slowly rebuilt our LP collection (at much higher cost  :sad:)

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3 minutes ago, blueschica said:

Most of our vinyl was lost as well. So sad because my husband had an awesome Pioneer stereo setup and a great record collection. We lived in an apartment and the water heater above broke open and soaked all our records. (System still ok, though, we still have it) We were away at the time and came home to soaked moldy albums and carpet.  We took the renters insurance and bought cds to replace stuff. I have always liked the sound of vinyl better and have slowly rebuilt our LP collection (at much higher cost  :sad:)

That stinks.  I'm not an audiophile myself, but a lot of people who are say that vinyl is much, "warmer."

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1 hour ago, Rick N. Backer said:

That stinks.  I'm not an audiophile myself, but a lot of people who are say that vinyl is much, "warmer."

I’m not really an audiophile either, but I love vinyl and agree about the warmth of the sound compared to CD and digital.

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