I started collecting CDs very hesitantly...

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I was thinking about the first CDs I bought this evening and looked back through my purchases table. I find it hard to recollect my state of mind at that time terribly accurately, because the thing that occurred to me was - "What the hell can I have been thinking of?"

I got my first CDs in October 1987. My wife had been urging (?!) me to get up to date and get a CD player for a little while, saying that everything was coming out on CD no. (Which it wasn't and stll hasn't, of course.) Eventually I capitulated and bought a Jimmy Smith Verve compilation - "Compact Jazz" - and "Go for whatcha know". Then in December, a Randy Crawford compilation.

So I had a small collection

But it didn't grow much in 1988/89 - I only bought 13 CDs in 1988; 30 in 1989. And 150 LPs and K7s. So, after more than two years of collecting, I had the grand total of 46 albums on CD. That's about 18 inches. It's true that a large propoertion of the music I was collecting at that time (a lot of gspel LPs) wasn't available on CD. But I can't really figure whether I wasn't taking CDs seriously or whether what was around on LP in the shops in London and Cardiff was simply overwhelmingly what I wanted to buy.

MG

[A Lark Ascending]

I took to them instantly - bought my first player in '85. The only thing that held me back was the price. They were at least a 1/3 more expensive than LPs.

I bought mainly classical music at the time; jazz was much slower to make it to CD where the classical labels (or divisions of labels) saw the future instantly. For a few years I was buying classical on CD and everything else on LP. That changed towards the end of the 80s.

What I loved was leaving behind all the imperfections of the LP - clicks, pops, inner groove distortion and the rest which had always driven me nuts.

[Free For All]

I resisted for a while. I remember when they started to become available (mid 80s)- I was on the road with Woody's band and most of us were still hauling around Pro Walkmans and cassettes (!). One of the guys got a CD player and some discs- it seemed initially to be a technical novelty but it was very cool.

The thing that got me started was when a huge number of Blue Note cutout CDs appeared at a mall record store (I think it was Camelot) for $2.99 each. They all had a notch cut in them, but there were so many of the good BN titles available I caved and that was it.

[B. Clugston]

I actually resisted until 1993. First CD was a compilation of John Peel Soft Machine recordings. Started buying them by the armful a year or two later. By then, most of the major labels started getting their act together with reissues, so I missed out on a lot of the crappy initial releases.

[kh1958]

I bought a CD player in 1984, I believe, not too long after they first appeared, and have steadily acquired CDs ever since. The first CD I purchased was Max Roach, In the Light, on Soul Note.

[porcy62]

Unfortunately I bought my first cd player very early, 1984 (I think it was the first player Philips realesed: CD 100), it costed me the whole summer's wages, I was at university then. Well, I had that damn expensive 'future next' thing and cds were so expensive! I still bought lp for some years, (they were so cheap compared to cd at times ) and very fews cds, I mean I went in a record shop and I could buy three or four 'best buy' lps for the price of one cd.

Then frequent movings pushed me toward CD and its facility, obviously the cost of cds went down, and forgot my LPs and TT in my parent's garage for fifteen years. When my dad passed away, we sold the house, and I had to recollect all the stuff. I set up the TT in my stereo and I realized I am an analog guy.

edit: forgot to say that for years K7s were my first source, walkman's effect I guess, though I didn't buy original K7, usually I got them recorded from friends, I really start collecting cd in the 1992.

Edited June 2, 2010 by porcy62

[jeffcrom]

I bought a CD player as soon as they became affordable - after the first wave of audiophiles bought theirs. I loved CDs right away, but in the early days it was hard to find anything I wanted to buy. The first four I remember were Beethoven's Emperor Concerto by Rudolf Serkin and the Boston S.O. on Telarc, that great Telarc Cleveland Symphonic Winds album with the two Holst Suites for Band, and Japanese issues of Blakey's Moanin' and Stan Getz's Sweet Rain. I still have all of those discs.

And I think I've told this story elsewhere, but I kept that first CD player until it burned a hole (!) in disc 2 of my Complete Charlie Parker on Verve set - the motor died, but the laser beam didn't. Polygram sent me a new disc - it seems unlikely that I would get that kind of customer service today.

[Chuck Nessa]

Bought a player in '84 and my first cd was Billie Holiday The Silver Collection - still the first one I reach for to get her at her (late) best.

[papsrus]

Hah. You guys are small potatoes when it comes to holding off on buying CDs. I didn't start seriously collecting CDs until about 2005. In fact, I was collecting mp3's before I was buying any CDs at all. I didn't even realize they played from center to edge until a few months ago.

I win.

[paul secor]

Bought a CD player in 1986, but actually bought a CD - Ellington: All Star Road Band - before I had the player. Don't have the CD player anymore, but I still listen to the Ellington CD.

[Van Basten II]

All i had was tape cassettes so as soon as I had the dough I started buying them it was around the early 90s when I actually had a job that paid enough to buy them.

[Free For All]

So a question for those who still have CDs purchased in the 80s- have many (or any) shown any signs of degrading?

Edited June 2, 2010 by Free For All

[paul secor]

So a question for those who still have CDs purchased in the 80s- have many (or any) shown any signs of degrading?

None that I have.

[Chuck Nessa]

No.

[MartyJazz]

My story of how I came to CDs is a little more unusual and somewhat ironic. I resisted for quite some time, still buying new LPs as late as 1989. Having gotten married a little later in life - I was 40 - my wife knew what she was getting into as by that time, circa '85, I already owned the bulk of my 5,000+ LPs. So her attitude re CDs amounted to, and I'm quoting, "As far as you're concerned, 'CD' means 'Certain Divorce'".

Anyway, in the spring of '89, I attend a jazz record fair sponsored by WBGO-FM at the Sheraton Hotel in Newark, NJ. At the door, attendees paid the admission charge and were asked to fill out a form that included name, address, phone number, etc. I remember hesitating to write accurate information as I knew that WBGO would use these forms to solicit donations to the listener-sponsored station. But, I decided to be truthful. I bought some wonderful LPs that day, including a mint copy of Rollins' "Our Man in Jazz" for $20. Went home, happy with my purchases.

A couple of days later, I receive a letter from WBGO, stating that they were sorry that I wasn't there at the time my name was called, but I happened to be the grand prize winner of the "door prize" for a lucky attendee. Sure enough, the grand prize stated in the letter was a NAD CD deck, and I should let WBGO know when I would be coming to the station to pick it up. I showed the letter to my wife who read it and said, "Oh, shit". Now that I own over 2,000 CDs and many box sets, I understand her point, but hell she herself has a collection of about 150 CDs.

[Peter Friedman]

Bought my first CD player - a NAD - in 1984. As some others have said, there were only a small number of jazz CDs available

at first so I bought quite a few classical CDs. My focus on classical CDs re-awakened my interest in classical music which has continued since then.

I slowly reduced my jazz LP purchases waiting for things to become available on CD. As time went on i began to dispose of my jazz LPs as I acquired jazz CDs to replace them.

Though everything has not been reissued on CD, I have been surprised at the very large number of jazz LPs that did make it to CD,

including many I never would have expected to have done so.

Though I still have jazz LPs I almost never play them. I prefer CDs for many reasons. The only advantage I personally find that LPs have is the larger sized album cover art.

[Spontooneous]

Some friends were early digital converts, in '84 and '85. I held out for a while.

The discs came first. One day in Exile Records in Overland Park, Kansas, I couldn't resist a relatively inexpensive used CD of Elvis Costello's "King of America" to perhaps replace my lousy pressing of the LP. This was probably the summer of '87. A couple of weeks later, I bought a Mahler Fifth Symphony on CD, attracted by the notion of being able to play the whole thing without changing a disc. At first, I played the discs at friends' houses.

I had about a dozen discs by the I actually got a Magnavox player, in the fall of '87. I still have the player.

[BeBop]

I worked "with" Sony on the CDP-101 project. I was given one of the players before they hit the market. I sold it. I think it was a dozen years before I really started buying CDs.

[sidewinder]

It was only in 1989 after I'd moved across to North America that I started buying CDs. Previous to then in the UK I'd stuck with LPs and CDs were damned expensive (3-4 times the price of LPs). My first CD player purchase (Nakamichi) coincided with the first big batch of US Blue Note reissues ('Black Fire', 'Night Dreamer' etc - wet dream stuff at the time) and I bought loads of them. Stayed with CDs pretty well until the mid-90s with LP as a secondary (mainly at the time to spin the Cuscuna brown bag 2LP sets), then got back into it with a new deck after my return back across the pond and since then the vinyl side has taken precedence. These days I will get CDs for convenience and new recordings but like Porcy I prefer to listen and savour in analogue where this is possible. The convenience of CDs is a big plus though.

Still like to dig out those early Blue Note CD reissues though. And CD prices in the UK have got much, much better.

I think my first CD bought was Hilton Ruiz's 'El Camino (The Road)', purchased at Sam The Record Man in Toronto. Still brings a smile to my face every time I spin that one.

Edited June 3, 2010 by sidewinder

[Van Basten II]

Good memories by reminding me of the late Sam the Record Man, a real music store, they don't make them like that nowadays

[JSngry]

1992. LTB won a Discman at a convention & brought it home. I was furious, having raged against the Devil Digital for almost a decade. Did and A/B with the LP of an Aretha Cd she bought on the way home, the LP clearly has superior sound. She heard it, I heard it, and that was that. The thing sat there for a few weeks.

But I started noticing shit in cutout bins, then bonus cuts (the long box BNs Paul mentioned above aroused me no end when I noticed that there was new stuff on them and they were cutouts!) & stuff in used stores, and the real pisser was when the only real choice for in-store purchase was between casette & CD...bought tapes up until then, but finally said fuck it, let's move on.

All things told, though, digital came along too soon relative to its quality..way too much of those early CDs, reissue & new material alike, don't sound particularly good, sometimes really sucking. But here we are anyway.

[Shawn]

My Mother bought me my first CD player for Christmas 1987, along with 5 CDs. I had actually been buying mostly cassettes by that point because I wanted "car music" and I think my Kenwood turntable bit the dust around the same time. Thus a Denon CD player took it's place and I started collecting seriously in '88 (I seem to remember the LP sections shrinking to nothing around that point or maybe a year later).

I initially didn't think the sound was that great, being un-thrilled with stuff I re-purchased from vinyl. So I stuck to mostly buying new titles for awhile. I didn't start seriously re-buying my vinyl collection until the first round of remasters started coming out in the mid 90's.

[ejp626]

I'm relatively fortunate in that I didn't have a CD player until 1988 and didn't buy much of anything until 1990. At that point it was a little bit of jazz (Mingus and Monk mostly) but more indy rock. My jazz CD habit didn't really kick in until about 1999. So I think I missed the worst of the early CD pressings.

[Late]

My first three CDs, purchased in August 1988, were Giant Steps, Outward Bound, and Go!. I hadn't actually heard the latter two albums before. I'd only started buying records three years earlier when I was 15. At the time, my LP collection consisted of only five artists: Coltrane, Rollins, Dolphy, Coleman, and Bird. (I had one Coleman Hawkins record, but I didn't get it yet.)

Twenty-two years later, I'm still a CD junkie. I'm afraid to count, but I think the collection is somewhere around 5,000 discs. The LPs are at a miniscule 14. I had to sell most of what I had way back then in order to fund the purchase of my first CD player. I also had to sell my turntable, amp, and speakers. For a number of years, my only setup was a Sony Discman and headphones. When all those Blue Notes came out on disc in 1988/89, I was in heaven. Nearly every single one of them was new to me. I particularly remember being riveted by In 'N Out and Dialogue. I hadn't even heard Miles' Second Quintet yet.

I wish I'd collected classical CDs in the late 80's and early 90's. Now that I listen to classical music these days more than jazz, I'm finding that there are so many out-of-print discs I'd like to hear.

[Free For All]

I started noticing shit in cutout bins, then bonus cuts (the long box BNs Paul mentioned above aroused me no end when I noticed that there was new stuff on them and they were cutouts!)

I was in Austin at the time. Maybe it was a Texas phenomenon.