Do you remember your first Compact Disc?
 

Do you remember your first CD purchase?

25 years ago I picked up,

1. Paul McCartney's Tug of War
2. Willie Nelson's Stardust
and 3. Wagner's Tannenhauser

The CDs were purchased at the Tower Records in Mountain View, CA. and still play fine.

Aging in an era of digital downloads, CD celebrates 25th anniversary

EINDHOVEN, Netherlands (AP) - It was Aug. 17, 1982, and row upon row of palm-sized plates with a rainbow sheen began rolling off an assembly line near Hanover, Germany.

An engineering marvel at the time, today they are instantly recognizable as Compact Discs, a product that turns 25 years old on Friday - and whose future is increasingly in doubt in an age of iPods and digital downloads.

Those first CDs contained Richard Strauss' Alpine Symphony and would sound equally sharp if played today, says Holland's Royal Philips Electronics NV, which jointly developed the CD with Sony Corp. of Japan.

The recording industry thrived in the 1990s as music fans replaced their aging cassettes and vinyl LPs with compact discs, eventually making CDs the most popular album format.

To read story, click here

1. Queen's Night at the Opera
2. Siouxsie and the Banshees' Superstition
3. No Doubt's debut self-titled
4. Queen's News of the World
5. Queen's Jazz
(hey, I was 13 and had just learned about Queen and they were easy to find in the used bins at Moby Disc)
6. B-52's Good Stuff

I forget the order after that. I used to know my first 20, I'd keep them filed in order of purchase and would know instantly if one was missing or out of place.

Phantom of the Opera... this should come as no surprise to anyone.

Rhythm Nation 1814 ~ Janet Jackson

:)

The soundtrack for Aladdin.

Something by Madonna, but I don't remember which one.

Even when I was 13 or so I had no interest in music so it was just out of sibling competitiveness tjat when my mom said my sisters could join BMG (or whatever that CD mail order club was called) I insisted that I get my share of the "free" CDs with signing up.

Pretty much randomly picked Madonna because I had actually heard of her and when the CD actually showed up I had no real interest in it. I assume one of my sisters kept it.


My second CD was 6 years later when I bought one as a gift for someone in my college dorm. Don't remember which it was. My third was three years later and it was Jagged Little Pill.

yup. debut album of "The Firm"

forgot all about that one....so, scuse me while I iTune

I don't remember exactly which was my first disc. I'm ashamed to admit I lifted my first CDs from the record store where I worked ... but I'm pretty sure Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon was in the original batch of stolen goods.

I still have it, and it plays just fine.

Genesis - Live: The Way We Walk

Pink Floyd - The Wall

&

Cindy Lauper - True Colors

Two classics to be sure. The Wall went missing somewhere along the way but True Colors is still hanging around. I guess I'll have to give it a spin tonight.

Herbert von Karajan conductng the Berlin Philharmonic performing Beethoven's 9th - ah the pleasure to be able to here the piece in it's entirety without having to turn the record over - that changed everything.

Still have the disk, and seemed fine when I ripped it into my MP3 archive...

:eek: Nope, no clue.

Deee-lite.

Beethoven's 9th is supposed to be the reason CDs are the playing length that they are. The Japanese are fanatical about the 9th so a CD had to be long enough to accomodate that piece.

I'm a bit fanatical about that one myself ;)

Me, too. I have the Leonard Bernstein Berlin Wall version with the Ode to Freedom instead of Ode to Joy.

Quite a few of my first CDs were classical pieces. The classical department at The Wherehouse (where I worked and pilferred from) got CDs a little bit before the rest of the store. Wow, was that 25 years ago!?!

After getting my first CD player, a Sony Discman, in about 1989:

1) Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show

2) The Best Of Credinece Clear Water Revival

I still have both of the CDs and the Discman, though the battery no longer charges. I've thought about selling the "Vintage CD player" on eBay.......

Garth Brooks - No Fences
Howard Jones - um still have it somewhere but I can't remember which one.

Bought on the same day, before I owned a player:
Philip Glass -- Satyagraha
The Cure -- Pornography

Tears For Fears - The Hurting

I don't remember the first CD I bought, but I do remember one of the clerks at the Tower Records in Brea in the early 80's. I was buying a couple CDs. He sneered and commented that I was wasting my money because "these things" were just a fad.... :rolleyes:

Chicago 18 - I got it even before I had the player.

Hrm...I'm not sure I can remember which one was first. It was probably Operation:Mindcrime. I wonder where that one is now? I still like that one.

I too purchased my first disc before I had a player. It was Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon.

I still have that first one, but have also added the remastered version of the disc to my collection. All tolled, I have probably owned about six versions of that album iin my lifetime.

FWIW, I also remember the first full-length album I purchased: the eight-track version of Kansas - Leftoverture. My first 45 RPM single was Eagles - Life in the Fast Lane

Rimsky Korsakov Sheherezade with Kyrill Kondrashin & the Concertgebow
Berlioz Symphony Fantastique Colin Davis & the Concertgebow
Rachmaninov Symphony No. 2 (can't remember which one now)
Mahler Symphony #1 with Berstein
Boston's first album
Elton John Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

all from Tower Records and they were $22.99 way back then. I had a Sony first generation player and it lasted a good long time, too. In fact, when I gave it away many moons later, it was still working like a dream, and probably still is.

Collection of cds increased a good deal once I started working for Tower, between promo copies and the employee discounted ones. Still have many, a few in lean times were sold to Streetlight Records, but about 2500 still left so I'm not lacking in music.

Very surprisingly, I STILL do not own this CD! Not for lack of wanting!

Made in the Shade - Rolling Stones
Physical Grafitti - Led Zeppelin

And I don't have The Wall, Animals nor Dark Side of the Moon. Pathetic!

Nirvana - Nevermind

I remember it well because I thought it sounded amazing.

Paul Simon - Graceland

I'm SHOCKED I tell ya... positively shocked!

Why the hesitation? Just go ahead and tell us.




Oh.

Me too! It's at least among the first 5 I purchased. This was also among my most played. The disc was stolen from my car some years back, but I stole downloaded a replacement. Some of the tracks are messed up though. :(

Most of my first discs were gifts from my dad, so I've got a Byrds greatest hits, a Dylan greatest hits, and Carol King's Tapestry early on.

I know! I Hope you were sitting down when you read that. Seriously! How about some warning next time! :p


My first CD that I purchased was... uh... I have no idea.

But my very first CD was a burned copy of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club.

Me too!

Your Dad has good taste in music!

Phillip Glass - The Photographer

The Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack-before I owned a cd player. 1984 I believe

Snowflake, was this the early MCA disc? that release eliminated some tracks so that the double album could be fit onto one cd. For that reason, I wouldn't buy it.

This was common practice in the earliest days of the CD. I did accidentally pick up an abbreviated version of Mike Oldfield's "Incantations," which cut out by far my favorite four minutes of the piece. :mad:

I well remember my first stack of CD purchases, all of which I still have:

Chess - original studio recording
Phantom of the Opera - original cast
Frank Zappa - London Symphony Orchestra
Mike Oldfield - Islands
Genesis - Genesis
Yello - Claro Que Si

At the time, selection was fairly limited, and a lot of my punk and new wave faves were no shows.

Now I remember when I saw my first CD - I think it was at Aarons, where they kept the few they had in a glass case by the register. I think at that time only classical discs were available - all made from that one CD factory in Germany

I recall looking at them at awe, talking about their indestructible nature, "well, you can't smear peanut butter on them and still play them - but almost." the man behind the counter claimed.

Though I don't believe I was the purchaser (I was... 10? 9?), but I picked out Guns N' Roses Appetite for Destruction.

I think I loved the artwork. I still love the CD.

Yes and it has been replaced

Garfield - Am I Hip or What?
Another Bad Creation
Nelson (I thought they were so hot!)

I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't make the switch to cd's until the early nineties. (I was a cassette kind of gal). I think my first one was Nirvana's Nevermind.

I don't remember exactly which one was my first, I think it was one of my many different copies of Dark Side of the Moon

Do you remember YOUR first Compact Disc?
 

Could somebody in a position of power please correct the title? I do realise that at this point it probably makes no difference at all, but it would make me happy.

Thank you.

Well, I did it, but I was kinda reclining on my sofa with the laptop balanced on the armrest, I don't know if that really qualifies as a position of power. I hope that's okay.

Crowded House. My sister gave it to me {the one that looks like a wooden box or something like that}. I remember being in awe that I actually had a cd.

I didn't have a cd player, but I was on my way.

Did you have to mention peanut butter???? I've been sitting here trying not to think of that jar of grape Goobers I bought....or wanting to eat some chorizo....:confused:

My first LP was Elvis, a yellow one with him on the cover in yellow...don't remember the name. First 45 was also Elvis~'Don't Cry Daddy'.

Not that you asked...:p

I kinda got started late with Compact disc. I remember buying my first Sony Discman with Phil Collins-Live! It was fun. Good times.

We played Nintendo
This was her very first date
I didn't wanna make it seem too fly
We ate cereal
She couldn't stay out that late
Her mother told her to be home by nine

Iesha!
You are the girl that I never had
and I want to get to know you better...

;) (My brother owned that, but I now have it on mp3. :D)

Yeah, I was late to it as well. I owned Nevermind on cassette - same went for Pearl Jam's Ten. It's funny to think that I never owned these albums in CD format. I finally begged my grandmother for a CD player as a Hanukkah gift. I still listened to cassettes on a regular basis for years afterwards, just because that was most of what I had.

Much obliged, GD.


25 years after buying my first couple CDs, I have to admit I buy very few these days. I think I have purchased as few as two all of this year. Its just so much easier (and cheaper) to download. I don't really miss the 'extras' because CDs were never as good as record albums for providing them.

Oh, I haven't bought a single cd this year, and maybe two over the two years previous. That's WAY down from what it was just a few years ago, when one or two a week was typical.

I admit that the 9.99 standard price at iTunes has spoiled me a bit. I just can't bring myself to plunk down 14 to 18 dollars for the same music just so I can have a plastic case and an insert. There are still a significant number of titles I can't (legally) get via download, and I do pick up and look at them the Virgin Megastore, sigh, and put them right back in the bin. (Admittedly, Virgin is notoriously overpriced. Living in Kissimmee as I do, it's the only retail location that's anything like within reasonable driving distance.)

Also, gulp, I haven't bought a single movie on DVD this year. There are tons of titles I'd like to have, but, these days, I just can't justify it.

Late to the party...

I got three, all gifts for Christmas, as my first CD's

Chess: London Cast recording
Cyndi Lauper
and Falco

As kind of an extension of this thread - how many of us joined the Columbia House or BMG CD Clubs (or whatever they were called) to build our music collections? I utilized both to jump start the collection but came to realize that they were sometimes limited CDs - missing tracks that were available on the regular commercial releases and/or not as extensive of inserts.

I'm guilty of being a BMG whore for a while. Got some good stuff, but also got a lot of lame "Best of" crap that I eventually divested myself of.

I was Columbia House for a short while and on their please come back to us email and mail list for years. Once employed by Tower, I had no need for any stinking mail order service, I could special order whatever I wanted and get an employee discount, them were the days.

I still have BMG. They sometimes have good sales with free shipping so I order a few things once or twice a year.

I built most of my early CD collection through BMG. I think that is why I somehow ended up with the Dirty Dancing soundtrack and the Immaculate Collection.

That said, I bought Nevermind and the next day Weird Al's Off the Deep End at a cool local music shop back in NY that sadly is long gone I'm sure.

Nope, never did BMG. I had a healthy employee discount in the early days of CD, so I didn't need anything to jump start my collection. And yes, I paid for far more CDs than I stole. But, yeah, both methods were the jump-starters.

I did lots of BMG-type stuff for DVDs and LaserDiscs, always scamming the system for 10-for-a-penny, then quitting before fulfilling the rest of the obligation. Signing up again for 10 free discs, and on and on.



If I were a hundredth as into music now as I was back then, I guess I'd be king of illegal downloads. I buy about 1 CD per year. The prices piss me off, as do the tech attempts to limit how many times I can copy the music from a CD that I paid $23 to legally purchase. Eff That!!

I was a total BMG whore. I found a lot of what I needed off of there.

As a bonus The Wherehouse would take BMG CDs in their buyback program.

Yes... yes, I do

Pat Metheny, Still Life (talking)

followed quickly by

This Mortal Coil, Filigree and Shadow
and
Anita Baker, Rapture

Most of my music collection, along with ALL my electronic equipment, was stolen when someone broke into my condo during my last few months in Dallas. It appeared to me the burglar stumbled on his last trip out the door and a few CDs fell across the living room floor. This Mortal Coil was one of those disks.

1) The Delltones - Greatest Hits (Bought for me by my parents with the player for my Birthday) - They're an Australian band, and Dad used to drink with the guy who sang Bass (Peewee)

2) (the first one I ever bought for myself) Evita (Original London Cast)

Francis Cabrel «Samedi soir sur la terre»

It came out in 1994 so I was slow out of the gate.

Ooooohhhhh! This Mortal Coil! I have vinyl but no CDs.

The first CD I bought was Madonna - Bedtime Stories.

About 8 years ago, I let my sister borrow it. She moved to San Francisco and lost the CD.

I no longer share my original CD's with anyone :)

Reminds me of the time I found an allegedly lost LP in the back FLOORBOARD of a friend's car.

We grew apart after that.