It's Been A While

The first CD I ever listened to was my brother's.  Pink Floyd, The Dark Side of the Moon.

That, and Peter Gabriel's So were the two CDs I remember him having at the time in his room.  He was in boarding school at the time, so we only saw him on weekends, and I missed him and used to go into his room and just hang out.  Guess, at some point I got bored and put on a CD.

Technically, the first CD I ever bought was Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy, but that was a used copy, I bought it from a friend, out of his locker.  I seem to remember it was his brother's too.

The first CD I ever bought from a store was Nirvana's Nevermind.  I bought it at A&B sound, which anyone who grew up in these here parts knows as the best music store around.  I don't think it exists anymore, but that's a whole other story really.

I remember how cool it was, but weird at the same time, to be going past the tape sections of the store and to the very small CD section and picking up the CD.  It felt...different.

I made myself a deal at the time, that I would only buy a CD if I knew I liked at least two songs from the album, that would make it worth the sixteen or so dollars I seem to remember them being.

Most of the time if I already liked two songs, the rest of the CD would be good, sometimes better than good, sometimes a bit hit or miss.

After a good long while, eventually... I stopped buying full CDs and started buying tracks, electronically.

And when I realized my CD collection was just gathering dust, literally, in my living room now that I'd transferred everything over to digital format, I packed them up into a box and put them in storage.

Since then, I've bought a few "albums." Entire CDs that I will, strangely enough, never touch.  They're digital figments and it's a very strange thing to have the music, but not the.. container, if you know what I mean.

This weekend was the first time in a long time I, once again, had that feeling of cool and weird all mixed together.

For the first time since Nevermind, I bought an entire album knowing only that I liked two songs on it, and just guessing at the rest.

I was never one of those people who'd go into a record store and sit in the listening booth sampling the songs.  But iTunes does kind of let you do that, and so I listened to the samples of the album, figured I liked it enough and bought the entire thing.

And I like it.  It's good.  And it takes me back to the day when I used to buy a CD and consume it for a few weeks and learn to love the songs and the stories.

It's been neat to do that again, even though I find myself wishing I had something physical to look over and read and file away.

Pre-ordered the new Mumford and Sons too.  Figured I'll love whatever it is they're going to put out enough to give them my money, sight unheard.

Or whatever the equivalent aural saying might be.