I had my own Compact Disc player and at the time it seemed like Digital Compact Discs were going to be the meduim for music forever. My mission had three goals. 1. Replace my old cassettes and vinyl LP’s with CD’s. 2. Buy the music from my life, namely things from The Scratchy 45 Days on CD’s. 3. Buy new music going forward on CD. This three pronged attack presents a challenge to me now in documenting My Musical Evolution. It muddies the timeline a little and has an unexpected effect on the overall evolution.
For example, mom had Horse With No Name on 45. During The Roach Days, I bought History America’s Greatest Hits, in order to acquire Horse With No Name. What happened was I fell in love with that album and Ventura Highway became my favorite. So now, where Horse With No Name was originally rooted in The Scratchy 45 Days, now America is more closely associated with The Roach Days. Prior to the Compact Disc Era,My Musical Evolution was nice and linear. After leaving behind mom’s 45’s, I rarely bought anything from that era. When I transitioned into cassette, I didn’t try to replace my KISS albums on cassette. When I switched back to vinyl, with a few rare exceptions, I didn’t replace my cassettes with vinyl LP’s. Now, with the CD, I felt compelled to acquire all the music from my entire evolujtionary journey on Compact Disc. I had decided that this was going to be my official format.
Even though Compact Discs were twice as much as vinyls, I acquired hundreds in the first few years. I had more CD’s than anybody else I knew. It was not unusual for me to walk out of Wooden Nickel or Musicland with $300 in CD’s . The cost was significant. I had to prioritize. Brand new music was easy, it was always on CD. Music from my childhood was almost like new music. That meant that replacing my vinyls were low on the list. When it came to replacing my records, I really tried to apply some logic and select those albums that, like Dark Side Of The Moon, would really benefit from the digital format. That put all the Heavy Metal records at the back of the bus. It was a balancing act.
Availability was also a factor. If you weren’ t there, it must be hard to imagine that something as ubiquitous as CD’s were at one time rare and difficult to find. For years, most albums apart from new releases were simply not available on CD. Sounds crazy I know. We had to wait until the record company decided to release Meddle on CD.
On of the by products of this early lack of CD support was the rise of numerous Hits compilation CD’s. The Have A Nice Day Super Hits Of The 70’s is an example that comes to mind. That series seemed to be taken directly from mom’s 45’s We’ll talk about them some more soon. The point I wanted to make here is that 1986 to 1988 was a condensed recap of My Musical Evolution as I scrambled to get as much of it as I could on CD.