WENTY’S TWO CENTS
The caffeine-addled ramblings of KCOW “Wakeup Show” host Jason Wentworth
October 1, 2012
Happy anniversary to the good old compact disc. 30 years ago today, Billy Joel’s “52nd Street” was the first commercially released CD–in Japan. Meanwhile, here in America, we were all slaves to the cassette tape–which, to be truthful, was a step down from the LP.
(Well, okay, you couldn’t play a record in your car unless you were an extremely steady driver. And 33 1/3 LPs don’t fit in the glove box. And they’d melt in a hot car anyway.)
But cassette tapes sounded muddy, and the tape came loose (keep that pencil handy). And here’s the elimination round: LPs and CDs allow you instant access to a specific track on the album. Cassettes did not. If I could get back all the time I spent rewinding and fast forwarding over the course of my lifetime cassette usage, I could hear Gloria Estefan’s “Words Get In The Way” album 57 more times. (Don’t judge! Let those without some questionable taste in music cast the first 8-track.)
Back to CDs. Springsteen’s “Born In The USA” was, appropriately enough, the first title released on compact disc here in America. And for a good couple of decades CD was the dominant music format.
Nowadays, though, mp3 downloads are king. These days I only buy 3 or 4 CDs a year–but that’s not because I’m downloading a ton from iTunes or Amazon. It’s because I have all the music I like on CD already. The last CD I bought was the new Beach Boys album–which is certainly available in download form.
When it comes to music, I think I’m just old enough (and just stubborn enough) to feel like I should have something to hold and look at for my hard-earned money. (Would you believe “semi-earned money”?) The same goes for movies and books. This may be why I am starting to feel claustrophobic as the one person in a two-bedroom apartment. (For the record: I am not a hoarder. I take out my trash, and I have no cats.)
I can still remember the first CD I ever purchased, by the way. I bought a Stan Freberg comedy album at a Record Theater store in Buffalo, NY. I did not yet have a CD player–Santa Momandad would deliver that a few months later. But I knew I could listen to the disc in one of the studios at the community college radio station–thus beginning a twenty-year pattern of time wasting that extends to my writing this blog when I could be doing actual radio station-type work.
Happy anniversary CD! Long may you spin.
