On CDs

I am old enough to have witnessed the numerous changes in how we as humans consume music. When I was a kid, my dad had mountains of vinyl that took over enough of our living room to drive my mom nuts. At the same time, my grandfather’s Cadillac had an eight track which was essentially a dinosaur of ancient times that he did not even use. Personally, I bought cassettes until they were replaced by CDs and, while I loved the sound quality of CDs, it was to be years before the CD-RW came along and damn it if I did not miss the mixtapes I would make on those cassettes in my jam box.

CDs seemed like the technology that would never go away until I gave one to a friend with a new car and a Macbook, neither of which had the capacity to play a CD. Everything seemed to be going online and digital and, at the same time, vinyl has had a resurgence which does not seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. I eventually succumbed to the ways of the world and we got a turn table (which promptly broke) and a family Spotify account.

So, here I was in the first half of 2022 and I listened to music one of two ways – on my laptop through headphones or in my car via Spotify piped in from my phone. If I am being honest, though, most of my car time was spent listening to podcasts so I really was not consuming much music on the road in the first place.

And then a couple of things happened. First, we moved into a new home (by way of a temporary cozy cottage) which means everything we owned was boxed up and placed in storage. Then, I got a new-to-me Jeep which is perfect in every single way except the fact that the aux port on the stereo does not work. Both AM and FM radio in general feels gross to me so there I was… forced back into the arms of a CD player for the first time in years.

Horizon Records; Greenville, SC

My listening started with the most accessible pieces of my collection – the CDs of local artists and touring artists that autographed copies I picked up from the merch table at The Radio Room or in-store appearances at Horizon Records. From this I revisited two incredible local albums courtesy of the Excons (New Life) and Vilai Harrington & the Hamptones (Sandhill Shaman) and I am being honest that my friendships with these guys have no impact on my opinion that these are both perfect recordings, local or otherwise. I also wore out The Great Dying’s Bloody Noses & Roses, The Menders’ self-titled 2014 release, and The National Reserve’s Hotel La Grange. Then there was Little Stranger’s EPs Techniques and Styles & Dynamics which, in my opinion, should be consumed back-to-back as if it were sides A and B of a single album. The experience of listening to each of these albums as they were intended – from beginning to end with no doors on my vehicle, of course – was wildly satisfying and each of them was a humbling reminder that I might not have even known any of them if it was not for having the good fortune of writing about the local music scene for the last bunch of years.

Still, the time came when my wife asked if I was going to listen to the same seven albums for the rest of my life and it was a fair question.

Cue a trip to the storage unit and, well, what do we have here? Method Man & Redman’s Blackout, Nirvana Live at Reading, President’s of the United States of America’s self-title debut, Fatboy Slim’s You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby and Beastie Boys Ill Communication to name a few. If you have seen a man in his mid-40’s clearly reliving his formative years (and possibly having a mid-life crisis) singing along to any of these albums at full volume in a Jeep Wrangler in the last several weeks, I just want to tell you one thing… I am sorry you had to see that.

Boxes keep trickling out of storage and I am currently on the Beethoven CDs my wife found of his 5th, 7th, and 9th symphonies. I suspect I look even more deranged digging on Beethoven than Method Man but I suppose that is for my surrounding drivers and pedestrians to decide. My biggest question is what the next box of CDs from the storage unit might offer as a replacement.

All of this is to say that as our technology evolves, please do not disregard your old stuff. Be it a CD, vinyl, or even an old Spotify playlist you forgot about, the stuff we listened to once-upon-a-time can take us right back to that place in all the best ways. Too many memories and good times are sitting in a box somewhere and all it took was a new home and vehicle for me to realize it. Thank God for broken aux ports, I suppose.