2012 will the 30th anniversary of the first commercial CD, though for most of my generation it's nearer 20 years since it irrevocably changed our music buying habits.
For many of us, this pivotal moment coincided with the arrival of toddlers. They had a tendency to scratch record needles with their grubby fingers, not to mention tread on casually strewn vinyl, so it also marked the point at which the turntable and record collection started to move from the sphere of the everyday to the peripheral zone where things-that-must-not-be-touched reside. A cargo cult in your own living room.
As I didn't convert my records to CDs, I've continued to use the "phono", as the amp still charmingly refers to it, occasionally since then, but it's only in the last year that I've started to appreciate the treat that time has wrought, namely the ability to listen afresh to music that never made it to my MP3 player.
Of late I have been immersing myself in both My Bloody Valentine's LPs, "Isn't Anything" and "Loveless", plus Laurie Anderson's "Big Science." I'm beginning to eye Echo and the Bunnymen's first 3 albums avidly.
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