Listen to the music!

Yesterday I listened to the football semi final on the radio in the car.

After the game finished I switched to a different station and ‘Missionary Man’ by Eurythmics was playing.

I took me straight back to the summer of 1986. I was already a massive music fan, an enthusiastic buyer of singles and albums. At age 17 I had loads on vinyl or cassette which I had built up over the previous decade. I had been working a year by that summer and had saved up some money. I was determined to buy myself a good quality music system with the newfangled thing called a compact disc player.

I had read excitable articles about these shiny small space-age metallic looking discs that a lazer beam read and produced superior sound. They were also almost impossible to damage! It meant the end of clicking noises as the needle passed over a scratch, it would not get stuck and best of all it was the end of tapes getting tangled up and trying to rescue them by sticking pencils in the wheels!

So they day came to splash the cash and treat myself. I walked into the local electrical shop already wit had a good idea which model I wanted. It was light years ahead of the battered old record player I had in my bedroom for years. The assistant came over offering a demonstration. He cranked up the volume and hit play on the CD player deck. The disc that whirred into life was the brand new album from Eurythmic and track one was ‘Missionary Man’. I stood in front of the speakers as the track started. The first 45 seconds was that long intro before the main song began, but I was already hooked. By the end of the song I was amazed at the digital clarity of the audio compared to what had had listened to up until then. I found it stunning on a completely different level.

I bought it and the deal included two ‘free’ CDs to take away. I chose brand new releases that I did not already have. Eurythmics – Revenge and Housemartins – London 0 Hull 4.

That day I was converted. I loved listening to whole albums complete without having to turn the sides over. Almost immediately, I switched to only buying CD’s. For me music was all about the sound. I never liked an artist, a band or a song because of their clothes, a haircut or a video. The compact disc gave me such a massive improvement to what I had been listening too. It made me appreciate music even more.

It wasn’t only the sound that took over my bedroom, half my bedroom space vanished after I had set it all up! I can’t help but smile as I remember the six stacked decking system I bought that day. The huge speakers and the glass cabinet it was all housed in.

I still prefer CD’s, just on a smaller system now.