Observations From The Forefront:CD 25 Elvis 35

Bob Birch, the bass player for Elton John killed himself yesterday.  He was one of the longest lasting bass players in that band, playing in EJ's band for over 20 years.

And now on other things.  I got word that Multiply might be shutting down so I am in the process of importing some of the blogs over there to my various sites here at Blogspot.  On the other site, you can read what is considered my Greatest Blogs or highlights on the Consortium page.  I used to blog a bit over at Multiply but since it really never took off over there, I quit doing that about a couple years ago.

35 years ago, Elvis Presley was found dead at his home at Graceland.  Everybody thought at that time that music really died that day too.  His Moody Blue album came out about a month ago I think and when he died, you couldn't find any Elvis records anywhere, they would be flying out of stores.  I did managed to find a cutout of Elvis The Sun Sessions but a week later RCA did restock the Elvis albums and the world rejoiced again.  My review of Moody Blue wasn't that fond that record, I didn't like Unchained Melody and on Little Darling, it sounded like he was backing out quarterback signals in a football game.  I did note that he did a firey take on Let Me Be There, Way Down was goofy fun especially with the bass vocalist going waayyyyyy on dooooowwwwwwwn at the end and the title track  pleasant.  But not exactly a grand way to end a career and gave it a B minus.  Since then, Sony Music continues to mine and rehash the Elvis stuff and repackage them in their usual way.  Latest is the ho hum I Am A Elvis Fan.

This year marks a special occasion of 25 years of buying CDs.  Hard to believe that time has flown by this fast as babies being born at that time now have families of their own.  There's a blog about a 20th Anniversary of CD collecting but since I cannot find it nor Bing or Google thinking its any important I pretty much forced to recollect the whole shebang from scratch again.   Long time ago, the CD was created in response of making the most perfect form of recording storage and that this was the wave of the future, if you could afford CDs at 25 bucks a pop.

You saw the demonstrations of scratching them up or some yayhoo putting jelly on them and they would still play.  Which was a hoot upon itself.   While CDs can still play while being scratched up (and there's some that I found at pawnshops that looked like they been dragged on a gravel road a few times but still played alright) they were not perfect.  A good scratch around the area in a circular motion would make it skip.  CDs at the beginning were limited to 72 minutes of data, later on industry rules relaxed the rules so that you can fit about 80 minutes of music on a single cd but I noticed that sometimes if a cd is running out of space, it would hiccup or hesitate toward the end (case in point: the last song on The Who's Kids Are Alright and The Best Of Luna).   Usually 77 minutes full is the limit but I have known a few CDs that have gone over 80 minutes and not miss a beat (EMI's Best Of the 1970s).

For the most part CDs in the early to mid 80s was an oddity.  I've saw them in a special section at Target or K Mart but the cheapest CD player was at around 500 dollars.  I was a vinyl person through and through and resisted temptation to buy any of them till 1987 when I saw a Best Of The Vee Jay Years on Motown that you couldn't get on vinyl and so therefore on a beautiful August day, 10 years after the death of Elvis, I bought a Sony Discman and purchased the first two cds ever, Lynyrd Skynyrd's Nuttin Fancy and Pete Townsend's Deep End Live and then the Best Of Vee Jay at BJ's Records for 17 dollars.  And then you can guess the rest.

The Sony Discman was 200 dollars and had a rechargeable battery and was perfect to take to work and jam out while processing Pell Grants and bullshitting with the late great Dennis Pusateri.  But the discman wasn't perfect, CDs would skip if a certain speck of dust was positioned right.  You couldn't take it while walking or jogging, there was G protection and the damn thing would skip and skip some more.  Over the years the fine folks in China would find ways to delay the song in a buffer and you could go for a walk and not having it to skip. I have had a old Discman with this type of technology for over 12 years and it still works great although sometimes the buffer doesn't work like it should.  Got a newer player and it works better but it does tend to eat batteries more than the older one.

The car Discman is a Godsend for those who don't like the radio.  I'm not a big fan of the built in CD player in the car radio, they tend to leave a mark after you get done playing the cd if you take it out wrong.  But in today's world, the CD has been rendered obsolete due to downloading and MP3s and IPODs or Smart Phones.  But back in 1987, the CD was up and coming and the future begins now.

Over that time, many a title that was on album has been reissued on CD and over the years we would look forward to see what was being reissued out on CD.  I traded half a box of my most prized albums for the 4 CD boxset of Led Zeppelin Remasters in 1991 and for a good decade and a half didn't buy any records of sort.  Throughout the 90s we had plenty of music stores to seek out or buy cutouts at reduced prices.  Or see what Relics had or the anti Relics store CD plus had.  It's safe to say that the 90s was the peak of CDs.

In 2000, the nasty Metallica vs Napster episode changed many a buyer's habit.  The advantage of the CD became it's downfall as people started ripping their favorite songs and putting them out on Napster and the bands and the labels begin to howl that it was taking their money away.  CD sales declined and then in 2005, Sony BMG and EMI did the one thing that started the downfall of CD sales, they introduced the copy protect CD.  Oh people found ways to get around that but the big problem was that SONY BMG had a nasty Rootkit virus that killed a lot of people's computers.  It also killed many a band's career too in the process.

After that, people quit buying in droves.  Sales tanked, music stores started closing up and people downloaded even more.  Most of the 90s and part of the early 2000's I started going to pawnshops to find the more lesser known CDs,  The Mister Money stores in Davenport had a treasure trove of forgotten classic that from 1999 to 2002 I started buying these forgotten bands.  But then pawnshops quit taking CDs and going to them proved to be a waste of time and gas.  However in this day and age of junkshops and the arrival of Half Priced Books in 2006, despite the closings of all the record stores in town as well as Sam Goody, FYE, Wherehouse Music, CD Warehouse bla bla, that I continue to find some interesting stuff on CD.  For the most part, the prices on CD have come down from 25 bucks to now ten bucks new and you can still find some of the classic rock stuff for 5 bucks at Best Buy or Wally World, that is if a Best Buy will be around years from now.   While the major magazines tout that the CD will be extinct very soon, I doubt that will happen and that, like vinyl, will still be around.

I haven't given up buying vinyl, on the contrary I have been buying lots of 45s and albums that I found at the local junkshop or the record stores still around in this area.  After 15 years, I did buy a turntable at Best Buy for 100 dollars.  I am now going through my second childhood of rediscovering 45s.  But when I go to work, I take about 7 or 8 CDs just to get through the day or when I go driving somewhere load up the car discman with tunes and off we go.  Yeah, I'm sure it'd be easier to have a MP3 player and ready made songs but I still enjoy the freedom of the undiscovered song off a forgotten album found for a buck at HP Books.

If life treats us well I'm sure I'll write a blog about 30 years of CDs and 40 years since Elvis left the building. But you'll have to wait for that.