Compact Discs were shiny, fancy and new, and proved to bring along with them a new slew of headaches. No more pencils in spokes, no more worrying about the Boom Box’s appetite for iron oxidized plastic film, but now you had to be something of a bombspecialist,moveto fast, step too hard and your music stopped, this eventually got better, but if you got in on the ground floor of this new fangled media, you knowtheproblems that came with it. Skipping, scratches and even a broken lens (I never personally had this happen – but I know those who had the misfortune) all could drain the enjoyment of the music quicker than a set of dollar store batteries.
While the Walkman never skipped, you did have to fast forward to your favorite song, or (*GASP*) may even have had to manually flip the tape over (the Horror!) – CD’s did allow for better navigation and somewhat easier transportation with a handy CD Wallet (but in most cases you would have to forgoe the album art to carry more tunes) and even the elegant dashboard visor sleeve allowed easy access while crusin’ around town (unless you had an awesome multi CD changer already loaded up in the car). The CD’s were certainly a step in the right direction for Music Geeks everywhere, but purists would complain about the digital steralization of the sound, as there were no imperfections, no hiss, no snap, no crackle or pops, but embraced they were and still exist to this day. Slowly but surely, the ability to create your own mixes was introduced to the tech savy crowd and people went to work perfecting the perfect mix, but it was that ability that started the downward turn towards CD’s becoming a dying medium, and while pretty to look at, they aren’t as effecient as we once intended them to be. With the advent of the internet, and digital culture moved from Midi to Wav to MP3s relatively quickly and ultimately it was that ability to Download and cobble together your own mixes that led to the next big jump in the lives of Music Geeks – the introduction of the MP3 player and the iPod specifically.
