Comments on: Happy Birthday, Compact Discs

By: Chris Molanphy

Chris Molanphy — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:03:50 +0000

@RobMurphy: I bought the D50 with my own summer-job money, and I couldn't afford the battery pack, which sold separately. My summer job had me at a desk all day, so it was no biggie to plug it in. (But oy! the adapter! Like the battery pack, it attached to the back of the Discman, and it too weighed a ton.) By the time I started thinking I wanted a battery pack, months later, Sony had released the much thinner D75, which came with a (heavy, but thinner/bottom-attached) pack, and I had some more job money so I bought that. Actually, cute story: when I went by myself to the local Bradlee's to buy the D50, I had brought enough money for the Discman and tax ($200ish), but I forgot I needed at least $17 extra to buy a CD so I'd have something to play on it! (Discs were $14.99 retail in '86, an absurd price given the going rate for LPs and cassettes at the time.) I can't remember exactly what I did, but I think I either convinced the guy to knock $5 off the Discman price so I could afford the Prince disc, or I came back later the same day to buy the disc.

By: RobMurphy

RobMurphy — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:54:24 +0000

@Chris Molanphy: My mom bought me that same Discman D-50 as a gift that year. Can you believe what a beast that battery pack was? (For those who never saw it, this "portable" player required 6 C batteries!) My first CD: The Who, Who's Next

By: Chris Molanphy

Chris Molanphy — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:09:36 +0000

@ampersandparade: That's a good story about your uncle's CD player. Dating myself a bit: 1986 was when I bought my first CD player (I was 14 going on 15). It was the Sony D50 Discman, which was just as blocky and bulky (albeit smaller) as the home player shown above. First CD purchased: Prince, Parade. I for one would feel nostalgia for the CD if it went the way of the cassette, but I'm weird like that.

By: ampersandparade

ampersandparade — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:31:10 +0000

I was born in 1986, and as a small boy my uncle had an early version of the CD player. It cost at least a thousand dollars, and he had a huge collection of hyper-expensive CDs. Being my cool gay uncle, a lot of it was New Order and Pet Shop Boys, but I remember being in awe of this as a kid, and us having dance parties to what seemed to me were merely weird bombastic electronic beats; I didn’t realize it was music until I was old enough to become someone else’s cool gay uncle.

My grandparents had a laserdisc player (and one of those archaic CED players before that) as well, so apparently I grew up in a family that literally lurched onto new technology, no matter how unwieldy. Amazing.

By: LostTurntable

LostTurntable — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:06:43 +0000

I hope CD players don’t get retro, I’d hate to have my blog complete with LostCDPlayer.

By: Maura

Maura — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:08:52 +0000

@SeanCarruthers: ohhh i wish i'd thought of that.

By: SeanCarruthers

SeanCarruthers — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:54:07 +0000

Sadly fitting it’s turning 27 as it’s about to die – it can become a member of the 27 Club: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27_Club