Gene Autry Can Still Kiss My Butt

John Scalzi notes the 25th Anniversary of commercially available audio CDs, and wonders what was the first CD that people bought.

I have no idea, as it turns out.

I tried to remember. I know that the first LP I bought with my own money was the Beatles Revolver. (At the time, I was disappointed.)

I remember that the first piece of music that inspired a protracted hunt to acquire was Vangelis's "Pulstar" off Albedo 0.39.

Man, that took an age. This was in the days before the internet. Before Google, or even Alta Vista. Before downloadable mp3 files, or even audio listening stations at record stores. I heard "Pulstar" at a Laserium show, and it rocked my world. I managed to get the name of the artist from someone running the show, after it was over. Just the artist name. No album name. No song title.

Finding the song again was an unimaginable chore in those days. Vangelis was not an artist you could find at the Campbell library. (Though Flanders and Swan were!) He wasn't played on any Bay Area radio station I could find. (This was before Chariots of Fire.) I can't remember how many Vangelis albums I bought blind before I got the right one. Oh, the days of buying albums by artists you had heard one song by, and just praying the whole album was good. Finally finding the right song was a major triumph that represented months of searching.

But my first CD? Dunno. I'm a late adopter, me. I don't think I bought any CDs until Hal and I moved in together, because he had a CD player. So that would have been late 1988 at the earliest.

I do remember what I was listening to around then, so I can make some guesses. I was listening to The Edge, as it then was. For just a brief, shining moment in the dusk-of-KROQ era, J.J. Jackson was music director of a radio station made practically just for me. They played Warren Zevon, and Richard Thompson. They debuted Melissa Etheridge and the Indigo Girls when nobody had heard of either one. They actually played Bruce Cockburn and House of Freaks. Hell, they played Happy Rhodes and Loreena McKennit. It was my best source for new music that rocked my world. Whatever my first CD was, I'm pretty sure I heard it first on The Edge.

And then one day, Gene Autry decided that what the Los Angeles market really needed was Yet Another Lite Format MOR station, and since he owned the station, they pulled the plug on The Edge. I've never seen its like again.

So you know what Gene? I'm glad the Angels waited until you were three years in the grave before they stopped sucking.