The Great Transition to CD era?

I have some questions for those of you who lived through this great transition...

1. When did you buy your first CDs?
2. What were they?
3. What was the first "essential" you replaced with a CD, even though your record or tape still worked fine?
4. When did you commit to CD as your primary media?

I bought my first CD's in about '90 (Cult-Sonic Temple, Tesla- Great Radio Controversy, & Iggy Pop-Instinct). The first "essential" CD I bought was UFO- Lights Out. And I didn't get a car with a CD player until '97 or '98; so that was when I really quit buying anything else.

I began in the CD era, basically. 1987 is when I bought my very first album on CD—Def Leppard's Hysteria. But I was buying cassettes until the mid-90s. In basic training, on town pass, I bought Life Of Agony's Ugly, SYLs Heavy As A Really Heavy Thing, and Marilyn Manson's Smells Like Children, all three on cassette. That was January of 1996.

I'd say a short time after that I pretty much stopped buying cassettes. I still have a lot of albums just on tape. My entire Sabbath collection is on tape; I don't own a single Sabbath album on CD.

my first cd purchase, as far as i can remeber.. was Bathory's Blood, Fire, Death

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1. When did you buy your first CDs?

It was 94 or 95. I had Paramaecium - Exhumed From The Earth

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2. What were they?

Paramaecium - Exhumed From The Earth (and Clandiah - The Train Journey North)

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3. What was the first "essential" you replaced with a CD, even though your record or tape still worked fine?

I had Paramaecium - Exhumed From The Earth on cassette but upgraded to CD.

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4. When did you commit to CD as your primary media?

That same time, more or less. I'd finally bought a little CD player in college in 94-95. I might have picked up another cassette here or there, but by 95 I was switching over.

The first CD I bought was Stryper's To Hell With the Devil.It replaced my cassette copy which still plays fine.I didnt start buying cds until around the mid 90's.

The first CD that I ever got was Garth Brooks' Ropin' The Wind. My parents bought it for me in 1991 along with my first CD player.

The CD I bought to replace a cassette was in 1993 with Trouble's Manic Frustration.

I committed to CDs around '93.

1. When did you buy your first CDs?
Mid-to-late 1992, after I'd graduated from college and had found a semi-"real" job that allowed me enough money to take the plunge.

2. What were they?
I think it was either AC/DC's LET THERE BE ROCK, or Metallica's KILL'EM ALL. For all I know I may have bought them both at the same time.

3. What was the first "essential" you replaced with a CD, even though your record or tape still worked fine?
See above. (Although now that I think about it, I replaced KILL'EM ALL because my vinyl skipped during "Hit The Lights")

4. When did you commit to CD as your primary media?
Immediately after buying my first two CDs. I never looked back after that.

Eyesore wrote:

I began in the CD era, basically. 1987 is when I bought my very first album on CD—Def Leppard's Hysteria. But I was buying cassettes until the mid-90s. In basic training, on town pass, I bought Life Of Agony's Ugly, SYLs Heavy As A Really Heavy Thing, and Marilyn Manson's Smells Like Children, all three on cassette. That was January of 1996.

I'd say a short time after that I pretty much stopped buying cassettes. I still have a lot of albums just on tape. My entire Sabbath collection is on tape; I don't own a single Sabbath album on CD.

Blasphemy! (unless you regularly use them)

I bought my 1st cd player, which I still own & use, sometime in the early to mid-90's if I remember correctly at Silo Electronics (anyone remember them?). Immediately after the purchase, I went to Tower Records that same night and bought 3 cd's:

Ozzy - Blizzard of Oz
Guns N Roses - Appetite for Destruction
Aerosmith - Toys in the Attic

GnR & Aerosmith I had on cassette, Blizzard I only owned a cassette dub from a buddy of mine.

I'm pretty sure after that, I switched to cd purchases exclusively. I may have picked up a tape or 2 at flea markets, but anything new would have been on cd.

Chairman_Smith wrote:

Eyesore wrote:

I began in the CD era, basically. 1987 is when I bought my very first album on CD—Def Leppard's Hysteria. But I was buying cassettes until the mid-90s. In basic training, on town pass, I bought Life Of Agony's Ugly, SYLs Heavy As A Really Heavy Thing, and Marilyn Manson's Smells Like Children, all three on cassette. That was January of 1996.

I'd say a short time after that I pretty much stopped buying cassettes. I still have a lot of albums just on tape. My entire Sabbath collection is on tape; I don't own a single Sabbath album on CD.

Blasphemy! (unless you regularly use them)

Nope. My mother bought me this boombox type deal for Christmas (she still thinks I'm 17, I think) and it has a dual cassette deck. But before that I hadn't owned a cassette player since the 90s.

1. I bought my first cd player in 1994 - 95 I think.

2. The first cd I received was Jimi Hendrix - Band of Gypsys, but my dad bought it for me a few weeks before I bought the cd player so all I could do was stare at the cover art and dream of what it sounded like. I also bought my first KISS cd Destroyer at the same time as the cd player.

3. I can't really remember what the first replacement cd was, but I think it was Ted Nugent - Great Gonzos or Nazareth - Hair of the Dog...I think.

4. From the minute I first heard a cd I knew that I would no longer need cassette tapes anymore, but I still buy records from time to time, because I love them so.

I hear that before CDs came out, they used these weird rectangular things called 'cassettes'. Apparently they were plastic shells with these weird tape inside.

Haha, but seriously, by the time I start buying music, it was all CDs.

Fetus!!!

For some reason my brother wanted a CD player when they first came out Mid-Eighties. He wasn't a music fan then at all so that was always strange. But off we went with my dad to Circuit City to buy this box like thing that played these discs. And we soon found ate batteries like nothing else could. Being the music fan in the family I ended up adopting the poor thing. Amazingly it still runs today (though it was retired from active duty long ago).

Wasn't much CD selection at that time. I think only Sam Goody had any at all. And did you ever pay for that sound upgrade. First purchases where the only two that even remotely appealed to me - Boston's Third Stage (which turned out to be a great buy) and Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet. I didn't buy another CD for probably three years after those first two.

The first essential I replaced was Ozzy's Diary Of A Madman.

The final conversion was early nineties when they came out with those devices that went into the tape players and connected to the CD player so I could listen in the car.

1. When did you buy your first CDs?
I'm a late bloomer, I started with CDs in 1994.

2. What were they?
For Christmas '94, I got a CD player and two CDs (Metallica-The Black Album and Megadeth-Youthanasia [sic?]). My first actual purchase was Iron Maiden-Live After Death.

3. What was the first "essential" you replaced with a CD, even though your record or tape still worked fine?
Savatage-Edge Of Thorns (I might be wrong but I' think that was it). Never got the rest of the Metallica albums replaced until recently (I was so disgusted by Load-that was the last Metallica CD I got since the Black Album-that I gave up on Metallica for a time).

4. When did you commit to CD as your primary media?
Shortly after I got my first ones. I also remember discovering used CDs stores and it skyrocketed from there.

SAHB Healer wrote:

I have some questions for those of you who lived through this great transition...

1. When did you buy your first CDs?
2. What were they?

Bit of a story here. When I started working at a radio station, my PD was showing me the board and he remarked "I'm sure you've used a cd player before." I kind of kept quiet, because I had not (this was in 1989 or 1990, I think).

While driving home from my shift one night, I had our competitor playing and the dj asked some trivia question that I knew the answer to. By the time I got home, no one had answered the question, so I called up and won a cd, my first ever. It was Valentine by Nils Lofgren. I got a cd player a few weeks later and started buying cds on my own. I have no clue what I bought first, but that was the first cd I ever owned.

Eyesore wrote:

Chairman_Smith wrote:

Eyesore wrote:

I began in the CD era, basically. 1987 is when I bought my very first album on CD—Def Leppard's Hysteria. But I was buying cassettes until the mid-90s. In basic training, on town pass, I bought Life Of Agony's Ugly, SYLs Heavy As A Really Heavy Thing, and Marilyn Manson's Smells Like Children, all three on cassette. That was January of 1996.

I'd say a short time after that I pretty much stopped buying cassettes. I still have a lot of albums just on tape. My entire Sabbath collection is on tape; I don't own a single Sabbath album on CD.

Blasphemy! (unless you regularly use them)

Nope. My mother bought me this boombox type deal for Christmas (she still thinks I'm 17, I think) and it has a dual cassette deck. But before that I hadn't owned a cassette player since the 90s.

Diden't you get Heaven and Hell's new live album tho? (I think its not technically Black Sabbath, but still)

I don't remember my first Cd but I remember cranking Diary of a Madmen and being blown away hearing Randy's solos sound so crystal clear. I will say, some of the translations don't work very well. Practice What You Preach has a weird ticking sound when I turn it up. Like the drums were miked wrong.