Dad? What's A CD?

I remember when the compact disk came out in the early 80's. I was fascinated by the fact that you can that you can just flip to the songs you want on an album without waiting and that you can shuffle the songs to get a new perspective on a familiar album. I couldn't imagine any significant advancement at the time that would displace CDs as the dominant form of music purchasing. That was before the advent of the Ipod and other MP3 players.

Ever since I bought my most recent computer, I have barely played my CD player. I am never in the forefront of technology. I believe in waiting out to see if or what will dominate the marketplace before I jump in. In 1984 the marketplace had determined VHS format of videotaping was the way to go in recording television shows and watching movies at home. 1990 was the year I finally got a CD player when prices for them were affordable to a cheap bastard as myself. 1 got my first DVD in 2003 when they got cheap and more so because the VHS format was all but extinct.

So, when I got my Mac I took advantage of the ITunes program and installed music from my favorite Cds. The sound from my computer is quite good so I used it as my primary source of listening. I have bought music from the ITunes web site on occasion and ahem! have gone to the library to "borrow" Cds that had songs I haven't had in my possession since my cassette days. I have taken advantage of other peoples collection of songs and installed it in my computer. Basically this means I have not bought a CD since 2004. Until the other day.

It's Christmas time and that means Scangirl likes to go shopping and I get to tag along. Scangirl has been influential in my going shopping for Christmas presents in her absence. That means going to stores that play Christmas music (Funny how the "War On Christmas" hasn't stopped that practice). My local K-Mart plays the pop standards. One dandy chestnut they play is "Christmas Is The Time To Say I Love You" by Billy Squier. It's a fun mid tempo rocker that features background vocals from the early MTV crew in the video. This reminded me how much I loved Billy Squier in the early 80's. After watching his videos on YouTube I got obsessed with him to the point of adding his music to my collection.

So I went to ITunes to purchase music only to find I needed to install an advanced version of ITunes to go further. I hate having to do that because half the time I install programs from the internet I can't figure out how to make it work on my computer. Well, I tried to do this only to find my computer wasn't advanced enough to install it.

What?!!!!!!? I bought the computer in 2005! It hasn't been 18 months yet! How can my Mac computer not be advanced enough to install songs from Mac's own ITunes yet I could install songs on a PC with Windows 2000! 2000! That's before Bush! How can they be so cruel to Mac users.

But I digress...

So my obsession continues with Billy Squier. I had to get his music. Only one thing to do, buy his CD.

I knew there was a collection out there, heck I've seen it in grocery stores. I finally decided to buy it at fye. I found a collection of ten of his songs in which I liked nine for $6.99. A better price then ITunes. It was weird buying a CD. It seemed so archaic. I looked at it like a person who still buys vinyl records, like I'm looking at an icon of a previous generation.

So, in keeping with my current tradition of listening to songs on my computer, I immediately installed the songs and played my "Party Shuffle" with the "Least Recently Played" as my source category.

To make a long story longer I grooved on Billy Squier classics like "The Stroke" My Kinda Lover" and "Everybody Wants You". Alas no "Christmas Is The Time To Say I Love You" and it just came to my attention as I'm writing this that the so called "Best of Billy Squier" doesn't have "Lonely Is The Night" Yikes! A quick look online at other various compilations over the years doesn't have "Lonely Is The Night" either. How did I miss this?

Sigh! It will be a while before I buy another bargain CD.