Artists I Forgot Existed Because I stopped Using CDs

Above: Setting up my record player just before the cd player arrived. New Order’s Round & Round (7 inch single) playing. Don’t worry, I also cleaned the record deck shortly after taking this photo. It had been in a warehouse for 5 or 6 years uncovered.

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Like many my age, a year or two after the debut of the original iPod, I joined the ranks of those who deemed CDs dead and embraced the iPod. Sometime in 2005, I carried my extensive CD collection—roughly approaching 1000 discs—to a now-defunct used record store in Kamimaezu, Nagoya to sell them all.

Fortunately, the store declined to buy them because I’d thrown away all the plastic covers to save space. In hindsight, this turned out to be a stroke of luck. Those CDs languished in storage for nearly two decades as I grappled with the quirks of Apple Music—playlists, inaccurate artwork, and missing tracks.

Last week I decided to bring them out of retirement. I invested in a new (pre-owned) amplifier and CD player to complement the record deck that I still owned. Once everything was set up I was left wondering why I hadn’t done it years ago. Simply put the sound quality is better, the artwork is always correct, there are no playlists so I listen to an album in full, and perhaps most importantly I’ve rediscovered some significant artists that I can’t believe I’d forgotten about.

Here are a few of them, listed without any particular order:

• Missy Elliott
• Aoki Takamasa & Tsujiko Noriko
• Ryoji Ikeda
• Broadcast
• Riow Arai
• The Jon Spencer Explosion
• Grandaddy
• Staff Benda Billi
• Talvin Singh
• Leftfield
• Crowded House
• Mix Master Mike
• Lenny Kravitz
• Jurassic 5
• DJ Format
• Cornelius
• Cibo Matto
• Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her
• Ride
• 808 State
• Massive Attack
• The White Stripes
• Franz Ferdinand
• The Flaming Lips

The list goes on. And on. And on.

An added benefit is that those CDs, for which I scrimped and saved during my teenage years, are now consistently available at bargain prices.

If you have a CD collection bring it out of retirement and join me in my slow conversion back to the 1990s. Nostalgia runs high and it feels great.

You will not regret it.