The birth of the Compact Disk

Greetings. When my great-uncle-in-law dies a few years back, one of the things which popped up when we were going through his things was a copy of "Gramophone" magazine from March 1983. Why is this interesting? Well, because March 1983 was the month that Compact Disk was released on an unsuspecting vinyl-loving, cassette loving humanity.

[Interestingly, I was in HMV yesterday and was amazed and delighted to see lots of LP's on sale - and not just the boom-bang-innit dance artists either. Lots of current groups are releasing to vinyl now as well. However, the real shocker was the re-appearance of the 7" single. Yay! The first thing I collected. And they're back. Anyway....]

Now, it's important to realise that CD was a dramatic change from LP. LP's could be scratched easily, they didn't like handling, they crackled and popped and were generally very fragile wee beasties. CD on the other hands promised "perfect sound for ever" - yeah, I know but check the adverts below...

And on to the purpose of this post. I have scanned several pages from the March '83 edition of Gramophone and put them into my Flickr account. I hope you enjoy these...







































So, there you have it. 25 years ago this coming year a revolution happened in music. And now it's happening all over again.

If you want to go straight to my Set on Flickr then just click the heading of this post.

And finally...



Cheers and Happy New Year...