Stop Making Sense by the Talking Heads. It was around 1984. I was living in Boston, working for minimum wage at a left-wing printshop. I had seen the movie with a girlfriend, and was blown away. About that time my roommate bought a stereo with a separate CD player. I didn't even know what a CD was. "Dynamic range" he said. Sure enough, it could play *loud* and clean. Actually I think it was his CD, but I made it mine, pogoing all over the apartment to "Burning down the House" when he wasn't home. Great CD, I'm going to have to buy a copy and relive the old days.
I travelled light for many years, just a little tape player and a lot of LPs (no turntable of my own, though), and finally couldn't stand tapes anymore, bought a CD boombox and what was probably the first CD I actually owned -- U-2s Achtung Baby. It's all intentionally distorted at the beginning -- and I panicekd and almost returned the CD player as defective! Now I listen to much more jazz and vocals (partly because that's what sounds good on my system!), but I still have and like that CD, and actually use it to audition new gear (sounds weird because it's so distorted in places, but one of the early songs starts with the drummer (Larry Mullen) clacking his drumsticks together, and I swear I can tell a lot about a system by how well it reproduces that "clack".
Recently got an LP player and starting playing my old LPs. Man, that resonates in every sense of the word.
- Eric