I think the first four issued were SUPERTRAMP's Crime of the Century, FLEETWOOD MAC's Rumours, TALKING HEADS Remain in Light and some classical disc--though I may be wrong. I remember soon owning YES' Close to the Edge and Fragile as well as KING CRIMSON's ITCOTCK, but Crime of the Century was definitely my first.

Somebody to love

Moody Blues - This Is

The ones I remember were mostly old albums I also owned on LP

- Six Wives

- Myths & Legends

- Foxtrot

- Selling England

- Nursery Cryme

- Aurora (Jean Luc Ponty)

- Leftoverture

- Thick as a Brick

- Stormwatch

And a other more I can't remember

No, normal CD player. Think I only ever bought two of them.

Then I bought a boom box with two cassette players on the front so I could listen to tapes I already had and a CD player on the top so I could start buying discs. 

The first CDs I bought were "No More Tears" by Ozzy and "Still Got The Blues" by Gary Moore.

Ha, what a coincidence. The very first two CDs I ever owned were Permanent Vacation and Van Halen's 5150. That, alongside Black Sabbath's Paranoid and Uriah Heep's The Magician's Birthday. 

Wow. I bought "Paranoid" on vinyl around 1986 and "Demons and Wizards" about a year later. I didn't buy(and hear) 5150 and Magicians Birthday until a few years ago believe it or not(on cd).

Here's a funny little story though. Around late 85 or early 86 I remember going to a department store and buying Yes' "9012live" on cassette. I happened to run into a guy from my school there and I told him I just bought a tape. He asked me what I bought and I lied and told him I bought the latest Van Halen(which would have been 5150). I remember him telling me he liked the song "why can't this be love" if I'm not mistaken. I lied in order to look cool. I figured he either wouldn't know who Yes was or would think they were weird. I finally bought that VH on cd about two years ago or so. I think I only listened to it a year ago for the first time. I'm not a huge VH fan but I now have all their stuff up to and including 0u812. 

BrufordFreak wrote: I remember them! I don't think I ever bought one, though. (Didn't they require a different player?)

They required an adapter similar to the old vinyl single adapters, except it was worn on the outside.  The one I had and still have wasn’t too compatible with my first player, it couldn’t get through most of it without skipping something fierce.

 

I know my first few (or more) CDs because I’ve always been anal-retentive about cataloging my collection, including all purchase information.  So my first ten, from the summer of 1987, are:

 

Camel – Pressure Points Live

Cream – Goodbye

Frank Zappa – We’re Only in It for the Money/Lumpy Gravy (the first, initially expensive Rykodisc version)

Penguin Café Orchestra – Broadcasting From Home

Kitaro – Silk Road Suite (the orchestral version)

Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells

Allman Brothers Band – Beginnings

Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow (the badly-mastered 1st version)

Genesis – Wind and Wuthering (ditto)

Ralph Towner – Blue Sun

Bought a CD player and on the way home realised didn't have anything to play on it so nipped into HMV and picked up this:

I'm talking about 1988/1989. But the cd was expensive. Hot Damn, were they expensive. 40 guilders, wich translates to 20 or 25 euros.

So I bought mostly the musicassettes (as they were called). They were cheaper, and I could play them in my walkman.

But only new albums were on musicassette, and I was a Queen- and Saga-fan so I had to buy some cds in order to make my collection complete.
I guess my first cds were: Queen - A Night at the Opera and Queen I and Saga - The Works and The Beginner's Guide to Throwing Shapes.

When I realised, collecting cds was only fo the rich, I started checking out second hand stores to buy vinyl, because they cost 1 guilder per LP. In no time I had thousands and thousands of lps.
Got rid of them though. Now I only stream music.

I still remember that my first two CD's were compilations (which I usually avoid): Another Arable Parable by Barclay James Harvest and B'sides Themselves by Marillion.

Ignoring the Audiophilatelists, who in 1985 still favoured reel-to-reel tape and valve/tube amps over vinyl and solid-state, (and whose opinions of CD and digital would never be positive in a million years of smashing their heads against an anechoic chamber wall), CD was struggling to live up to the hype and everyone looked for explanations of why CD wasn't all it was cracked up to be every-which-way and jumped on every plausible explanation thrown our way to little avail.

While we know now that this was primarily because the remastering didn't make full use of the advantages (and limitations) of the new media, and in some cases in the rush to re-issue vinyl in CD format they weren't even remastered, at the time everyone jumped on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARS_code" rel="nofollow - SPARS code s, {AAD, ADD and DDD}, since there appeared to be a direct correlation between albums that sounded blegh! [AAD] and those that sounded yay! [DDD]. In reality SPARS codes weren't an indicator of quality at all and so began the backlash against digital recording and mixing that persists to this day (which again is no indicator of quality).

The other perceived "problem" was down to the hardware, I guess we all remember those every expensive CD players festooned with buzz-words like oversampling, interpolation, anti-aliasing, sin(X)/X (which no lay-person can really understand no matter what they try and tell you) and such passing fads as the MASH converter and that over-priced nonsense, when most of the real issues were mechanical rather than electronic but as Sony & Philips had the joint monopoly on transport manufacture no one could do anything about. 

The 1980s were early days for the technology and there were inevitable bugs to iron out, but the engineers have done all that now so no amount of post-production tinkering by enthusiastic amateurs will make a blind bit of difference.

What's worth noting here is my second CD purchased was (predictably) Dark Side of the Moon and the third was Diamond Dogs, both of which to this day sound pretty damn good for CDs issued in 1984 because EMI and RCA took care in the mastering process. The Old Mikefield thing on the other hand is passably acceptable as a pair of drinks coasters and little else.

Seems like a lifetime ago already  

I only started collecting vinyl five years ago, mainly because it's very difficult to find used records in good condition at an acceptable price around here.

Over here in Blighty many of us recall seeing seeing a TV demonstration of a CD being liberally coated in jam and then playing perfectly well when put into the player. 

Unfortunately everyone thinks this was on a TV programme called Tomorrow's World but none of the presenters of the program recall doing that so this has since been decreed "an urban myth" by The Internet, and as "proof" here is the Tomorrow's World clip where Kieran Prendiville attacks a CD with an abrasive but doesn't demonstrate that it is subsequently still playable.

There is a clip of a Breakfast TV presenter spreading honey and coffee over a disc and then playing it but that is poorly edited so you cannot see how he cleaned it off before playing, however this isn't the demonstration I remember seeing as I never watched Breakfast TV back then so would not have seen it anyway. I suspect it happened on an early evening live magazine programme such as Nationwide so no recordings of the episode exist as I distinctly remember laughing as the presenter spread the jam on the label-side.

 

And I really started buying CDs as a medium of preference when Division Bell was released (spring 94) ... and have not returned since to vinyls (OK, I buy a couple of them a year) mainly for user-friendliness issues

 

I remember occasionally getting a bum CD back in the early days. There was a Tracy Chapman CD I returned (most indignantly) because none of the tracks would play properly.

 

I remember very well the first CD I ever bought. It was the summer of 1987, and I had a broken jaw, which is probably one of the most miserable physical experiences possible short of amputation. My husband was great the whole time, waiting on my hand and foot and keeping me well supplied with ice cream and soup. I wanted to do something special for him once it was over so I bought him a CD player and Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms.

 

After that we embarked on a huge 3 year CD buying spree. At the end of it we had about 500 CDs, mostly replacing our favorites that we had on vinyl. We were living in the Netherlands at that time, and CDs were very expensive, so we used to stock up when we visited America, usually buying 50 or so on each trip.

 

I know there are people who swear by vinyl but I never had any issues with the audio on CDs and I really don't miss the scratches and hisses.

I mostly stream music now,too, but, thanks for sharing this story! It opens up a whole new discussion topic that I've been thinking of posting for quite a while: Is music only for the rich? Both the collection of music and the playing/composition/publishing of music? Is music another medium that incites elitism? 

I had the privilege of being born into an affluent family in an affluent country (the U.S.), but I always thought I was very lucky to have the means to buy music and musical instruments and recording equipment. So, can a "poor" or even "middle class" person hope to either collect music or become a musician?

 

 

I would completely say so. I am no means a wealthy man, but I collect records like a madman. I give myself a limit. I try, emphasis on try, to keep the price on each record I buy to be under $12 each. It doesn't always work out that way, but I have managed to amass a considerable collection by keeping within my budget. I will buy  one or two records every Friday.

https://www.discogs.com/Roger-Waters-Amused-To-Death/master/49965" rel="nofollow - https://www.discogs.com/Roger-Waters-Amused-To-Death/master/49965

 

Apparently not in the US (or via import maybe)

I did see it as a vinyl, but it was a double album... and not easily available, even in Europe... and rather prohibitively priced, so indeed, I went for the CD as well.

I don't remember this last stuff, Dean! I guess I was too busy playing with my G & L guitar, Magnepan ribbon speakers and Carver amp & pre-amp!

I never could tell the difference between AAD, ADD, and DDD--and I thought I had a discerning ear, but that analog vs. digital argument never affected me. Even the mp3 vs. wav vs. Flac differences are lost on me. Again, I find this weird cuz I think I am very attentive to sound engineering cues. Guess not! Recorded/reproduced music is still music!

I'll I never forget the pleasure of listening to it, switch from song to song, repeat them over and over again... I still own it.

Not one of their good albums by any stretch of the imagination though. Awful really. But apparently not easy to find on CD these days apparently. Until all those Sky albums were re-issued recently by Esoteric of course.

I still remember going into a record shop called Seeing Ears in Adelaide's main shopping strip very early in the time of CD and seeing an imported CD copy of the Snow Goose (Camel) on a shelf behind the counter for a very high price. At that time I was still thinking these CD things were just going to be a passing gimmick, no way I was going to pay big $ for that... But it was rare enough to see Prog albums in local shops at the best of times and seeing one on CD seemed an impossible rarity.

Must have been Queen's greatest hits part two as well as a comedy album done by a famous Danish "group" called Monrad & Rislund. Then came Michael Jackson's Bad

Kinda funny reading this thread as most started out with LPs and then moved onto cds. I am the other way around - collected thousands of cds and then suddenly decided to go the vinyl route Nowadays I buy both but prefer vinyl. There's a reverence about the medium that escapes the aforementioned plastic disc, I find.

I wasn´t even at least on a conscious level a prog fan at that time (end of the 80s), but my first CD I bought gives me credit I think ;-)

 

3) The Moody Blues - In search of the lost chord  (I had absolutely no idea who they are  and what they sound like, it just bought it because the cover struck me)

Somewhere in time around 83 or 84-

Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here

Weather Report- Night Passage

Simon and Garfunkel- Bridge Over Troubled Water.

In 1984 or 85', I remember purchasing my first new release -  The Alarm- Declaration...   I remember it cost me $16.99.  I'd never heard of The Alarm.  I bought the CD because of the wild crazy hair the band sported.  68' Guns is still one of my favorite songs of all time.

I hated how clean it sounded.

That perfect, snarling guitar sound reduced to digital meh.

Vinyl forever. 

That's awesome! I can't imagine going back to vinyl (though I have about 5000 in storage in my brother's basement). It's the space and playing equipment that prevent me. When I was single I had my whole living room set up for the best sound possible. Now I'm just happy to stream it on my headphones.

Agree whole-heartedly with the superior intimacy of the vinyl form--there is NOTHING like sitting down in the lazyboy in the sweet-spot of your surround sound speaker system and poring over the album cover and lliner notes . . . . 

Megadeth - Rust In Peace

Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back

Faith No More - Introduce Yourself

Living Colour - Time's Up

I still have the FNM.

 

More interesting were my first audio cassettes. The first one was "Iron Maiden. Collection 90-93". It was a release from Polish audio pirates Eurostar. Till this day I wonder where these guys took those versions of IM's songs. In short, all songs had melodicism in the vein of Fear of the dark. Was it another master tape? I liked No Prayer For The Dying and Alexander The Great - but when I listened to real studio versions 15 years later, I was heavily disappointed. The second one was "Aerosmith. Big Ones". The third was "Roxette. Greatest Hits".

 

I played the hell out of ABWH when I first got it...on cassette! (Not sure why, but I wasn't buying everything new on disc yet at the time, and I often got tapes for the car or boom box). "Themes," "Brother of Mine," "Fist of Fire," "Birthright"...great songs. Yeah,  "Order of the Universe" was cheesy, but hey, it was 1989.

 

The concert at the Greek was awesome.

Man, was I ever upset with the sound quality. Gone was the fury and snarl. All the greatness sucked right out of it. Pissed.

Some things should never go digital.

Luckily most Prog translated well onto the new format.

So did I, still do, parts of it.