I was snooping around my dad's house when I found a sizeable, sturdy black bag on a bookshelf in his office. I was 13, dressed in his Soundgarden…
I was snooping around my dad's house when I found a sizeable, sturdy black bag on a bookshelf in his office. I was 13, dressed in his Soundgarden T-shirt and a pair of out-of-date cargo jeans. I unzipped the bag and beheld a new world - or an old world, I suppose.
Hundreds of CDs were lying in buckling plastic sleeves, ripe for the taking: pirated Alice in Chains live concerts, Deftones' Saturday Night Wrist, Sepultura's Roots, Primus' Sailing the Seas of Cheese and… Fiona Apple's Tidal? I dragged the bag into my room, carefully removing all of our shared favorites before flipping back through to retrieve music unheard by me before, selecting solely based on the quality of the cover images.
I had a feeling I wouldn't like Monster Magnet, but the Superjudge art was too good to resist. Eventually, I stumbled upon what was the greatest album ever made to 13-year-old me: David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. But how could I jump back in time without a machine? The holidays were rapidly approaching, and I had many wishes, but none as great as getting a CD player.
Not portable - I refused to risk scratching my precious new hand-me-downs - but dormant. I didn't want another opportunity to live with my headphones in, ignoring my AP Human Geography teacher and missing instructions to get on stage at my music school. No - I wanted to sit down and listen and not do anything else for a while. I didn't want to listen and play Tetris, or listen and scroll on Instagram, or listen and text my friends.
I wanted to be on my own, in a way I imagined people used to be. I wanted to feel how my dad and everyone must have felt, before music was wedged between a calculator and a compass on a digital screen. Upon hearing of my new affinity for physical music, my family members opened their varied, extensive collections to my very sticky fingers.
This is a source-linked briefing. Read the original report from Johns Hopkins University .