My First... CD - The Wonder of Decade
Written for the occasion of the 29th anniversary of Decade's release
November 15th, 1989... Nottingham
It was my first year at University living at Halls of Residence. I had worked all summer picking tomatoes (good money!) and paid for a holiday back packing around Europe and (big drum roll!) a new hi-fi with a CD player! I was the first of my friends to get one and at university I was still the only person to have one (I lugged it with its two massive speakers in the back of my Austin Allegro. The hi-fi cost more than the car).
Obviously a significant problem was having not much music to play on this apparently amazing thing. For the record, my first ever CD was INXS's Shabooh Shoobah, closely followed by Prince's Batman (so shiny! the future was here!). We all listened closely to the crystal clear sound but mostly really loved the ability to skip tracks and not have to turn a record over after 20 minutes.
And so it was quite exciting when within a few months of having this new toy, Duran produced their new album. Well, not exactly 'new' but this would have to do. I bought it from Virgin Records (long gone) for probably more than a CD costs today. I brought it back home and played it but this wasn't exactly an earth shattering event given the content. Not many pictures either.
So all a bit underwhelming, really. Not that surprising as the CD wasn't really aimed at me. As so often can be the case, the expectation was better than the experience. But I never bought an LP again.
Top trivia - following a recent Twitter conversation, we seem to have established that Decade started the decision (?) for Duran to call 'The Wild Boys', 'Wild Boys'. Check out your LP and CD re-issues of Arena.