No one is to blame...
Sometime in, ooh I would think about 1991, I earned enough of a wage to buy myself a little stereo. That is to say, I had the potential to pay my parents back IF they bought one for me upfront. Which I managed to charm my dear mother into doing so, at the ESB shop in the Stillorgan shopping centre, with promises of regular repayments. I am quite convinced I honoured them to last IR₤ (no comments mother, please :o)
Anyhoo, this little stereo was about ₤200 at the time - very pricey considering it was only 5w per speaker and made (dubiously) by Sanyo. But it had a CD player, a digital display and a remote control - and I just HAD to HAVE one as soon as I could (our family hi-fi, though fairly schmick, was limited to vinyl and cassettes, and had an annoying tendency to produce arguments between myself and my brothers about playing time, and indeed what "crap" each other was playing).
So I took this home, bursting with excitement, and immediately set it up in my room, only to realise
that, of course, I had no CD's to play in it, so I had to make do with the radio and the tape deck that first night. The next morning I was out the door with my limited funds to see what CDs I could buy. After a bargain bin raid, I managed to find 2 compilation CDs - "With love from the stars" and "The greatest love album in the world... EVER" (no hardened loyalty to any specific artist at this stage) and proceeded to play them continuously for weeks after that (I'm convinced I didn't buy any more as I was paying off my dear parents with any spare cash).
Every song on those albums has been etched in my head forever. And when I hear one, as I did last night on a late night 80's Countdown repeat on ABC (Howard Jones "No one is to blame") I am swept back to those strange young days listening in isolation to my music in my room, hairbrush in hand (actually I preferred a can of deodorant) happily singing in earnest in ranges I could not reach (generally only when I had the house to myself). So last night I leapt to my computer and started to download every song on the CDs that I could remember (Three times a lady, Damn - I wish I was your lover, I wonder why, Constant craving, The crying game, No one is to blame etc) and repeated the listening and singing experience, the fun of which has never left me. How wonderful it was...
Incidentally, I so vividly remember the first song I heard on CD "It's a kind of magic- Queen" in my auntie's house when I was babysitting her kids one evening. The hi-fi was a super duper deluxe one with wonderful headphones, so when the kids were safely bedded down, I would creep into the "good room" and marvel at the sound experience. *sigh* sitting on the floor in darkness silently mouthing the words, I must have looked a bit like a pale Stevie Wonder without the glasses...
