A lot of traditional-media ink has been spilt over the long-ago death of vinyl and its current plaid-clad life-support. Such large packaging and warm sound! Album art meant something, and our couch was like
Roseanne's! Now, those who transmit profitlessly from our mothers' basements must find a new dying music medium to be irrationally nostalgic about. Take a guess! Here's a hint: you can cut them into guitar picks, or reflect sunlight to send messages in Morse code with them!
We still make a point of acquiring actual compact discs -- but now typically play them just the one time it takes to rip them to mp3 filez. Our mp3 player has yet to fill, and can go a week or so without playing the same song. We remember how crazy it was to have a CD player that could keep 3-6 discs on the ready. Being the late 90's, these devices had horrible aesthetics, could also play two cassette tapes, and made a robotic cacophony at every disc switch. The speakers were always these huge particleboard boxes designed to appear like a badass Hi-Fi speaker. But, if you ever peeled back the cheesecloth covering, they actually contained just a crappy clock-radio speaker, and the spot that looked like it would contain a tweeter was empty. Blah, blah, this puffed-up emptiness was actually symbolic of post-Kurt American culture, blah blah. However, they
were cheap enough that they were acheivable birthday/christmas presents.
But we aren't actually nostalgic about the medium itself or even the machines that played them. Compact discs themselves are uninspiring and the players are inferior to the technology that replaced them (see above). However, one thing that binary code and cheap hard drives will
never be able to replace is the scent that select CD packages contain. MP3s are odorless, and LPs just smell like old cardboard. But, depending on either the paper treatment or ink used, some CD packaging had a distictive aroma that would be enjoyed prior to loading them into the player. With apologies to the consistently fragrant offerings of
Cryptogramophone, the best-smelling CD of all time, hands-down, was the
Foo Fighters debut. Hot-damn that was good. If that smell would only be extracted and bottled so that we could wear it daily, we could wear
those glasses, drink
that beer, move to Portland, and devote an entire room to the CD collection.
Four period-specific CD players would be positioned in this room, and we would show it off to dinner party friends until it had to be dismantled to make way for the kids room.
What do
you think is the best smelling CD packaging? Please comment, we promise not to snark you.
1 comment:
Dude, I'm still nostalgic for tapes. And they smelled good too! (They have the same little booklets.) I remember many Frank Zappa tapes that all smelled good. Frank was known for his dedication, so I would have believed he sprayed each one with something he cooked in his kitchen.
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