I still enjoy collecting, but CDs don't provide the same pride of ownership, since they never existed in the past, when the music we enjoy was most popular.

Jim replies....

About the wisest thing about rhe industry, that I have heard in ages.

You know, if it was simply nostalgia, we could both laugh at our obsession and get over it - but it is not just nostalgia.

My own daughter, brought up on Beatles CDs, has "borrowed" all my Mersey vinyl, and sees them not just as vehicles for distributing music, but as art works in their own right, not to mention - pieces of history.

Somehow, MP3s from iTunes, (even if they ever get the sound right), will not have the same meaning for those of us who lived through the era.

John Lennon or Buddy Holly or Bill Haley, all owned, touched and listened to the same similar piece of plastic as you and I have in our collections - so there is a sense of continuity in those that no piece of cyberspace can ever touch.

Plus. you have the memories of buying each piece of vinyl.

In 11958, I bought my first LP.

It was called "The Chirping Crickets" and cost me a lot of pocket money. Today (nearly 50 years later), I clearly remember buying the album - remember the girl who sold it to me - remember my trip home holding it - and remember playing it to my Mom, who (to give her her due) told me it was lovely!

The CD is probably better, but as you say, it does not hold the same memories.

And as for MP3s - what do you have but the sound?

We lived a lifestyle - not just a sound.

And now, I am definitely getting dangerously sentimental.

• RE: And they said it would not last.... - John 08/28/2007 02:02:18 EDT (2)