How Benno helped me organize my CD collection

** Zoals verschenen in de digitale nieuwsbrief van Collectorz.com [27.10.2009] **

“In 1984 (I was twelve) my father brought one of the first CD-players home. A Philips (forgot the type, sorry about that) with a built-in pre-amp. The thing weighed a ton! Living in the city where the technology of transferring digital audio through laser was actually invented (at Philips NatLab, Eindhoven), my father (a Philips employee - like almost 50 per cent of the people living in Eindhoven at that time) got a big discount on that player. It costed him 2,400 Dutch guilders (appr. $ 1,500 US Dollars). Man, THAT was a lot of money back than.

The player had no remote control, but came with 4 FREE CDs! ‘Let’s Dance’ by David Bowie, ‘Love over Gold’ by Dire Straits, ‘Seven and the Ragged Tiger’ by Duran Duran and a classical music sampler from the Archiv label. I was in awe. It was simply the most wonderful thing I had ever seen and heard! I remember too that with the player and the disc, a catalog was issued. A book, consisting of a mere 200 pages. Containing ALL the then available CDs. With cover art and descriptions! The Full CD Guide 1984/1985. It’s insane what happened since. A couple of years back, I bought The Penguin Guide To Jazz On CD. A massive book, with over 1,500 pages  and only the index counts around 80 pages. And that’s “jazz”.

1984, the year of Purple Rain (Prince, one of my all time heroes), will never be forgotten. It was the start of my addiction.. er.. collection. It started with those three CDs that came with the player (my father kept the classical music sampler). Next were the Prince albums that started to come out on CD. Remember, 40 Dutch guilders (18 euros now or $ 25 USD) was a great deal of money. And me, being a teenager, deprived of the necessary liquidities, had a hard time. But still, every extra went to music. Well, everything, actually.

My first place to store my discs was a shoebox. Then I bought some kind of casket that would hold 60(!). I thought that thing would stay empty forever. But.. it did not and I needed a second one. Alas! It was not being sold anymore. So I found a nice series of boxes to store my (then 100) CDs. When these were full, they were also gone from the shops. Well ... this went on for quite some time. And then, somewhere around the year 2000, IKEA made Benno! Benno holds appr. 12x15 discs (180). I now have 12 Bennos (and two on their way). That’s, indeed, 2,160 CDs.

And thanks to the alphabet (and the wonderful Collectorz.com software) I know what I have and where to find it!

I still have the three CDs that came with the player. And despite all that they say about the data not being eternal (some even say that it won’t last 15 years), they’re still fine. We’re talking 25 years now.

I bought the missing classical music sampler about 5 years ago. Found it in a thriftway and I still wonder why somebody would want to part with it.”


© Fred Händl - 2009 / 2010