Hey Berkshire County, What Was The First CD You Bought?

This may make you feel a bit older. Today is the 40th Anniversary of the CD. Back when they first came out, everyone called them compact discs. But as they became so commonplace, everyone started calling them CDs.

The CD was first produced in a factory in Germany. The very first commercially available CD was Billy Joel's "52nd Street" and it was released in Japan that October.

The very first music CD pressed here in America was pressed a couple of years later and it was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A."

As for Billy Joel's "52d Street", it was not released before some other CDs. In fact, there were 50 albums released on CD at once. "52nd Street" just gets a special distinction because it had the first catalog number.

CDs and CD players were first introduced to the Japanese market in November 1982. By March 1983, they launched worldwide. By the late 80s, that price went down on CD players quite a bit to the range of $300 to $600 dollars.

Things also changed in the radio business. The photo below is what we would play the CDs on at work. We would have them stacked three or four up. You would also have to put them in a special case to play them in the pro machines.

WUPE-FM's Eric Green and I were talking about the first CD ever released that we bought. Unfortunately, our vast music albums seem to blend in so we could only remember what the first album we bought was. Our midday guy on WUPE Eric's was Aerosmith's "Toys in the Attic". Mine was Queen's "News of the World". Looking back, those were pretty solid purchases. If I had to guess, my first CD was probably a WHAM! album if I'm being honest. The only one on the WUPE staff who remembered that his first CD was Madonna's "True Blue" CD was Our WUPE DJ who keeps you company on the ride home Jax.

Do you remember the first CD you bought?