Scopique July 15, 2026
Scopique July 15, 2026
This entry is part 11 of 10 in the series My Music

My Music

OK so better late than never.

A while back I talked about an “experiment” in which I’d select singles from Days of Yore(tm) and listen to their containing albums in their entirety. I don’t know how music works today (I suspect it’s pretty much the same) but back in My Day(tm) singles were released and that’s what we heard on the radio. This would send impressionable young people to the Record Stores — pour one out — to buy the whole album on the back of one song. It was hit or miss. You could love all or most of the songs on the album, you could encounter other songs on the radio over time, or you could hate the whole thing. Crapshoot.

Last weekend my wife and I went to a local flea market, and I picked up a few CDs. I am at a point in my life where the 80’s are a distant yet comforting memory, but the early 90’s are where it’s at. This is my college years. I focused on CDs that were from that period of time, and managed to score 9 or so. I also had purchased several from Qobuz because they had lossless versions. Some albums are from existing collections. Right now, it’s a pretty small selection, but I’m working on it.

I have created a “90’s” playlist which I thought should only contain the “songs I know”, but then realized that I now had entire albums from which sourced the songs I knew, so why not get familiar with the songs I missed Way Back When(tm). So that’s what I’ve got: a playlist of entire albums, sourced from the early 90’s, which will hopefully grow over time because as I’m sure I have enough songs across all current albums to last me for a while, I would like to fill the gaps with the actual songs that evoke the memories of the early 90’s that I’m interested in right now in my life.

My Music

My Own Honest Playlist

Scopique

Husband, father, gamer, developer, and curator of 10,000 unfinished projects.

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6 Comments

  • Nimgimli

    July 15, 2026 - 7:58 pm

    Are you old enough to remember when they’d pack in really thin (flexible) vinyl 45s with junk food? Like you’d buy a bag of chips and there’s be a square piece of vinyl with a round ‘record’ printed on it. Fidelity was terrible and I wrecked my parents hi-fi needle piling pennies on it to make it heavy enough it wouldn’t skip on these monstrosities.

    • bhagpuss

      July 16, 2026 - 2:18 am

      Flexidiscs, those were called over here. They used to be commonly given away with magazines. I still have a few somewhere.

      A decade ago, the nostalgia for vanishing record stores would have made more sense. Given the huge resurgence of vinyl, though, and the increasing interest in physical product, especially in the younger end of the music-buying public, the nostalgia itself is starting to look a little quaint. Where I live, the trend seems to be more towards new record stores opening than closing down. The premises next door to where I work, which had been a clothes shop, closed recently and our management was disappointed not to be able to grab it before someone else did. Apparently the plan was to extend into next door and open a combined games and vinyl section. Games and vinyl albums are big sales drivers these days.

      CDs though? They are still out of fashion. But even there sales have reportedly stabilised and are no longer in decline. If things follow the same pattern as vinyl, I’d advise grabbing your old CDs while they’re cheap because all those thrift stores that were refusing even to take vinyl albums as donations a decade ago now have sections with the same records priced at five or ten times what they used to sell them for. It might happen to CDs eventually, too, although they don’t quite have the tactility of albums with gatefold sleeves.

      • Scopique

        July 16, 2026 - 6:35 am

        We do have boutique stores around here that are primarily focused on vinyl, but they do sell CDs and cassettes, already at a premium. I haven’t visited any yet, and wanted to get to the flea market as I assumed that they’d have things for cheap. I think the most expensive CD I picked up was $8USD, and the least expensive was a whole $1USD! I think in the boutique shops they’ll still be selling for $10+ and at that point I might as well just get physical media from Bandcamp or hi-res digital from Qobuz since my ultimate goal is mainly to rip them to digital.

    • Scopique

      July 16, 2026 - 6:32 am

      Personally, I remember the 45’s with books that were aimed at kids. I had a few of those when I was younger, and while my parents had a turntable and many records, I skipped that phase and went straight to cassettes because they were portable.

      • Nimgimli

        July 16, 2026 - 2:20 pm

        Casettes weren’t invented yet when I was a kid. I had to go from albums though that dark and desolate period known as The 8-Track Era, and then finally to casettes… and then.. AND THEN… you could get one IN YOUR CAR!

        What? I can take my music in the car!!? What marvels technology had wrought!

        • Scopique

          July 16, 2026 - 8:32 pm

          Funny thing: there were SEVERAL 8-track cassettes and players at the flea market! But being in the sun all day, I don’t know that I’d buy any cassettes or LPs.

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