Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Twenty years ago today, I purchased my first two compact discs: The Alan Parsons Project, Pyramid (1978), and Mark Isham, Tibet (1989). I still have these CDs, naturally, but they have been joined by well over 600 more. (I should count them some day.) Coincidentally, Katherine and I put together a CD shelf this morning. It holds 702 CDs. I like to keep things organized. This new CD shelf will help me do that. How many CDs do you own? What was your first musical format: vinyl, eight-track tape, cassette tape, or CD? Mine was eight-track tape. I still have a few dozen eight-track tapes in the house, plus a couple of hundred cassette tapes. During the past 20 years, I have replaced many eight-track tapes and cassette tapes with CDs. I've heard people complain about the musical quality of CDs, but to me, they sound perfect. Certainly they sound better than eight-track tapes!