Hopefully, all of you reading this will understand why this was a difficult Christmas. It should come as no surprise that there’s absolutely no photographic record of this years’ festivities. Thankfully, my dad and nanna did their best to bring the festive season into Mercuryvapour Towers. The main present this year was one that I’ve always cherished, and still own to this day. It was my first ever CD player. It was the matching model to my Alba hi-fi which I got the year previously. It was what those phono jacks existed for. It unlocked a whole new world of music to me, where I’d previously been living off scratched records, and worn out tapes, I was finally entering the digital era.
Now, at the time of typing, I don’t have the exact model of CD player to hand, but a quick Google search would lead me to believe this is the CD1010. I can’t confirm that, as ut’s currently 03:45 in the morning and I don’t want to wake the whole house up just to confirm this, but it really was barebones. There was no time display. The only indication was the amount of tracks on a disc. You couldn’t fast forward or rewind in a track, you could only skiop the entire thing. It apparently had some type of memory control, so you could program tracks, but that was about the limit of its capabilities. It played CDs great, however. Even the barebones systems were ruggedly built back then. Of course, I received some CDs to go with it. Mainly singles And, of of course, I can tell you what they were…
“The Boney M Megamix”. For some reason, Boney M had became relevant again. Not sure why, but they released a medley of somgs, starting off with “Rivers of Babylon” and ending with “Rasputin” I believe. I don’t think it grazed the top 10.
Second was “Drift Away” by… Michael Bolton. Yep, his reworking of the Dobie Gray classic. I actually quite liked it at the time. Also featured a terrible rendition of ‘White Chirtmas’, and two tracks from his earlier albums which I quite liked.
Third and most definitely least, was ‘Supersonic‘ by ‘Hedgehogs with Attitude’, stylised as H.W.A. Back in 1992, there was a number of records released based on computer games or computer game charaters. There was Tetris, SuperMarioLand, and this sparkling turd.
I’ve literally just discovered there was a follow-up to “SuperMarioLand” called “Go Mario Go”, and it’s on Discogs for over £100. I shall have to keep my beady eye out for that one. There was also a Lemmings one. I’ve heard it. It’s not superb.
Anyhoooo, back to the CD player. I still have it, and it still works, at the time of last power-on. It served me well. Both the hi-fi and the CD player were in onstant use until 1996, then I got another hi-fi with a CD player built in. there shall be no blog about this, however.
Oh yes, I also received a goal net this year. I made very good use of this, as it fitted at the top of the garden just nicely. That is, until I put a football through the kitchen window. I think I took it down after that and never used it again. Rusted remains of the frame can still be found on the flat-roofed washhouse.