Spinning back through the decades

LET me set the scene.

A friend of mine recently bought his first car and so in I hopped and we took it out for a spin.

Now, first things first, as a music guru with an eclectic taste, my natural state is to find the AUX cord, plug in my phone and blast some obscure song, but this time I was cut off.

“We do CDs in this car,” my friend hissed, his eyes narrowing menacingly as he slowly lifted the lid of the armrest console and revealed to me to a hidden collection of compact discs.

He watched me intently as I took one of the CDs from the their hiding spot with a shaking hand and I didn’t say a word as I pried open the case of 2002’s So Fresh: Hits of Summer.

Dust poured out in a fountain, twinkling as the sunlight caught it.

I felt my heartbeat flutter; my hair stand on end and my eyes widen.

It brought back memories, let me tell you.

Suddenly I was in back in my parents’ back room, listening to their copy of Queen’s The Works on the silver tape-and-CD deck we had. That album, man, it introduced me to Queen, introduced me to CDs … it introduced me to music, really. The tears couldn’t flow fast enough as I was consumed by a fist of pure emotion. It was like a songbird was tugging at my heartstrings. It’s a cliche, but there’s something so magical about owning something … having a physical object free from the shackles of a phone or the endless void of the internet. I felt it; an urgent need to hear the CD slide into the machine, the tiny wait as it was being read.

Is there really anything better than that?

It’s not the warmth of vinyl, it’s something else.

Sitting in that car, listening to my friend’s collection of CDs from his teenage years — Ball Park Music, Florence and Aussie Crawl — was like an awakening.

My ears felt like the ears of the gods as I sat, glued to a tiny green screen displaying those magic words: “Track 3”.

I felt renewed; like this newfound feeling was going to stay with me for the rest of my life.

Would I ever forget this moment? Would it ever truly leave me? Who knows, I thought as I stepped into the sun a new man.

Smiling to myself, as I put in my headphones and cranked up Spotify.