“I used to think getting old was about vanity but actually it's about losing people you love.”
- Joyce Carol Oates
I received word yesterday that my longtime friend Cliff Acred passed away at 92. I wrote about him and his amazing life on his birthday on November 11, 2025 under the heading: Cliff-O. As I told his wife, Leslie, I knew this day would come but I had held out hope in my heart that he might live forever. So long my dear friend. Heaven finally got its bass player.
Also, yesterday, the CDs of my new record arrived. I get the minimum order, 100. It's a fair question to ask, in this day and age, why bother with getting CDs at all? Hardly anyone still has a CD player, and they don't put them in vehicles now, so…
Well, I have some reasons. One, I like tangible, non-virtual objects that I can put my hands on. I like the tactile experience of holding something. It's why I like physical books over online reading. The same for newspapers and magazines, if you can still get them. I like turning pages. It's why I subscribe to County Highway, America's great broadsheet newspaper that can't be accessed online. They're fighting the good fight.
And with respect to music, those of us who grew up gently taking the plastic off of a brand new LP, opening up the fold, reading the liner notes like they were sacred scripture, holding it like it was a talisman that possessed great wonders, we never lost the memory of that experience. And that magic doesn't exist looking at something on a twelve-inch screen. And CDs, while not the same as a vinyl record, are still a thing to hold and turn over in your hands.
Also, I don't wish to repeat regret. Growing up, I had a pretty dandy baseball card collection. It was the envy of some. In my late teens, thinking I'd outgrown the phase, and hard up for cash, I sold the whole bunch for a humiliatingly small amount of money. I'm not over it yet. I also had a most excellent record collection for many years, 500-plus albums. When CDs came along, LPs began to feel a bit luddite-y. Plus, I was weary of dragging them around anytime I moved. So, once again, I sold most of them for a pittance.
But I still have a good collection of CDs, and I'm not making a third mistake. I'm hanging on to them and waiting on a comeback. As with the resurgence of vinyl, it seems like the winds are blowing in that direction.
I read an article recently entitled How We Stopped Listening. It touched on some things I've been observing about some younger folks in my orbit. Talking about the gradual decline of tangible objects in music, the author, someone writing under the moniker ABSTRACT TRUTH, says:
Visual aids such as album covers, liner notes, turntables, and even CD players had to be dispensed with. Anything that might cause a young person to sit still and listen – really listen — had to be eliminated. We couldn't have that. Streaming completed the job: fragmenting attention, destroying shared experience, devaluing the work, and ensuring that the artist — the one who practiced, sacrificed and created — was not paid.
He goes on: But lately I am noticing something strange happening. I see Gen Z rebelling in the only way they know how. I see the proliferation of used record and CD shops. I see kids walking around with Jimi Hendrix tee shirts…
These kids, a decade or so behind the millennials — at least a good many of them — want to be challenged and engaged and to think bigger thoughts. When I walk into my local used record shop and engage with the 17 and 18 year old boys and girls and tell them that I actually saw Procol Harum and Weather Report their eyes go wide…
They walk away with vinyl records and CDs, and they talk about this or that part of an album in a manner that reminds me of the kinds of discussions I used to have with my father…
Great art, great music, is something to hold and behold. We don't want to “stream it.” We want to hold it. Cherish it. Own it. Share it. Because more than anything else, it means something…
It is not fleeting. It is a gift from the artist to the listener. It was not meant to disappear into space or be put into the background of a video game. When we stop for a second, put the album on the turntable, or the disc into the CD player, we experience things differently. The tangible product makes us better understand the diligence and sacrifice of what went into creating this work of art that we brought home with us. This is what brings us back to a world full of meaning.
So that's why I still order CDs and I have one for you if you want it.