You know who you are, step forward CD-R

Years ago I did a blog about how CDs appeared to have hit absolute rock bottom, becoming the music format that dare not speak its name. They'd become junk, trash, stuff to throw out. Instead, the music-consuming public - bullied and cajoled as they were by music companies, advertisers and the media - were now dutifully salivating over expensive new vinyl or, perhaps more realistically, busily streaming music to their hearts content (discontent?). On the one hand there was, I think, something overblown about this supposed rejection of CDs (they still sold in pretty big numbers), but it's also true that I did myself come across several boxes of CDs left out in the street. They'd reached a disposability stage in their evolution: from futuristic new music format of the early-eighties, to supremely old-hat "mum and dad" format of the mid-2010s. Anyway, with CDs now reportedly experiencing a minor revival there's another shiny, plasticky format that's several rungs below even the humble CD. You know who you are, step forward CD-R. Yep, those cheapo recordable versions of CDs that electronics shops used to sell in massive 100-strong "spindles" in the 2000s and 2010s. A boon to inveterate home recorders like me. In 2004, when I got my hands on a CD player that could record I went all in on CD-Rs, switching all my home recording (of 20 years standing) from blank TDK tapes to these. It was home recording year-zero: never have I recorded on a cassette since. But who values an album or bunch of random songs recorded onto one of these anonymous-looking things? Compared to an official CD, with its properly printed disc and insert artwork and jewel case/digipak sleeve, they're awful, right? Akin to something you'd see in the stock cupboard of an office IT department. Which is true, but looks aren't everything and CD-Rs still sound fine. Either way, in the past 20 years I've amassed hundreds of CD-Rs as I've rampaged through the lending libraries of east London to feed my home-recording habit. And now - this very week - has come a moment of reckoning. Having kept all these CD-Rs stacked up unsorted on the bottom shelves of my CDs (the lowest rungs), treating them like poor cousins to the official ones, I've finally decided that they need to be integrated. Yes, they're all getting filed in with the other CDs. So that, dear reader, is what I've been doing this week (yeah, I know how to fun). Sorting these out ...

Out and proud: CD-Rs in readiness for their long-awaited integration

It's long overdue, I reckon, part of a wider CD integration process. Basically, CD-Rs need their due. After all, which sounds better: Four Tet's Pause on CD-R or Skream's Skream! as an official release? Or what about Prince Far I's Silver & Gold on CD-R versus the official release of King Tubby's Crucial Dub? Answer: they all sound good, even if the Skream album is arguably better than the Four Tet album (despite Pause's excellent No More Mosquitoes) and the Prince Far I album better than the King Tubby's. So yeah, this is a much-needed rebalancing of my CDs. And alongside the oh-so-fun job of re-filing the physical copies on the shelves, there's also the matter of adding the CD-Rs into a big list I (belatedly) got up and running last year so as to have some way of knowing what I already own when I'm confronted by a £1 copy of a certain Sun Ra or Hot Chip or Miles Davis album in a charity shop far from where I live. Up until I did the list my typical thought process in these situations used to be: have I already got this album, or not? Fuck, I can't even remember. The list makes a note of the format type (there are lots of packaging variants), including - hurrah - whether it's a CD-R (er, I omitted the hyphen in the list). For example, an excerpt ... 

... so now I'll have new purchasing dilemmas: do I get a cheap official copy of such-and-such a CD when I already have it on CD-R or as an official but unhoused CD in a plastic wallet? Yeah, crucial questions. Meanwhile, back in the 2000s it used to be fairly common to go to a small gig and have a band member offer you (for sale usually though sometimes gratis) a CD-R of some of their songs. Possibly a demo. Sometimes these had a bit of DIY artwork, sometimes they didn't. Either way it was a healthy thing, I reckon. One of these which I still have is this super-humble three-tracker by Unbunny. No artwork, no CD design, just some scrawled writing:

I've never seen Unbunny live and as far I can (fuzzily) recall I bought this off some bloke at a Jeffrey Lewis gig in Hebden Bridge in about 2009. A random geezer in the bar who said something like, "Would you like to buy one of my CDs?". It must have been Mr Unbunny himself (aka Jarid del Deo) and I must have missed his support slot so didn't really know who he was. The CD is great, though, and I'm glad I got it - check the songs out here, plus seven other tracks from what apparently became Unbunny's Moon Food album. So yes, three cheers for three-track CD-Rs bought randomly in pubs, and three cheers for the CD-R format in general. C'mon, you know who you are, step forward CD-R ...