From LP to iPod

OK.
I admit it: I am the type of person who would obsess over the first album to place in my iPod (cue laughter from those who know me).
I received an iPod as an early Father's Day preset and I could have easily closed my eyes, pulled any of 10 CDs off the shelves and stuck one of them in the computer to import into the iPod. But that is sooo not my style.
No, my style is much more comically obsessive.
I had internal debates about the first of my CDs to enter the true digital age. I weighed and reweighed merits, balancing these out with a host of (imagined?) cons.
The Beatles? Sex Pistols? Dennis Alcapone? Miles Davis? Frank Sinatra?
All good choices.
But I chose Simple Minds' "Sons and Fascination." This Scottish band's 1981 breakthrough (in the UK, silly) release becomes the first album that I have owned in all four formats -- LP, cassette, CD and iPod.
It just made sense.
I adored Simple Minds in high school -- years before "Don't You (Forget About Me)" provided the band its first American success. As is always the case with me, as Simple Minds rose in American consciousness, I began to lose interest.
(The word "cult following" was made for a music geek like me.)
I remember pumping my fist in the air to "The American" at a Simple Minds' concert at San Francisco's Warfield Theater. I remember hearing "Love Song" on a Salt Lake City alternative radio station (can you believe it?!) en route to my freshman year at an Iowa college. I remember requesting the headlong rush of "Wonderful in Young Life" on San Francisco's majestic alternative station The Quake (to no avail -- they would much rather play Echo and the Bunnymen or Depeche Mode).
This album -- originally a double album that included a second set titled "Sister Feelings Call" -- has played a part of my life for nearly 25 years. It has crossed a continent with me and provided a soundtrack since adolescence.
The question is not "How could I make this album the first on my iPod?"
The question is "How could I NOT make this album the first on my iPod?'
So I did.
Posted by Hello