This is the time. And this is the record of the time.

June 3, 2007 9:45 AM

MeFi Trainspotting Dept.: While most music consumers long ago traded up their sonically dodgy, graphically threadbare, non-bonus-enhanced early CD pressings of their favorite albums, a subculture has naturally arisen to absorb their discarded digital detritus. Witness "Target CDs", a family which encompasses certain early West German and Japanese pressings on the Warner/Elektra/Atlantic (WEA) labels. So named for their distinctive label design, Target CDs - unlike, say, MFSL Gold CDs - make no particular claim to superior fidelity or longevity; in fact, due to their notorious "flat transfer" process from whatever version of the album happened to be lying around, it seems quite the opposite. (Further evidence for the purely nostalgic and/or aesthetic value of these discs can be seen in the "hypothetical Target CDs" threads.) Even so, as within any oddball subculture of collectordom, one can now expect to lay out serious bucks for certain of these shiny little period pieces.
posted by mykescipark (6 comments total)

Sometimes I amuse myself by holding up my oldest compact disks to a bright source of light. Back in the 1980's, many compact disks did not have heavy silk-screen graphics on the "label" side, only the bare text. MANY early CD's had pinholes in the aluminium deposition layer.

I would hope this quality control situation has been rectified by now, but you can't tell these days because most CD's have total silk-screen coverage.

Being that I mostly enjoy rock music, the notion of high fidelity is mostly lost, as most rock music is so heavily processed in the studio that the quality of the final medium is sort of moot.
posted by Tube at 10:57 AM on June 3, 2007

This is really awesome. The early days of the CD fascinate me. I always thought the "Manufactured by Polydor/PDO" CDs which were reflective silver and were completely flat all the way to the center hole looked really cool. They're also the ones that suffer from "Laser rot." Then there's the awful-sounding early 80s DDD recordings made before they realized that mixing and mastering in 16-bit digital simply for digital's sake probably wasn't the best idea.
posted by zsazsa at 11:07 AM on June 3, 2007

I remember my uncle had INXS' The Swing as a target disk.
It was really extraordinary at the time because I was just starting to realize my interest in design (Im a graphic designer now) and I couldnt figure out why, expensive as they were at the time, more CDs didnt feature full disc art like that.

It had to have been about 88 or 89 before you started regularly seeing screenprinted graphics on most major CD releases.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 11:38 AM on June 3, 2007

1) I have a Tragically Hip CD that I swear has the sound of a Side 2 lead-in groove on it (before "Fingers and Toes"?), as if it were transferred from vinyl.

2) I would love to get my hands on a CD of Bram Tchaikovsky's "Strange Man / Changed Man," which was only ever released on CD in a very limited run by WEA (and is also quite expensive second-hand). Anyone know if this was a "target CD?"
posted by ZenMasterThis at 11:56 AM on June 3, 2007

Wow. They're pricing my MFSL gold disc of Dark Side of the Moon for $100.

As for the "target discs"...I recall getting these discs all the time and thinking just how friggin' ugly the labels were.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:22 PM on June 3, 2007

Great topic, great post. Thanks for this.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 1:54 PM on June 3, 2007