George Michael established himself in the first half of the 1980s as the brilliant songwriter and singer of the archetypal pop group of the era, Wham!  When Wham! broke up in 1986, Michael planned on going solo.   His solo career started in 1987 with release of the blockbuster album, Faith, which featured Michael’s versatility as [...]

In the early 1980s, Sony issued a series of promotional sampler CDs in Japan with “YEDS” catalog numbers.  The first such sampler, simply titled Demonstration Disc and assigned catalog number YEDS 1, was released in 1982.  This disc was featured here in August 2010 (click here for details).  As a continuation, we feature another YEDS [...]

We kicked off 2012 on keithhirsch.com with discussion of a rare U.S. Target CD pressing of Neil Young Harvest (click here for details).  This disc is unusual by virtue of its color scheme, which differs from the color combination found with the more common West German pressing.  Here we consider a similar example — a U.S. Target CD of [...]

Whitney Houston, regarded by many as the greatest voice of her generation, died suddenly on February 11th at the age of 48.  This a huge loss for the music industry and for fans across the globe.  Whitney gave us hit after hit throughout her career, including “Greatest Love of All”, “You Give Good Love”, and “I [...]

When the CD format was launched in 1982, a key target audience were audiophiles who were frustrated with the labor and pop and clicks encountered in playing vinyl records and the wear and poor fidelity encountered in playing cassettes. While one could debate the merits and limitations of the various music formats, I will not [...]

Happy New Year!  Welcome to 2012 at keithhirsch.com! Most Target CDs, as early issues, were pressed in West Germany or Japan.  However, perusing this site, you will see a handful of U.S. Target pressings sprinkled about.  The U.S. PDO (Philips-DuPont Optical) plant pressed some CDs early on with the Target motif.  Generally speaking, these U.S. [...]

Happy Holidays!  It’s time yet again to celebrate the holiday season on keithhirsch.com with an early Christmas CD.  This year, we grace this site with a compilation from one of the great crooners — Bing Crosby.  In 1986, MCA Records released Bing Crosby Sings Christmas Songs on CD in the U.S. (catalog number MCAD-5765).  The [...]

1978 saw a three-man band from the U.K. break onto the music scene with a fresh punk/rock/reggae sound and creative, insecure, honest, and sometimes humorous lyrics. That band, of course, is none other than The Police, led by frontman Sting and joined by guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland. Their debut album, the distinctively [...]