Back to rock, or to be more specific, prog rock. For the last few months, we’ve looked at early CDs in the jazz, reggae, and pop realms. It’s been a while since we focused on a rock album. Let’s do that. In this post, we consider the British rock group Procol Harum. Prog, psychedelic, blues, […]

If you search past posts here on keithhirsch.com, you will find entries from 2010 and 2013 featuring early Japanese pressings of John Coltrane. So it’s been seven years since we last covered the legendary jazz saxophonist. In this post, instead of a Japanese pressing, we will take a look at a rare U.S. pressing. This […]

In today’s post, we add some reggae to keithhirsch.com as a change from the usual rock, pop, and jazz. When most people think reggae, they immediately think of Bob Marley. Understandable. Marley was instrumental in helping to bring reggae to the mainstream in the 1970s. However, to keep things interesting, we will not look at […]

With CDs doing their part to signify the start of the digital age in the early ’80s, it is appropriate to look at early CDs of music from the era. Of course, music usually represents the culture and beliefs of the period in which it was written. When the CD went commercial and began to […]

Happy New Year! A new year and a new post. To start 2020, we consider a rare, early U.S. issue of the Cat Stevens compilation Footsteps In The Dark: Greatest Hits Volume Two. Footsteps was released in the U.S. on the A&M, and the earliest CDs were pressed in Japan by Denon. There are two […]

At this time back in 2007, we looked at two early Elvis Presley Christmas CDs, both titled Merry Christmas (go here). One was the particularly rare Japan-for-U.S. pressing, and the other was the slightly more common West German-for-Europe version. Collectors would do well to find either version and should expect to pay significant premiums for […]

The album was titled Make It Big, and they sure did. Wham!, the British pop duo formed by George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, released the sophomore effort in 1984 and propelled to the top of the pop world. “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”, “Everything She Wants”, “Freedom”, “If You Were There”, “Careless Whisper”. The […]

With the CD format being targeted to audiophiles at launch, it is no surprise that many of the early releases were classical titles. Philips, both a co-developer of the format and the namesake of a major classical label, released classical CDs right out of the gate. These discs were pressed in West Germany at the […]