360°Sound first interviewed author Zach Schonfeld in 2020 about his then-new 33 1/3 book on 24-Carat Black’s Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth. After seeing that Schonfeld would occasionally tweet about his used CD purchases, we asked if he’d like to be featured in our CD Junkies series. Fortunately, the 33-year-old New Yorker was game. In this Q&A, Schonfeld shares his thoughts on the format as well as photos of his collection, which currently stands at 1,093 CDs at his parents’ home in the suburbs and 175 discs at his NYC apartment.
360°Sound: How long have you been collecting CDs?
Zach Schonfeld: Since the late ’90s. My dad worked in the music industry when I was a kid, and he would regularly bring home promo CDs that had arrived at his office and give them to me. This gave me a head start on building a collection, and it’s why many of my CDs have that “For promotional use only” engraving.
For example, I fell in love with Pearl Jam after my dad brought home a promo copy of Binaural. I found out about Beck because my dad had a promo copy of Mutations. I got exposed to pop-punk when my dad brought home MxPx and New Found Glory promos. My first R.E.M. was a promo copy of Reveal.
The first album I ever bought (well, I asked my mom to buy it for me at the mall) was a cassette copy of One Hot Minute by RHCP. My parents knew nothing about RHCP and were horrified when they later looked at the lyrics.
I soon outgrew cassettes and switched to CDs. I’m pretty sure the first CD I ever bought was Everclear’s So Much for the Afterglow. It was 1999. My maternal grandfather took me to Sam Goody and said I could choose a CD. I chose Blood Sugar Sex Magik. When my grandfather went to check out, the cashier realized he was buying the CD for a young child and pointed out the “Parental Advisory” sticker. What a narc! My grandpa told me to go pick something else, so I grabbed So Much for the Afterglow.
What do you love about the CD format?
Well, I love vinyl, too. But I’m a ’90s kid at heart. When I was growing up, CDs were the default format for music consumption. I didn’t have a record player, and I wasn’t savvy enough to use Napster. Streaming wasn’t a thing. If you wanted to hear the new Foo Fighters album in 2002—which I did—you had to get the CD. I kinda just assumed that CDs would always maintain their primacy in the music industry. I never imagined they would fade as much as they have.
I like that CDs are small and portable, but still sound great with decent speakers. I like that they can fit a lot of liner note content into a small package. I like the way a new CD smells when you peel the plastic off. I like that CDs are quite cheap these days, at least if you buy them used. It occurred to me recently that CDs are the only consumer good I buy regularly that are cheaper today than they were during my childhood.
How often do you buy CDs? From where do you typically buy CDs?
Maybe once a month. I often dig through the used bins of my favorite NYC record stores: Academy Records, Generation Records, Earwax Records. (RIP, Other Music.) Outside of New York, my favorite record stores to visit are Turn It Up! in Vermont and Amoeba Music on the West Coast. Additionally, I’ll sometimes buy cheap used CDs from the guys who sell CDs and records on the sidewalk in my neighborhood. I occasionally buy and/or sell CDs on Discogs and eBay, too.
What are some of your favorite genres? Who are some of your favorite artists?
My all-time favorite recording artists are PJ Harvey, Radiohead, R.E.M., Flaming Lips, Leonard Cohen, Prince, Ween, Joanna Newsom, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Outkast, Beastie Boys, and Neil Young. In terms of genre, most of my collection is rock, hip-hop, or indie-adjacent stuff.
Which CDs have been getting a lot of spins lately?
On May 8, I was listening to Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly when I learned that Steve Albini had died. Shocked, I instinctively turned off The Nightfly and put on In Utero—the same copy I bought at Sam Goody in 2002. Since then, I’ve been mourning Albini by spending a lot of time listening to his ’90s work with bands like Nirvana, the Breeders, and, of course, Shellac.
What are some of your most prized discs in your collection and what makes them so special?
1) Flaming Lips – The Soft Bulletin. I bought this CD in 2003, and the Lips became my favorite band throughout high school and college. I got this copy signed by Wayne Coyne when I met him at a Lips concert in 2006.
2) Flaming Lips – Zaireeka. An album that exploded my perception of what an album could be. I took this CD (well, CDs) with me to summer camp when I was 14 and convinced my friends to find four boomboxes so we could sprawl out on the grass and hear Zaireeka how it was meant to be heard.
3) Ween – The Mollusk. This copy of Ween’s masterpiece is signed by Storm Thorgerson, who designed the cover.
4) They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Pick Up Sticks. This was the first album review I ever wrote. So, I guess it was also the first promo CD I received on my own merits. I thought this freaky Canadian band was headed for great things. Instead, they broke up immediately after this album.
5) 24-Carat Black, Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth. I wrote a book about this album for the 33 1/3 series. I spent a year and a half researching the story of this unusual ’70s funk collective. During that time, the 1994 CD reissue was never far from my side. The liner notes include an essay on 24-Carat Black’s backstory by the music historian Rob Bowman, which proved indispensable as I sought to trace the band’s sparsely documented history.
Probably not on the massive corporate scale of the vinyl revival. But I know of a few zoomer writers—hardly representative of the general population, admittedly—who’ve started buying CDs in search of a more retro listening experience.
I hope CDs come back. I find it depressing that many of the bookstores that used to sell CDs now have a section for $40 vinyl LPs instead. All major-label stuff; always overpriced.
Zach Schonfeld’s latest book, How Coppola Became Cage, is about actor Nicolas Cage’s early career. Buy it here.
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