I've spent the past couple of days re-devouring my few Mobile Fidelity discs, awaiting the arrival of their latest offering, Rush's Permanent Waves. If you're not an audiophile, and not many people are, these discs are not for you. They're expensive, for one - nearly $30 each when new, then usually skyrocketing in price when their limited production runs end - but they have been given so much delicate handling with regards to the remastering that they are very worth the investment.

As I said, I have been reinvestigating my MoFi discs - the previous three Rush installments, which are 2112, Moving Pictures, and Signals. I picked these up, one by one, many years ago, when I saw them used, quite cheap, I might add, but unfortunately when you give the discs a good look, it's obvious why they're cheap. They're scratched. Who would buy these discs at those prices and then treat them like that is an idiot, but that's beside the point. They're playable, but Moving Pictures is in the most worrisome condition - it actually has pinholes through the reflective gold layer, which is a scary thing indeed. Good thing MoFi will be reissuing these discs over the next year, but unfortunately in their new "mini LP sleeve" packaging rather than the original "lift-lock" case that their discs were known for.

I remember when my friends and I first found the elusive "gold discs," as we simply called them. Back then, when we were teens in the late 80s, it was widely believed that the high sound quality of these releases was due to the gold reflective layer that became so symbolic of Mobile Fidelity CD products. I mean, it made sense - we didn't understand mastering and stuff like that. We just knew that the other CDs were silver, and these were gold, and these sounded great, therefore gold=great sound quality. It turns out that the gold was used because it was a superior reflective layer - it didn't have the tendency to age and tarnish like aluminum did in regular CDs. Oh well. It sure is pretty, however.

I picked up the Rush discs for prices between $8.99 to $15.99 over a period of a couple of years. Unknowing owners dropped them off on the trade counter at Zia, getting a measly amount of money for what had been quite an investment. I didn't pick them up because I was any kind of audiophile. I picked them up merely because I wanted them - being a dorky completist fan, that's all, and, really, at the time, before the remasters came out, these had better liner notes than the bland original CDs did. And, you know, they were pretty gold.