"And yeah, I love the cover art... People just don't do art like that anymore..."

How about this? And that's from 1979, folks! Makes you proud, don't it?

There are some great CD covers around; my wife bought Karen Dalton's Green Rocky Road at the weekend which has a gate-fold cardboard sleeve almost as exquisite as the music.

I have some CDs which I made around 5 years ago and there are some among them which are unusable due to the deterioration

They would be CD-Rs, which people often call (& pass off) (for full price) as CDs but are a different beast altogether. Even the best have a limited life. The oldest actual CDs in my collection are holding their own quite nicely and I'm still playing cassettes from 30 years ago. Vinyl, on the other hand, will always be my first love.

How can you roll a decent spliff on a CD jewel case?