This isn't the exact model, but it looks every bit as crappy as the one that I had, oh so long ago.
Bloody kids…
Part of the joy of working with teenagers is the smug sense of superiority you feel when they all pull out their latest generation iPods and start listening to Hedley or Lady GaGa. Before you can stop yourself, you’ve already blurted out the phrase, “Back in my day…” You follow this up with steadfast assertions that the pathetic excuse you had for a music-playing device somehow imbued you with deeper character, broader worldviews, and a heightened sense of smell.
My first portable music player was a hand-me-down tape deck from my stepmother. It was already ancient when I got it, only a small step up from an 8-track, and it featured no more than two hours of functionality on a pair of AAA batteries, and that was only if I avoided using the fast-forward, rewind, or pause buttons. In addition, it did not have a built-in radio. I will remind you that even at this point (1992ish) portable radios were being made that were the size of a quarter. The technology was there. It was cheap and readily available. Do you know what this monstrosity’s solution to an FM tuner was?
A tape-shaped insert with a radio built into it.
Pardon me when I say that this was a complete and utter embarrassment to own. As a teenager, pulling this red and chrome beast out of your backpack and popping in the cassette-radio was a sure-fire way to get mocked and/or beaten-up. (I was already scrawny, ugly, awkward, and unpopular; why give the other kids further ammunition?)
The sound quality somehow managed to be both tinny and muddy simultaneously. It warbled the sound if I tried to move while it was on, giving me the eerie sense that the musicians were flying past me on a short, circular train track. The foam on the headphones had disintegrated, so I was left with two perforated metal pieces cheese-grating my ears. It also made a kind of whirring noise while it played, and this would often turn into rhythmic squeaking, grinding, or clicking, where each new sound was louder than the next (and louder than the actual music) until it finally ate my tape and spat it out in a filmy pile of magnetic ribbon (unless, of course, I was listening to the cassette-radio insert).
I suffered with the red piece of crap for roughly a year before I got an actual Walkman for Christmas. It too was red, but it was mercifully sleek and functional. The scabs on my ears slowly healed, the bullies at school choose less obvious things about me to mock, and I could actually hear all of my music in all of its stereo wonder. As I listen to my 5th generation iPod Nano today, do I look back fondly on the days of the red monster? Do I wish for simpler time, a time of “Side A” and “Side B,” of winding tapes with pencils that fit just right in the gear holes, of “auto-dubbing,” recording songs from the radio, and making mix tapes for my girlfriend?
Hells no, my friends.
Hells no.
There were a few tapes I had where I really liked one song. I would memorize how long I’d have to rewind the tape and stop it right at the right time so I could listen to the one song over and over. I also had several tapes where I’d tape songs from the radio, so there would be snippits of the D.J.’s voice or a radio commercial at the beginning and/or end of the songs.
Oh Ipod, how I love thee. Kids these days just don’t understand how truly amazing the MP3 technology is.
Ah, the old radio taping sessions. I don’t hunt, but I feel like the process would be similar. You spend hours sitting by your stereo system, fingers poised over the record button on the twin deck, hoping that the DJ would give you a clue that the song you wanted would be coming up in the next block. And you desperately wanted to hit that song right at the opening chords so that you wouldn’t have to wait for it to come back on to rotation again.
Now I can record the radio on my iPod Nano, but if I miss the mark, I can rewind it and try again as if I have the power to alter the flow of time.
I had a walkman too! I did not have the radio insert thing like you had and mine was black, but I got it for my ninth birthday and it was the most exciting thing in the world. I remember it had a handy dandy belt clip, but because it was so heavy, it almost pulled down my pants. LOL.
Other amazing things that the kids of today know nothing about:
1) Taping songs off the radio. I had 17 tapes spanning from my freshman to senior years of high school full of poor quality songs with announcers talking over the top of them. The very first song I ever recorded was No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak”. Oh 1990s Gwen Stefani, I miss you . . .
2) Cassingles. I remember buying Jewel’s “You Were Meant For Me”, Dishwalla’s “Counting Blue Cars,” Tracey Chapman’s “Give Me One Reason” and Jars of Clay’s “Flood” on cassingle and thinking I was the coolest chick ever. This pretty much proved the opposite.
Cassingles? No way. I demanded that my artists give me a full A and B side of music, or it wasn’t worth my hard-earned money (read “allowance”).
And thank you for reminding me of Dishwalla; I haven’t given that band a thought in well over a decade.
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