[October 23, 2011 marked the 10th Birthday of the iPod. In honor of that monumental event, I decided to write about my tiny music device of 1980. Yeah we had something similar. Note to Readers: most of these posts will be as historically accurate as I can recall them from my youth. See if you want a history lesson, you can go to Wikipedia or something. But if you want to read an entertaining account of history from a point of view of someone that was there, then this is the place for you. And now! On to the first post on 80sArchaeology!!!]
Some would tell you that we didn’t have portable music back in the 1980s. They would be wrong. We had electronic devices that would provide us hours and hours of music. In my world, the device was small. It could fit in my jeans pocket, kinda. (Yes, it did Mr. Jobs). It was costly but not overly expensive. I think I got my first one when I was only 8 or 9. I remember we purchased it at Kmart. It was red plastic. It did not come with headphones. I had to buy those separately. Instead it came with a lone ear bud. It was a honkin’ big ear bud, like that thing Uhura used in Star Trek. I do remember it had a little speaker on the back so I could listen to it from my desk in my room.
So, in 1980, Sony unveiled to U.S. markets the Walkman—a portable cassette player. I was too young to remember the big hoopla over this tiny electronic device. And when I say tiny, it was still bigger than a paperback novel. Later, when I was older, 12 or 13, I would get my first one. And it wasn’t even a Sony, it was a knock off. It was the Sears model SR –something. I remember the first one didn’t work. The tape wouldn’t play without jittering and garbling. We took it back and I got another one. That one worked until I broke it. I rocked that little Walkman-knock-off like it was a real one. I would later get a real Sony freshman year in High School (when prices dropped) and it was weather proofed yellow! But, I’m not talking Walkmans.
I’m referring to a smaller device that could play music for hours longer than my Walkman-knock-off. See that Walkman-Knock-off would eat through 4 AA batteries in about two hours. This other device would give me about a day’s worth of listening—all on one 9 Volt battery. I had thousands of songs in my pocket. Oh yes I did. I picked from Easy Listening, Classical, Classic Rock (which in the early 80s was Beatles and Doors), Heavy Metal and the new and powerful Pop genre. Just needed to rotate the dial and boom a new set of songs. Yes, I had to deal with the annoying interruptions of a DJ, got advertisements of used cars, affordable furniture and where to get a professional fitting of shoes. Yet, as a kid, I didn’t care. It was the coolest technology I knew of. And I didn’t need giant black plastic discs to enjoy my music.
See, portable music, for me, in 1980 was my AM/FM Radio. Purchased from that Kmart on Main and Hobbs. Found in Kmarts around the country. I vaguely remember it costing 20 bucks in 1980. Not cheap but very affordable for the entertainment factor. See, those first generation Walkman’s cost couple hundred dollars and my mother would never be able to afford it. Like I said, I got my Walkman-Knock-off in 1985 and it was still in the $49 range. Being a poor kid in a single parent home, I was always behind the times in technology (will get to that later, i.e. Atari, CDs and PCs). Just as I got my first cassette Walkman, a new thing called Discman was hitting the scene in 1986. Again, overly priced, I wouldn’t get one until my last year in high school. But I didn’t care. I cherish my early devices.
I will always remember listening to Radio Ga Ga and the Go’s Go’s Vacation on that tiny little radio. I had the power of thousands of songs, they were just on shuffle play. Like Forrest said, “you never knew what you would get…”
