For all the kids out there, this is a picture of an audio cassette. See that dark brown ribbon? Music is on that dark brown ribbon, and in order to hear the music you would need to place the cassette into a machine that would have two prongs that stuck into those holes in the middle, and the machine would make those holes twirl...and sound would be produced.
Back in the era of audio cassettes, in some stores, you could peruse the shelves of cassettes behind walls of glass. To actually look at the tape, you would have to get a person to come with a key who would unlock the cabinet, push the glass aside and pull out the cassette for you to look at it. Nope, no iTunes search, click, click, download, listen and enjoy. There was work involved here.
Going through some boxes in my closet tonight, I came across a grey transparent cassette with faded pink writing on the label in a girl's script: Sinead O'Connor The Lion and the Cobra. Where that little brown ribbon is exposed, there is a little metal spring with a cushion in the center. That little piece has been missing for years, making it impossible to hear the music. Yet, I have never thrown it away.
In 1988, my family moved from Minnesota back to Wisconsin. We moved, a lot. But, that's another story. Every kid in our suburban neighborhood helped us load our U-Haul and my parents bought multiple pizzas to thank them. We all sat around the U-Haul, droopy pizza slices in our hands, the mosquitoes starting to come out as darkness fell; yet even when the pizza was gone, few kids wanted to leave and we spent a lot of time just talking and laughing on our last night together.
Geradine, the girl who lived next door, and I talked about music. She had just gotten hooked on this bald, Irish girl named Sinead O'Connor, and she so desperately wanted me to hear her new tape, but her mother was weird about letting other kids into their house.
My parents, sister, and I slept on the blue-grey carpeting in what used to be our living room. The tableaux would have been film worthy: four people sleeping in a single file row in a completely empty house, fully dressed, no blankets, just there ready to leave at a moment's notice. Early the next morning, Geradine was the one who woke me up, my back aching from sleeping on the floor, and she handed me this tape. I was so groggy, I hardly had the chance to really say goodbye to her--but she had done it properly, with a gift of music she thought I would enjoy.
Yes, I love that I can type in something completely archaic like "Gracie Fields" or "The Cowsills" or "Spanky and Our Gang" and grab any song I want and throw it on my iPod, but it's almost too easy. I remember in the early days where you would take two different boom-boxes, hold them up to one another, and hit record, the sounds of the room blending together with the songs. Or when you would sit on the floor listening to the radio with your fingers on the "play" and "record" buttons, just hoping the next song would be the one you wanted, so you could just push down and record them on a blank tape.
I miss the effort of hunting down those favorite songs, or writing down song lyrics by hand guessing what it was Cyndi Lauper was trying to say in "All Through the Night"--hitting stop, rewind, play, stop, rewind, play, with your ears up to the speakers trying to grasp ever word. But even though there was something there that I think may be gone for good with our advanced technologies, it's not going to stop me from jumping on iTunes right now to download The Lion and the Cobra.
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Comments
Well-written piece and a lovely trip down ye ol' memory lane. ;-}
~R~
Laura: It's funny how all those tapes stick around, isn't it? I've moved time and time again and they are still with me in the garage, the closet, under the bed...they just follow us around...and thank god they do :)
trudie: Thanks for stopping by and the nice comment
malcolm: thanks for the info! very interesting...
carl: Too, too true. I'm sure people were scoffing at that wax cylinder contraption saying things like, "Who would want to sit around and watch some tube spin around and produce crackly sounds in your living room?"
Thanks all for stopping by and leaving the nice comments...
My daughter wrote a paper in her senior year of college on AMERICAN PIE...our favorite....
I do love my ipod...was one of the first in my generation (where I live) to have one. It is now my main source of music. Gone the big speakers...add a couple of tiny Bose Boxes and connect my ipod...
Wonderful. I love music.