The only reason I mention the talent show is because so many things in music have changed over the years. It would have been impossible for us to imagine, in 1962, the kind of technology we have today. When I was a kid, we listened to 45's and LP's, and every once in a while, we might come across somebody with a reel-to-reel tape player. I had one myself, and in 1967, I was able to hear my voice for the first time on tape when I recorded "That's Alright Mama" while sitting in my bedroom. It was also the year I bought my first new car, a '67 Chevy, with an 8-track tape deck.
I loved the 8-track system. The sound seemed so much heavier and fuller than the 45's, and after I rigged up 4 additional speakers inside my car, listening to a "live" recording was almost as good as being at the concert myself. One of my favorites was "London and New York," released in 1978, by Elton John. When the tape came out, I was living in the northwest hills of Connecticut, and taking long drives at night, as far north as Vermont, just to spend time listening to the music. It was the kind of freedom only a good car, good music, and a warm summer night could bring, and to make it even better, I was still driving my old Chevy.
There was only one problem with the 8-track. The tape was split into four "channels" that automatically advanced from one to the other, and if there wasn't enough time to play the songs recorded on one channel, it advanced to the next one in the middle of a song. When I drove out to California in 1979, my tape player got stuck on the third channel, and repeated the same three songs over and over again--cutting off the last song in mid-sentence--while I was listening to a tape by Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan is one of my favorite singer-songwriters, so it didn’t bother me at all. I just kept singing along to the same three songs while I drove across Kansas in the middle of the night. I didn't get to hear the last few lines of "Song for the Life" until I bought the album on cassette, but the song had become such a part of my life, that every time I picked up my guitar after that, it would be the first one I played.
I never understood the technology behind 8-track players, or why the tapes were divided into 4 channels, but when I bought my first cassette, and held it up to the light, I realized that I was looking at a miniaturized version of my old reel-to-reel tape player. It was a brilliant idea, six songs on one side, six on the other.
In the early days, with my first cassette player, it was necessary to turn the tape over manually each time side one or side two had played out, but when I could finally afford to buy myself a walkman, I bought a beautiful little AIWA with an auto-reverse feature that allowed me to listen to both sides without having to take the tapes out. Not only that, but the AIWA was also an amazingly powerful recorder. Whenever I had an idea for a song, I would pick up my AIWA and do it a cappella, usually while driving my car, or if I was listening to an AM or FM station, and a song came on that I wanted to save or learn, all I had to do was hit the record button, and the tape would do the rest.
What I liked about cassettes was their size. The 8-tracks were roughly the same size as a video tape, in VHS format, but the cassettes were no bigger than a pack of cigarettes, and half as thick. If you couldn’t afford a fancy carrying case, or didn’t want one, you could always fit 30 or 40 cassettes in an old shoe box. I probably had enough cassettes to fill about 10 shoe boxes, but then, just when I thought I could pick and chose my own music whenever I wanted to, it seemed like the whole system became obsolete overnight, and everyone was talking about the “new sound,” and the quality of the CD’s. To tell you the truth, I’ve been a little slow to catch up on my music collection ever since. I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I expected to get eclipsed by technology again, and it didn’t seem fair, especially with all of the outdated cassettes I had, because even though I was able to hang some of my favorite album covers on the walls of my basement—from the days when I collected LP’s—I didn’t know what to do with all those little plastic boxes that the cassettes came in.
Now that we’ve entered the age of digital music, it looks like my fears were well-founded. My very modest collection of CD’s is okay for long trips in the car, and no matter which format they come in, I’ll never get tired of listening to my favorite artists or their songs, but no one who appreciates music can avoid taking a similar interest in technology, or ignore the changes that have taken place over the years.
Not too long ago, I went on e-bay to see if I could find an AIWA cassette recorder just like the one I used to have. I found out that they have since become collector’s items, because “Marty” had one in the movie, Back to the Future. That’s okay. There was only one available on e-bay anyway, and it would have cost me three times more than I paid for it when it was new.
Someday, EVERYTHING will become a “collector’s item,” even though that’s hard to imagine as we sit at our computers, plug in our i-pods, and download music from a seemingly endless list of songs.
When I bought my first computer about 8 years ago, it was mainly because I wanted to create a web site where I could display samples of my artwork and photos. As I became familiar with other aspects of the computer, I began to think about the voice chat rooms, and whether or not it would be possible to enter a room with a guitar, and invite others to join in. That idea was behind the concept of a “worldwidejam,” and what led me to register this domain name. I’m not sure technology has caught up with the idea yet, but the way things have been going, anything is possible.
2007
skip@worldwidejam.com