Do you remember your first music-playing device, be it a record player, 8-track, cassette player, Walkman, CD player, or for our youngest Townspeople, mp3 player? Care to describe it? Does anything stand out in your memory about it?
I had a record player that was plastic, olive-green, and textured on the outside. Flip up the top and the plastic was off-white – also textured, to better pick up smudges from my dirty hands. The turntable itself was brown. I can’t remember for sure if the arm was brown or off-white, but I remember my shakey hands were always challenged by lifting the arm onto a specific track. The cord was a 2-pronged brown affair. I experienced my first electric shock on that cord, leaving one of my fingers between the prongs as I plugged it in. Ouch!
I used that record player from the ages of 4 or 5, playing “She Loves You” over and over, singing along with my speech-impeded l sounds (She wuvs you…), through about 15. It was kept in what was originally our spare bedroom, before my little brother came along 5 years later. A few years after that, when he was set up in his “big boy” room, he continued to want to sleep in the same room with me, so the record player remained in that spare bedroom until its demise. Then my brother and his damn KISS cassettes finally found their own space.
Sometimes, beginning around the age of 12, I’d bring records down to our living room, where we had one of those gigantic wooden stereo consoles, as wide as a piano, with built-in, cloth-screened speakers. It was a substantial piece of furniture, holding foot-high reproductions of sculptures representing conquistadors, for god knows what reason. The midsection of the top flipped up to reveal a metal turntable, sunken, on springs. The knobs were big and black. They clicked into place just so. As the tubes warmed up the stereo gave off a pleasing hum and fire-hazard odor. When I was little and my Dad was around he used to play me the “1812 Overture” on that thing. It sounded great, and he’d get lost in thought the way he did only over that song and “Mack the Knife.”
My Mom played Dionne Warwick, Johnny Mathis, The Surpremes, and later, all the TSOP records, Barry White, and The (disco-era) Bee Gees. She loved to dance and, when I was old enough to stay home and watch my brother, would go out disco dancing with friends, meeting guys in wide-collared silk shirts. In my middle school years, when middle school dances were in vogue, she’d crank up that console and try to teach me a few of the period’s happening steps. I loved hearing “The Hustle” as much as any budding music savant, but dancing was never my thing. I shudder at the thought of my incompetence and extreme discomfort.
I took me forever to get an actual cheapo, solid-state, all-in-one stereo/cassette player of my own. I was in 10th grade, officially in the process of transferring my fantasy life from Professional Baseball Player to Rock ‘n Roll Musician. That old, green record player had life. The surface noise it gave off was exciting. It was better than anything I’d own until I was in my late-20s.
We also had a plastic-topped record player that I used to listen to all sorts of records. I loved Disney’s “Cinderella” soundtrack, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (which my mom said I wore out completely so that it no longer played), and a bunch of recorded versions of fairy tales. I hated to be sick from school, but when I stayed home, I stayed in bed and listened to record after record.
When I started high school, I had a tinny clock radio. I can remember spending all day listening to it, waiting to hear Blondie’s “Heart of Glass.”
When I turned 16, I begged my parents for a stereo. My father found me a used one which included an 8-track tape player and several used 8-track tapes: Jimi Hendrix, Heart, and the Cars. I used to love to listen to that stereo, which was not of very good quality, but I was proud of it because it was mine. I used to sit up on the sill of my bedroom window, crank the Queen, Supertramp and Led Zeppelin, and dream.
Oh man… I had a yellow and white Panasonic record player. I had that until I was about 10 years old. I used to put it in funny places and ask people if they knew where the music was coming from (as if I was going to stump somebody – what a kid-like thing to do…)
When I was 10, my grandfather bought a new stereo and gave me his old one. I was in pretty good shape then – I had a Fischer Amp/Receiver and I don’t recall the make of the speakers, but they were very good – and large too! He didn’t give me a turntable, though, so my dad hooked up the little panasonic into the receiver. Problem was he must’ve used the wrong kind of cable, because suddenly there was one side missing from all my Beatles albums. Then I saved up $100, went to Sound Of Germantown and bought a Technics SL-100 manual turntable. On that same trip, I bought “Back To The Egg,” so that was the first album I heard in full-fidelity (relatively) in the privacy of my on space. Hence my personal attachment to that album.
record player with the arm that would allow the platters to drop 1 at a time, combined with a tuner and an 8 track. Neither of which ever got used. I’ve been a vinyl man from the get-go!
It looked a lot like this but it was black:
http://www.collectorsquest.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/portable-wildcat-gold.jpg
I got it in 7th grade, I think.
Sometime around junior year of high school I got a nice turntable, receiver and speakers. I still have the receiver and would probably still be using it were it not for the fact that my wife has much better gear.
We had a big-ass Hi-Fi of unrecalled make and vintage (early 60s?) that I remember listening to Ram on in the very early 70s. Then a very crappy “component” system–turntable plus receiver/8-track. Eventually, ca. late 70s, I saved up lawn mowing $ and bought a decent Technics semi-automatic turntable which, of course, did nothing so much as reveal how crappy the rest of the system still was. I used that player for a long time. My father could not fathom why I would pay all that money for a record player that only let you put on one record at a time.
I had one of those cardboard portables that was orange and white that would play through a speaker under some holes punched in next to the tone arm. The cool thing about it was it would play 16-33-45-78, so you could really slow stuff down. I don’t believe that lasted through junior high, but I distinctly remember listening to some floppy 78s in my wee years that had little episodes featuring a character named Lariat Sam.
My parents had a proper stereo that I used when I started pretending to know about music. I got some sort of admonition about “ruining” records with the needle on my little box thingie.
My dad gave me his old stereo when I was a freshman in college, forcing me to siphon money from beer consumption for record buying. All that gear was heavy, but all too necessary.
I had one of those little pocket transistor radios – with a leatherette cover. I was allowed to listed to music to fall asleep and my parents would switch it off later.
I also had a record player that was from a school classroom (both my folks were teachers). It was brown with a removable hinged lid. I played the Beatles records my uncle gave me for my birthday – Yellow Submarine and Abbey Road are the two I remember getting.
I was lucky — in the 70s, my dad bought a decent Dual turntable, top-loading Panasonic cassette deck, an early Technics receiver, and some big old Fisher speakers. The equipment was sort of mystery to me at first, but my parents were cool about letting me use it as I got older. My first record was Roger Miller’s Dang Me that my uncle gave me, then I bought the Beach Boys Endless Summer with my own money. As the oldest, I was sort of a music dictator to my siblings in the late 70s.
When I was about 13, I figured out how to tape stuff off KQ92 in the Twin Cities and then we were really rocking — The Doobie’s China Grove being a particular favorite in the hours before our parents returned home from work.
Great topic! I had a red cloth, removable-top portable (with handle) that played on 16-33-45 and 78. I used to play my first single “Smokin’ In The Boy’s Room” over and over again and play air guitar and air drums. It had a skip in the beginning so I carefully scotch-taped a penny to the top of the arm to give it more weight and it worked!
My parents had one of those large consoles that you could put four or five records on and it would drop one after the current one finished playing. The sound was piss poor because the needle had never been replaced. Didn’t matter — I’d still crank up my Stones, AC/DC, etc. and still get yelled at to turn it down.
The first “major purchase” my wife and I made after getting married way back in 1968 was a Zenith Circle of Sound stereo. We quickly introduced our neighbors on our little street in Warner Robins, Georgia to Steppenwolf, Cream and Jefferson Airplane!
Funoka – Having “Dang Me” as your first record is a great claim to coolness – at least, in my own twisted mind.
che —
A strange gift to an eight year old — it also included Chug-a-lug, Chug-a-lug. My guess is my uncle got it free and never listened to it. He was kind of a “square.”
Very cool stuff coming in from all of you. It’s great picturing these first players you had and hearing of your early spins on them. ljhord, I’m sure you were quickly very popular with your neighbors the day you started cranking up those platters:)
I too had one of those transistor radios with the leatherette sleeve, also used for sub-pillow listening.
Next was one of the previously pictured turntables that folded downward. On ours the speakers were bigger than in that photo, and they swung outward to play, folding inward when the whole unit was locked up like a suitcase.
My parents also had one of those console stereos, a big box about three feet long, two feet deep, and two and half feet high, with the turntable embedded under a lift-up lid. It was more a piece of furniture than a stereo, used by my parents to play Harry James and Ray Conniff platters. For reasons unclear to me I have a strong memory of playing the second Blue Cheer album on it.
In the early 1970s my sisters and I shared one of those plastic clamshell phonographs which were good primarily for playing 45s. For family listening, my dad had a nice rig: a mid-60s McIntosh integrated amp, a KLH Model Ten tuner, a German turntable. I can’t remember the speakers, but the whole thing made the jazz my parents liked sound fantastic.
My first audio device that belonged to me was a portable AM radio my grandfather gave me for my birthday when I was eight so I could listen to baseball games.
To keep the kids off his gear when we got older, my dad bought a Panasonic integrated with a separate turntable to put in the basement, which was just as well because that’s where we wanted to be to shoot pool and drink beer.
My first personal device was a “Close & Play”. My parents also had a big console stereo. I then got my older sisters “All-in-one” stereo and finally got individual components as a present from my parents when I got bar-mitzvahed.
I am not a gearhead at all. I still use my technics single disc CD player bought at Crazy Eddies in 1987.
My bother and I shared a plastic, all-in-one turntable for our kids 45’s plus my mother’s collection of original 50’s singles (Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino but no Elvis!). I still own these.
When my Dad finally taught us how to use the family stereo (Pioneer w/ BSR turntable and an early cassette deck) the 1st LPs we got for Christmas that year were Wings Over America for me and Endless Summer for him. In retrospect, pretty good stuff.
“I am not a gearhead at all. I still use my technics single disc CD player bought at Crazy Eddies in 1987. “
WOW! They don’t make ’em like they used to do they!
Anyone had a tootaloop? Cousin of a Close and Play for your portable musical enjoyment.
Wow, I don’t recall that oddity. Did you have one?
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_lqcapwW1CkU/SdPPP5GAI3I/AAAAAAAADMM/QpndrcMphEs/s800/Toot-a-loop.jpg
Nope, but my friends did. It was too cool for school – you wore it around your wrist to the pool/beach, etc. And in yellow!
I had a Close N Play when I was real little. I think they only played 45’s, so there was something else in the house we played lp’s on, but I don’t remember. My dad’s friend owned a one stop back then and I had a lot of kiddie records, including The Chipmunks Sing The Beatles and a stack of 45’s. I always had a transistor radio, for as long as I can remember. I tested 9 volt batteries on my tongue (or my brother’s, if I knew it was brand new).
I wanted a Wildcat like cdm’s but I had a mono GE 4 speed record player. It was that goldish yellow, the part under the turntable was orange and the tonearm (if you could call it that) was black. I killed a lot of records with it. I got a swell AM/FM clock radio back then that had a really big speaker in it, and it swiveled so I could point the speaker towards me for better sound.
The first stereo I bought was a GE with an AM/FM radio and built in 8 Track. It had speakers with 8 inch woofers and I bought a BSR turntable for it. I hated that turntable, and when I got in high school I bought a used Dual 1216. I really liked that setup. It worked perfectly until my brother in law wound up with it and put the speakers outside on his garage. They still played for three years and sounded okay, but then birds destroyed them.
2K, I’m curious, how old were you when you first got turned onto the Stones?
My first was probably some kind of plastic close-and-play device, but the one I most remember was a hand-me-down turntable (which I later replaced with a Technics SL-D2 that I had for about 25 years!), and — this is the point — a Heathkit amp and speakers I built myself, with help from my Dad. Fathers, I heartily recommend this bonding mechanism.
I didn’t like The Stones until probably 82, so I would have been 20. I knew who they were and they were far too popular for teenage 2K, who thought he was terribly punk and underground in high school, but that kid was wrong. I always liked Some Girls, though. But one day I noticed I had more Stones albums than any other band, and I had to admit it seemed I really liked them. If I hadn’t been such a douchebag about the whole thing, I could have seen them in 78 and had easily first ten rows in 81, but I was doing something else, I guess.
My cool bedroom set played a lot of Yes, The Doors, Manfred Mann, Dr. Feelgood, Angel and The Clash.
I had that loop AM player. It was red and came with Peter Max-ish stickers. Later I had the 8-track player that looked like a TNT plunger. http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kqjq6eY6QT1qz4sk0o1_500.jpg
The Panasonic Dynamite 8 is my favorite portable player I ever had. That little thing played really loud!
I had that too – bright blue one. Listened to The Eagles Greatest Hits Vol I on that thing a lot