From turntables, boom boxes, to the Walkman and the Discman, it’s back to a record player for me.

Growing up Gen X, there was nothing quite as cool as your record player.  Except maybe your boom box. But listening to record albums on a turntable was the ultimate and best music experience next to an actual live performance. 

Record albums. I kick myself for getting rid of all my records.  I sold some at a yard sale for probably fifty cents a piece and what didn’t sell I suspect I took to the Salvation Army. Dumb, dumb, dumb.  I have been chasing my long lost collection, trying to find copies of all those records- Styx’ The Grand Illusion, Bruce Springsteen’s Greetings from Asbury Park, The B52s, The Cars, Elton John’s Madman Across the Water, Foreigner, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Eric Carmen just to name a few.  At least four or five Beatles’ albums too. Like I said- dumb. I went through a phase in the early 90s when I was snobby about what I listened to.  I was influenced by a boyfriend at the time who had really good music taste but who was disdainful of “oldies” and “classic rock”.  He was an ardent promoter of new and alternative music- which was and is great.  But I wish I had had a mind to keep all my old stuff.  

I received my first record player as a birthday gift when I was either seven or eight.  If I  recall correctly it was a red, white and black RCA with a dust cover. I’ve been searching for a picture of one just like it and can’t seem to find one. With it came a blue and white checked carrying box for 45s.  Loved that blue and white box.  Here’s a picture of the exact same box I owned. 

I was wrong!  In perusing the web I found my REAL first record player.  I remember listening to Turkey in the Straw when I was like three years old in our basement play room. 

The first “grown up” record player was the RCA.  Along with the turntable I received some 45s, among them The Guess Who’s American Woman and No Sugar Tonight. So funny to think I was listening to this when I was seven- having zero idea what the lyrics were about. One of the things about growing Gen X is that there was not yet a lot of “kid” stuff – I mean there were books and music for babies and toddlers but there was no YA literature or Kids Bop or Dan Zanes or the Grateful Dead singing kiddie tunes.  Once you were of a certain age, you were thrust into adult stuff.  We listened to the same music adults listened to, we read adult books, and watched adult TV.  The entire industry and marketing culture for young people was kind of in its infancy in the 70s.  Think about Batman- that was really an adult show watched by millions of kids- but it was pure psychedelia.  Kids had Sesame Street, The Electric Company and Zoom, and Saturday morning cartoons, but that was about it in the early 70s.

OK- as usual I have gotten off track.  Back to my first real record player.  In addition to The Guess Who singles I also received the  Partridge Family Greatest Hits album that I listened to non-stop and to which I also choreographed elaborate dance routines.  I absolutely loved the song Echo Valley 26809. I might also have had Free to Be You and Me but I can’t remember for sure.

I also don’t remember what happened to that player because a few years later I inherited,  or maybe just outright co-opted my dad’s vintage record player that looked something like this one. Rich kids had serious Pioneer or Marantz or Fisher or Sansui stereo systems.  Systems that were housed in glass cabinets and had receivers and tuners and all kinds of features for the ultimate listening experience.  But not me, I had this- lol! Hey, it did the job.  I was not an audiophile, obviously. 

A convenient feature of older record players, that I gather is not good for the actual records, was the ability to stack them so you didn’t have to physically put on a new one every time.  Some record players also had a mechanism that would flip your album over once one side was finished.  

This was the record player upon which I spun the original Broadway production of West Side Story, Barry Manilow, The Captain and Tennille,  Styx’ The Grand Illusion and Pieces of Eight, Kansas’ Point of Know Return, Lynyrd Skynyrd Gold and Platinum, The Cars,  The Doors, The Eagles, Chicago.  It was the gateway to my pubescent inner life.  I’d shut my bedroom door, spend hours trying on clothes, planning weekend festivities, imagining that I was older than I really was, pouring over the photos and lyrics and liner notes and the dedications in each of the albums. It was an other world; better than the real one in which I had to clean the bathroom and set the table for dinner and study for fucking algebra or earth science or practice my oboe for my lesson on Monday morning. I sucked at that fucking thing- the damn reeds!

My mom had a stereo system in the living room that I also kind of co-opted.  It had a radio, turn table, speakers, and an 8 track tape player.   That’s what I listened to when I was doing my Friday afternoon chores, the jobs I had to do after school,  before I was allowed to go out for the evening.  The good thing was that I got home from school before my parents did so I could listen and work in peace most of the time.  I remember being ecstatic over finding an 8 track tape of The Byrds Greatest Hits at a Goodwill store in Tucson in 1983 that I could play in that system.  At that time, 8 track tapes had had their day so it was a fun find because at that time in my teens I was deeply obsessed with the 60s and 70s and wished desperately that I had been a teen then rather than in the sucky 80s.  Of course now I’d go back to being a teen in the sucky 80s in a fucking hearbeat. 

Later in high school I got a Panasonic boom box and listening to cassettes and making and sharing mixed tapes was a full time job.  Making your play list on a cassette tape from songs on the radio was a real talent.  You had to press record at the exact time the song started and the DJ stopped talking.  It was not an easy task.  And of course the brand and quality of cassette tape was a signifier of just how cool you were or were not.  Real music aficionados used the expensive TDK or  Maxell tapes.  I also foolishly got rid of all of my mixed tapes. I had some killer mixes.  I’d give anything to have them back. 

In the late 80s when we all basically eschewed buying vinyl for compact discs I had the requisite a Walkman, and then a better Walkman, and then a Discman and then an anti-skipping Discman and this bad boy.

And then an MP3 player and then an iPod and then a better iPod, and then just relied on my phone until I got a Crosley record player about ten years ago.

That’s when I started in earnest to re-build my record collection.  And when I became obsessed with The Cars and the Crosley built-in speakers just didn’t cut it anymore I decided to shell out a ridiculous amount of scratch for my Technics turntable and Edifier speakers.  They are fucking beautiful.  And let me tell you, as convenient as it is to be able to listen to music anytime and anywhere with your phone and a bluetooth speaker, nothing, absolutely nothing,  sounds better than a vinyl record album on a turntable with kick ass speakers.

Time to go spin something and dance like a maniac in my living room