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My first Walkman was a cheap one from argos but it had a really high powered radio and I could listen to kiss 100 all the way from London (60 miles seemed a long distance) weirdly this seemed more impressive than being able to pick up foreign stations from unknown locations in Europe. The tape mechanism broke so I got an aiwa Walkman with an awesome graphic equaliser.
There wasn't another word. It was a Walkman and the branded trademarked Sony players were too expensive.
Swapping tapes was an important part of friendship. A friend copied me a snoop doggy dogg tape and I didn't even like rap (until ten years later) but I bet if I listened to that album now it'd still be imprinted on my memory.
Another friend said that a compilation of all the current hits was being played in full with no disruptions on late night radio for a couple of hours. He kept promising that he was gonna stay up and tape it for me. We were both excited about this, but something went wrong in the end. I think maybe he couldn't get decent reception.
There was a kid who had a pirate radio station down the road 'ridium fm' - we used to try and find the transmitter - we knocked on his door once and asked if he could lend us some hardcore and he gave us a heavy metal mix. We were baffled, we wanted hardcore rave not hardcore rock. Still, we listened ironically to that tape a lot.
Although I did start to dread the tap on the shoulder on the school bus
what you listening to
Dj slipmatt at fusion
do me a copy mate
Oh OK mate
There's a lot of vaguely culty ipod laments at the mo, and one article claimed that before ipods you could only listen to cassettes on the go.
My first discman was a bona fide second hand Sony CD Walkman: of course if you actually wanted to move around with it you had to hold it aloft on a velvet cushion. I had that plugged into my amp so it was my first non portable CD player too.
It came to a point where the discman only worked at an angle of about 75° so I got an mp3 CD player: I could fit 10, 15 albums on that bad boy. I gave it to my mum eventually (I wonder if it still works)
I have fond memories of my first proper mp3 player. A black Philips device with a good screen and battery. That got stolen I think, so I got a second hand ipod. I liked the click wheel and was impressed that i could watch videos on it. Even second hand it was so expensive so I didn't get a case and so it wasn't long before I dropped it and had to get another one and then obviously dropped that one too.
People on the Internet were raving about mp3 players by a South Korean company cowon and I was happy with that until the hard drive broke on that too.
I've just found out that cowon's iaudio mp3 player came out the year before the ipod and of course they were accused of stealing the 'i' (what an idiotic sentence).
Now I can get a 256 gig sd card for 20something quid and plug that into my phone. Mp3 players are obsolete. I like finding an old memory card and seeing what I was listening to at the time.
I've still got broken mp3 players in my wires draw with the hope that one day I'll bring them back to life and the knowledge that I never will.
To come full circle: I bought a Sony Walkman off ebay not too long ago. I listen to the sort of ambient music that still gets released on tape. The Walkman only works at a certain angle.
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