Electronostalgia
When I was a runty little monoceros, around age 8-10 or so, I was the Monster Under the Stairs. We lived in a partially-finished farmhouse in the middle of Missouri. My father and uncle were in the middle of expanding it into a "kid's bedroom two story", turning the attic into undersized rooms so my sisters and I could stop multi-bunking it in the same room. The first thing to go up were the stairs which eliminated the part of the room I lived in. So from that point until the attic conversion was done, I got to live in the little pocket-room there under the stairs.
I absolutely loved this.
This is why I was puzzled at how the Harry Potter books portrayed his under-stair living arrangement as so dismal. Being the monster under the stairs is pretty damn awesome when you're a kid. I didn't even really have a wall; just a hung sheet and some rigged up shelving on the stairs' undersides. But that's not what this is all about.
At that point of time in my life I had two major gadget fascinations: weather instruments and clock radios. The former were all things I built in science class or recovered from thrift stores. The latter were what I asked for on Christmas. The two best ones I had were from Soundesign. Both had those wonderful VFD displays that looked incredible through my little toy magnifying glasses, and the better of the two had a (gasp) casette player, angled display and a capacitive metallic 'touch button' on the side for snooze and alarm shutoff. While the displays and UI were properly interesting, it was the actual "I Own A Radio, Holy Cats" part that had me so rapt. It wasn't the big family radio out in the living room. It wasn't in my parents' car. It was _mine_. I could tune it how I liked, listen to the shows and music I wanted to, and plug in one of those little twisty-wire single-ear earphones if I wanted to sneakily listen to it at night when I was supposed to be sleeping. I vividly remember hearing Jimmy Carter give his concession speech as Reagan won, and kept wondering why I never heard anything from that Anderson guy. But most of all, I remember listening to America's Top 40 in glorious monotone.
One birthday not much later I got the best present ever -- an AM/FM/SW portable transistor radio that ran on a 9V battery. It had an even tinier, tinny-er sounding speaker, but it had that same earphone jack. I could take it with me all over the farm, little wire up over and into my ear, listening to the early 80's music that is still heavy in my collection today. That whole 'walkman' thing was just starting to happen and my much-richer-than-us (read: middle class, as we were dirt poor in Missouri at the time) counsins in LA had them. The first time I got to hear stereo music that was attached to your head was just plain stunning. I begged and begged for one, but they were both pricey and New Scary Technology that my parents didn't yet trust. Remember, at the time there were all kinds of sensationalist media stories about these new-fangled Walkman radios causing kids to walk into traffic and DIE TRAGICALLY while they RUINED THEIR HEARING. It was just considered unwise to give them to a young'n. So I was stuck with that little transistor radio for a few years until we moved to Nevada. I bought my first headphone-equipped portable radio/casette player with my paper route money so nobody could tell me "no"... and the anti-walkman hype had long since disappeared by then anyway.
In the 35 years since then I've gone up and down all sides of the portable, home and studio audio scenes. I'm currently a Martin Logan fanatic; they've been in my house in one model or another for 15 years now. Heck, I've even got a nice bedroom bookshelf system built off their 35XTs these days. While I love the music I honestly don't think all that much about them.
Then today, playing with one of my little ham-radio HTs (portable hand-held transciever, aka 'walkie talkie') I noticed it had a "BC Mode:ON" menu item. I toggled it and quickly found out it meant "Broadcast Radio". 98.5 KUFX (K-Fox) is the local classic rock station of choice so I dialed it up and set the radio back on the table so I could get back to reading the manual. And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. Tinny. Monaural. 80's rock. Tiny handheld, just sitting there belting out the tunes. The nostalgia hit was hard and deep. I just sat there for like a half hour with the radio playing, feeling just like I was the little Monster Under The Stairs again, listening to America's Top 40 on the Soundesign clock radio. I didn't care in the least about all the high-fidelity / audiophile gear surrounding me -- it was just all about that tiny, crackly radio playing away on the table.
It makes me want to go dig up an old Radio Shack monaural earphone and listen for a while. Such a comfy, happy-making feeling.
I absolutely loved this.
This is why I was puzzled at how the Harry Potter books portrayed his under-stair living arrangement as so dismal. Being the monster under the stairs is pretty damn awesome when you're a kid. I didn't even really have a wall; just a hung sheet and some rigged up shelving on the stairs' undersides. But that's not what this is all about.
At that point of time in my life I had two major gadget fascinations: weather instruments and clock radios. The former were all things I built in science class or recovered from thrift stores. The latter were what I asked for on Christmas. The two best ones I had were from Soundesign. Both had those wonderful VFD displays that looked incredible through my little toy magnifying glasses, and the better of the two had a (gasp) casette player, angled display and a capacitive metallic 'touch button' on the side for snooze and alarm shutoff. While the displays and UI were properly interesting, it was the actual "I Own A Radio, Holy Cats" part that had me so rapt. It wasn't the big family radio out in the living room. It wasn't in my parents' car. It was _mine_. I could tune it how I liked, listen to the shows and music I wanted to, and plug in one of those little twisty-wire single-ear earphones if I wanted to sneakily listen to it at night when I was supposed to be sleeping. I vividly remember hearing Jimmy Carter give his concession speech as Reagan won, and kept wondering why I never heard anything from that Anderson guy. But most of all, I remember listening to America's Top 40 in glorious monotone.
One birthday not much later I got the best present ever -- an AM/FM/SW portable transistor radio that ran on a 9V battery. It had an even tinier, tinny-er sounding speaker, but it had that same earphone jack. I could take it with me all over the farm, little wire up over and into my ear, listening to the early 80's music that is still heavy in my collection today. That whole 'walkman' thing was just starting to happen and my much-richer-than-us (read: middle class, as we were dirt poor in Missouri at the time) counsins in LA had them. The first time I got to hear stereo music that was attached to your head was just plain stunning. I begged and begged for one, but they were both pricey and New Scary Technology that my parents didn't yet trust. Remember, at the time there were all kinds of sensationalist media stories about these new-fangled Walkman radios causing kids to walk into traffic and DIE TRAGICALLY while they RUINED THEIR HEARING. It was just considered unwise to give them to a young'n. So I was stuck with that little transistor radio for a few years until we moved to Nevada. I bought my first headphone-equipped portable radio/casette player with my paper route money so nobody could tell me "no"... and the anti-walkman hype had long since disappeared by then anyway.
In the 35 years since then I've gone up and down all sides of the portable, home and studio audio scenes. I'm currently a Martin Logan fanatic; they've been in my house in one model or another for 15 years now. Heck, I've even got a nice bedroom bookshelf system built off their 35XTs these days. While I love the music I honestly don't think all that much about them.
Then today, playing with one of my little ham-radio HTs (portable hand-held transciever, aka 'walkie talkie') I noticed it had a "BC Mode:ON" menu item. I toggled it and quickly found out it meant "Broadcast Radio". 98.5 KUFX (K-Fox) is the local classic rock station of choice so I dialed it up and set the radio back on the table so I could get back to reading the manual. And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. Tinny. Monaural. 80's rock. Tiny handheld, just sitting there belting out the tunes. The nostalgia hit was hard and deep. I just sat there for like a half hour with the radio playing, feeling just like I was the little Monster Under The Stairs again, listening to America's Top 40 on the Soundesign clock radio. I didn't care in the least about all the high-fidelity / audiophile gear surrounding me -- it was just all about that tiny, crackly radio playing away on the table.
It makes me want to go dig up an old Radio Shack monaural earphone and listen for a while. Such a comfy, happy-making feeling.