I've always been amazed at how quickly not only music has changed, but by how quickly the audio format has change, as well. In my very young lifetime, I've seen this format change many times. I was alive for the decline of the 8-track (those under 30 see the picture above), the record, the cassette tape and the cd. Presently we live in the age of the mp3 -- unless I'm not aware of some popular new consumer formats. I always was a bit behind, never wanting to let go of the previous version.
Though I never owned an 8-track, personally, I listened to my parent's often. Those displayed in the above picture are among them. I loved how you could hit a button to skip to the next song -- or at least you could skip to some part of the next song. It was much better than picking up the needle and attempting to find where the next song began.
When cassette tapes came into popularity, I was overjoyed. I could record songs from the radio and not have to pay for them! I'd even use my parent's microphone and pretend I was a DJ myself and introduce songs recorded from the radio, records and other cassettes.
I was late on the cd uptake. I loved my cassettes. My car had a cassette player, cassettes were cheap and I couldn't imagine ever being able to afford this futuristic player that played these fragile discs. I'd never be able to throw a disc in my car like I do a cassette tape. I finally caved a few years later when a friend of mine gave me his old cd player.
Like cds, I was late jumping on the mp3 bandwagon. I didn't have a computer at the time, I didn't understand mp3s and my cds worked just fine. I had a cd player in my car, after all! How can you play this digitized, futuristic music in your car? I listened to my first mp3 on a train in Fastiv, Ukraine when my Peace Corps friend let me check out his ipod. It was the greatest thing and the world and I would have to have one IMMEDIATELY. I was instantly embarrassed by my gigantic brick of a cassette player and hid it from sneering faces.
I realized how bad it was when I was on this broken-down bus in a village of Ukraine and a young Ukrainian girl, who had never even been to a city, looked over to my cassette player and asked:
"What is that?"
"A walkman."
"Why is it so....big?"
While I still have some cds I'm not willing to part with, I have more gigs of music than I even know. I've changed formats with the times, though often late. I'll probably be late on the next format, whatever it may be. But like my sexual firsts, I still remember all of my audio format firsts. The first of each that I actually owned:
First Record: Madonna - Like a Virgin
First Cassette: Madonna - True Blue
First CD: Counting Crows - August & Everything After
First MP3: Tanya Donelly - Sliding & Diving
Do you remember your firsts????