There are so many inventions that play a huge part in our lives. Most are so mundane that we barely give them a thought. Take the clock for instance. Without it we’d be clueless of the time of day. OK, on a sunny day we might be able to use a sun dial, but this is Yorkshire in February. As with all inventions though, clocks and watches have given us a form of slavery. Before they were common and especially before the Industrial Revolution, time wasn’t measured. People grafted on their farmsteads without being tied down to a clock or wondering when it was Twenty to Five. All inventions in modern times never give us complete freedom. Like the powered looms they invariably mean that some poor soul loses their livelihood overnight. Yet there are a few that you might say give us the freedom of expression. Books are one, music is another.
Music is a great passion of mine. Not making music, I’m what they call terminally tone death. I used to play the guitar at school, but that only got me into dinner early on a Tuesday and Thursday. I soon realised that Ritchie Blackmore, Steve Hackett and Trevor Oakes would always be better than myself. So, I swapped out the instrument for a hi-fi.
There have been many inventions that came along to provide music in the home. First came the old wax cylinders, then came the age of the hand cranked disc player. Electricity brought us the electric gramophone and through the wonders of Marconi, radio. Over the years that went from something which took up half a room to a small device which easily fitted in your top pocket.
Records, vinyl as its perversely known these days, were around for about eighty years in some form or other. The early ones being hard plastic that broke if you dropped them, Sorry Dad. This graduated to the plastic ones we know today. Speeds went from 78 down to 45 and then thirty-three and a third. All required a player with a needle and some form of speaker. In my childhood we had this huge dark wood radiogram with doors. It was the done thing to disguise them as an item of furniture, to hide their function It was on the behemoth that I listened to the first record bought for me, Winnie the Pooh and Friends.
In the early 70s my dad upgraded to a proper stereo. Still essentially the same as the radiogram, but a separate deck, amplifier with radio and two speakers. It was on this through my teenage years that music came into my life. Money was always spent on books and records. A Christmas in 1971 brough me a new-fangled Phillips cassette recorder. This was the future…
Sleek and black, guess now it would seem like a black brick, but back then it went everywhere with me. I discovered the charts show on Sundays and taped it faithfully each week. My record collection grew, and I taped the albums I couldn’t afford from friends. Cassettes were the way forward. I looked enviously at my Uncle Pete’s eight track tape player. That would be the device I’d buy when I was old enough, I told myself. They were the future…
In the 80’s I bought my own separates system complete with stereo tape deck. Then came along the Sony Walkman. A cassette player that was so tiny, barely bigger than the tape it enclosed. This was the future… I had to have one. Sony ones were so expensive though, so I ended up with a cheaper one from Comet, remember them? Now my albums were mine to take with on the road or listen to with the tape deck in my car. Sorry not an eight track, they seemed to have disappeared. My car was a mess of cassette tapes, all out of their boxes as I’d changed them and thrown them on the back seat.
The eighties also brough about the compact disc. A silver slice that was so small, yet the quality was better than the records or cassettes. They were indestructible, no more tapes getting stuck in the player and ripping when you tried to extract them. They were the future…
No clicks or scratches on the sound, just music how it was recorded. You could even smear them with jam, wipe them and they’d play. I quickly added one to my system. Slowly I stopped buying the records and now my purchasing power went to CD’s. Sure, they were a bit more expensive but the quality … My record collection slowly was relegated to a cupboard as CD racks fought for space. On the road my trusty Walkman was replaced with a portable CD player, which ironically connected to the car through of all things a cassette…
I then heard about the em pee three. It took the music and compressed it to a small size. Instead of a CD holding one album, it could now hold fifteen albums, providing you had the right player. This was the future…
I digitised my collection, and it went on the road with me. What could change? I heard of Creative and their MP3 Jukebox. Over fifty thousand tracks on one device. Apple soon came along with their iPod, Microsoft with the Zune and countless others all playing the same. This was the future…
You might guess I had to have one. Not an Apple person I had a Creative for a while and then a Panasonic with higher capacity. Connecting to the car again through the cassette player.
Cycles of technology were getting shorter. Now the MP3 players are consigned to the drawers. Music is now streamed to your phone, and you have at your ears, nearly every song known to man at the touch of a button. We’ve even had a vinyl revival; a cassette revival and I hear a CD revival is on its way.
My first real record buy was Genesis, Nursery Cryme. So far, I’ve bought the vinyl version, the cassette, the CD, the DVD. The digital version is my rip of the CD, special edition. Yes, I bought that too. I’m sure the way we consume music will change over the next few years as they find more ways to make money out of us. I’ll be in the queue to buy whatever it is. It will be the future…
