Friday, September 30, 2011

A very strong memory!

Just now, I was sitting in my office at work singing along to the radio.

The song was Billy Joel's "It's Still Rock And Roll To Me."  One of my favorite songs (and popular when I was a teenager).

Singing along to this song brought back a strong memory of using a cassette recorder to TAPE this song from the radio.  My BFF at the time and I would listen, and listen, and listen some more to try to figure out all the lyrics.  We'd scribble them down in a notebook and correct them until we were satisfied that we had them right.  Then, we'd play the tape over and over and sing along like we were rock stars.  I'm sure we were annoying as hell.

Let's see. . .

·       No CDs - You had to buy a cassette tape (or an album). If you were broke like we were, you taped most of your music off the radio. You’d spend a lot of time trying to do it without the DJ talking at the beginning or end of a song. 

·       No Walkman - Those things did come out right about that time but they were expensive. We did take the tape recorder outside to listen if we were in the back yard. That was our version of “music on the go.” 

·       No MP3 players - YIKES! That technology probably wasn’t even in anyone’s brain at that point. The Walkman was innovative for cripes sake. 

·       No Internet to download songs - You wanted music? You bought a cassette (or an album) if you had the money. Taping music from the radio was our version of Itunes or Napster. 

·       No Internet to look up lyrics - You got your lyrics from an album, cassette, or using the method I described above. That's where all the websites that show "mistaken" lyrics come from. We were guessing while listening to the radio all those years.

I just wrote about things that make me feel old.

This may just top that list!

4 comments:

Nicole said...

Oh... I totally empathize. Especially with the trying to get the songs without DJs at the beginning or the end.

Liz said...

Nicole - I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one that went through that. Damn DJs!!

Unknown said...

I remember that too...trying to record music from the radio and hoping that the dj lets the song finish so that you can hit "stop". You definitely grew up in my time.

Liz said...

Simone - I love to hear that I'm not the only one that went "through" that!! HA! How different things are now. I wish I had some of those tapes to see how well I actually did. It would be fun to see how they turned out.