15 on 45: Fifteen Questions about My Forgotten 45 Collection
Nov23

15 on 45: Fifteen Questions about My Forgotten 45 Collection

My brother Matt recently sent me a text: “Found the old records!” And accompanying this joyous announcement was a picture of my old 45 record of Eddie Money’s “Take Me Home Tonight.” A little context: Matt had purchased a record player, but he had no actual records to play on it. So he Indiana-Jones-ed our parents’ basement, looking for the collection of 45s I had back in high school. The search seemed fruitless, until my dad...

Read More
K-tel Records
Jul24

K-tel Records

Ask me what some of my favorite albums are and you’ll get a short list of ones that I would make it to the desert island with me – Tattoo You by The Rolling Stones, Beauty and the Beat by The Go-Go’s, Kings of the Wild Frontier by Adam and the Ants. I know these records up and down, and I never get tired of them. But ask me about important records, ones that take me back to a time and a place, ones where when I see the cover of them a...

Read More
Trapped in the Columbia House Tape Club
Oct09

Trapped in the Columbia House Tape Club

Who remembers flipping through your Young Miss magazine, comic book, or the Sunday paper and coming across this ad? It was the deal of the century!  Eleven (or ten, depending on which offer you used) tapes for a penny? And I get a twelfth tape FREE? And I only have to buy a few more tapes at the regular price (plus shipping and handling) over the next year?!? Who needs to read the fine print, I’d be a fool not to join Columbia House!...

Read More
Cassette Tapes in the 80s
Dec12

Cassette Tapes in the 80s

By Julie Anderson Woo-hoo – cassette tapes have been with us since 1962! Happy fiftieth birthday, cassettes! For those of you who have played music exclusively on shiny silver discs and on MP3 players, cassettes were little plastic boxes filled with musical joy. Cassettes were not new in the eighties, but they became wildly popular for two big reasons. Starting in the early seventies, 3M Corporation started to make cassettes that were...

Read More
45 Records in the Eighties
Mar02

45 Records in the Eighties

You Spin Me Right Round, Baby, Right Round… Before cassettes, before compact discs, and WAY before iPods, we had vinyl records. Just as a refresher, 45s were different than LPs, or long-playing records. An LP had a small hole poked in the center, like this (pictured at left). 45s had much larger holes in the center, a holdover from jukebox mechanisms. LPs played at 33 1/3 revolutions per minute, while 45s played at (you guessed...

Read More
Mixing up an Awesome Summer, 80s Style
Apr11

Mixing up an Awesome Summer, 80s Style

It’s almost Summer. You’re going to be doing some laying out in your Wayfarers with your trusty Walkman. You’re going to be driving around with the windows down and the volume up on your car’s cassette player. You’re going to want to listen to some rockin’ tunes on your jambox. You’re going to want to impress a special someone with your musical taste and generosity. You NEED a good mix tape. But what to put on it? A perfect mix tape...

Read More