At the risk of showing his age, Kim Gillespie takes a musical trip down memory lane, visiting some old favourites along the way.
Convoy - CW McCall
When I first started listening to music 40-something years ago it came in the form of a little black disc spinning at45rpm.
Music was a tactile experience - something that, if you wanted to listen to it, you had to physically handle it, place it on the record player, set the needle, then three or four minutes later take it off and place the next one.
I'll forever know the lyrics to the greatest songs of the 70s because of this.
Rock Me Amadeus - Falco
Come the 80s I was making my own mix-tapes. They might have been recorded off the radio, from shows hosted by Casey Kasem or Rick Dees, or I might have used one of those double tape deck boom boxes to record from my cassette collection.
Can you believe people used to lug those around?
Rhinoceros - Smashing Pumpkins
In the 90s grunge arrived along with the age of the compact disc.
Across the decade, for a variety of reasons, I amassed a rather large collection. Too much to ever listen to them all. (My books tell a similar story).
The Walkman was replaced by the CD Walkman. Cassette versions that had replaced beloved vinyl albums were themselves displaced by CDs.
The CDs were eventually consigned to storage, along with any remaining vinyl. The cassettes were long gone.
The iPod shuffle music player. By 2006 portable music came in a tiny package, a long way from the days of boom boxes. Photo / File
Music now existed in a magical invisible realm, and has continued to do so for the next two decades, first via downloading, and those interminable waits, then via streaming.
Fire - Waxahatchee
Mixtapes are now playlists. Albums are made in bedrooms. Not a lot of people own music anymore. And I can request any song in the world by talking to a speaker in the corner. We've come a long way, baby.
But in other ways, we've travelled a long way to get back to where we started.
Vinyl is back, and booming. Record stores are popping up again. LPs are putting listeners back in touch, literally, with the music that moves them.
Once again music can be a possession, a treasured item, something to have and to hold.
Like that black disc 45 times a minute, we've come full circle.
