Friday, June 12, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
The DECCA Navigator

Inside that 1961 BEA "About Your Flight" Booklet.
Labels: 1960s, planes, tech, tourism, vintage ads, vintage advertising








Monday, December 15, 2008
Of Music, Technology & Kids Today :sigh:

So many makers of today's music machines, like the new Jensen JiMS 525i, are selling themselves on the the benefit of iTunes Tagging. "How many times have you heard a song on the radio you’d really like to hear again?" they say. "Wouldn't it be great if you could tag that song and buy it?"
Everyone knows that one of the many joys of music, along with the often related ear worm song, is the nagging annoyance of 'knowing' a song, but being unable to name it or who recorded it.
Honestly. It's a thrill.

This deficit on the part of the general population to recall the song's title and artist even when listening to it forces you to listen to the radio announcers (even today on those new music stations), just to hear them identify the song. You beat your fist on the dashboard in frustration when they didn't -- and rhythmically on the steering wheel as you repeated the title/artist mantra out loud when they did (yes, all the way to the record shop). If you were home alone on a Saturday night, you could even call into the radio station and ask... The final nail on your loser coffin. This alone made DJs vital to your life.
But, again, sometimes you couldn't count on the DJ for help. You just wandered, frustrated and annoyed until you found one of those rare and annoying but necessary walking encyclopedias of musical knowledge -- those who can who can hear, process & recall such info (along with band, album name, and concert date at CBGB's). We need these geeks of music. And they know it. Hence their egos.
Now the chips on the shoulders of those who do not recall as well have been replaced by some computer chip.
Sure, it's cleaner, easier, and costs your pride less to hold up a device and get the answer than it is to humbly ask your local music knowledge god. But the computer chip has no great stories.

Or of staying home one night after being dumped and polishing off a six-pack of Zimas solo while listening to November Rain over and over again until you could get pissed enough (emotionally & alcohol-wise) to angrily sing-scream along with I Used To Love Her.
(Axel Rose sure knew how to musically score a love life -- or so I'm told. I never did that, of course. It's just an example... From my, uh, friend's life.)


How else will we be able to share these stories?
Oh yeah... Blogs.
But then, it's not quite the same as being asked -- and I have no idea if you're even listening.
Labels: 1980s, cult classics, music, records, retro, stuff, tech








Monday, December 10, 2007
Car Record Players, 1961

From the Consumer Reports archives:
The needle of the Norelco Auto Mignon stays in the groove of our 45s, even when we drive over rough roads. But since there's no record changer, we must insert each record we want to play, then remove it when the song is over.
Labels: records, retro audio, tech, the automobile








Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Modern Retro Media

Via Advertising Lab, you can see a bunch of retro-styled modern technology, from MP3 players that look like tape cassettes, to celphone headsets that look like a 1940s Bakelite handset, to a CD player that looks like it'll be just as ungainly, impractical, and scratch-prone as it's 1980s vinyl-album-player ancestor. The Cassette MP3 Player is the most practical of them all -- our van has no CD player, and we'd love to have something like this in the dash.
Labels: cool, retro style, tech, vintage style







