Lately, my two (plus) year old has been on a Lion King kick. Which is great as it is one of my favorite Disney movies ever! (plug Andy’s one blog post….ever). But that is only a brief part of this story that will come back in the end. Stay tuned.
This writing isn’t necessarily about The Lion King. This blog is about….the portable cassette player. Yes, this thing:
Now let’s think about this. This is a device that literally you put a weird cassette that works by writing music onto a small strip of tape and you can play it back in your ears with soft headphones WHILE YOU’RE ON THE GO. I know you think those Galaxy Pods are the best things ever (Alan) but we’re going backwards here, folks! This thing is what dreams are made of.
Let’s rewind (pun intended). Remember making mixtapes for girls? I do. Lots of them. Lots…and lots…lots of lost memories and songs…..anyway, nevermind that. The cassette tape. You could play a CD in one of those CD/Cassette Player/Radio combos and record it onto the cassette. Cassettes were letting us bootleg songs way before Napster was founded!
But even cooler….when your favorite song came on the radio, you just pressed the record and play buttons down at the same time (which was kind of weird) and BOOM! Your favorite song from the radio was now saved forever onto this cute little cassette tape!! The crazy thing is when you went back and listened, you never heard the BEGINNING of your favorite songs so it’s like the 2nd and 3rd verse and then you accidentally record over another one of your favorite songs and the remixes were wild. HOLY SHIT, I BET CASSETTE TAPES INVENTED REMIXES! Wow, we’ve come a long way.
But let’s get back to the beginning. The Lion King was seriously a great movie…but some would argue even a better soundtrack! And I vividly remember playing on the swingset at my mom and dads, going down the slide, climbing things, and jumping out of my damn swing….ALL WITH MY PORTABLE CASSETTE PLAYER…..BLARING THE LION KING SOUNDTRACK. Now, for all of you guys out there wondering what ladies want in a man, I’m pretty sure it’s that.
So there you have it. A novel idea way before its time and one of my prized childhood possessions. Did you have one of these when you were younger? What was your favorite cassette to jam out to? (my 2nd fave was Garth Brooks, FYI).
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