1970s Stereo Geek

These were called "speaker cabinets." They made noise.

Back before high-school geeks had computers to get all wet over, they fiddled about with what used to be called stereos or hifi sets. These were modular systems designed to play back music and other recorded audio in the comfort of one's home, without all that tedious trekking back and forth to the village bandstand just to catch the latest Sousa march.
So for the sake of historical record, vintage tech-head, Joe Roberts, decided to detail his personal epic-obsession with stereo gear, that began in the 1970s, on his homepage - which is an old fashioned word for "blog." Yup, his page has been up on the information superhighway since way back in 1998, you know, back before it sucked.
So click the link below to take a trip into the ancient world of patch-cord spaghetti and grey-backgrounded web pages and who knows, you might even learn something along the way! Knowledge is power!

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

BONUS VIDEO: A 1970s STEREO STORE COMMERCIAL

People We'll Miss: Harold Ramis

Harold Ramis 1944-2014

Comedian, actor, writer, director and producer Harold Ramis died yesterday, February 24, 2014. He has left an enormous legacy behind him having worked on countless films, television shows and even radio shows, where he got his start on National Lampoon's Radio Hour. You can read all about Harold's achievements on the web as he was an active force even up until his final days, but I won't go into any of that here. Suffice it to say that while he was alive he made many, many people laugh either directly or indirectly. So in tribute to this comedy legend, I present to you one of my favorite scenes from one of my all-time favorite sci-fi movies, Heavy Metal (1981), in which Harold starred along with some his fellow SCTV alums, including John Candy, Eugene Levy and Joe Flaherty.

The Voice…Not.

That's British for "you suck."

Something happened to pop music singers between the 1980s and the 2010s. There was a time not too long ago (or maybe it was) when you could flip on your car radio (car radio?) and get a blast of alterno-caterwauling from someone like Robert Smith of the Cure, Perry Farrell of Jane's Addiction or David Burne of the Talking Heads, and you wouldn't feel one bit bad about trying to sing along with them. These folks may not technically have been the best vocalizers in the world of pop-rock, but they managed to stand way out and neatly fit in all at the same time. Their lack of technical perfection was in fact, part of the charm and appeal of their music. Can you imagine Just Like Heaven or Burning Down the House being sung by Robin Thicke or Rihanna? Yeah, that ProTools experiment might be interesting for about half a minute, but the final result would be A) nowhere near as good as the originals, you know it, and B) devoid of any human character, you know that too. Suffice to say, Smith's all-over-the-place vocals and Farrell's raspy whine were artistic statements as much as they were instruments that served the music. So put on all of the meat-suits and funny glasses you want, Gaga, your songs are still pablum.

So there we are in late '89, trucking away to the sound of Van Halen slowly turning into the worst band in the universe, and along comes the 90s. Then suddenly, for some unexplained reason, every male lead singer between the ages of 18 and 35 decided that it would be better if they sounded exactly like Eddie Vedder, even Scott Weiland. Sadly this trend contaminated the genetic lineage of pop music so thoroughly that even today, bands still crop up at random sporting a Vedder wannabe at the mic. Things only got worse when a little band called Green Day came out of nowhere and decided to screw up punk rock forever by putting a professionally-trained singer at the helm. (wtf?) Luckily, Billy-Ray Arrmstrong's over-the-top SoCal accent caused so much confusion amongst the masses that nobody even noticed. "Is he trying to sound British?"

But then, in 2002, the game changed forever. After a decade of everyone complaining about how pop music and its associated artists no longer had any heart and had just become part of a massive manufacturing process which removed anything remotely human from the source talent in order to form it into the perfect plastic product, along comes Simon Fuller with American Idol. Bastard. This Gong Show retread took the world by storm and slowly killed off the notion that anything less than utter perfection in a vocalist was desirable. The inevitable imitators followed en masse and now every kid that's grown up in the last decade thinks Daughtry is the pinnacle of rock and roll.

Digital perfection. That's all popular music is about now. No heart, no earth, no whimsy. Just Taylor Swift.

So since there's no longer anything worth listening to on the radio (was there ever, really?) I'm going to put on some Talking Heads. Enjoy and have a good weekend.


Talking Heads - Once In A Lifetime by hushhush112

Happy Towel Day!

“A towel, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.” - Douglas Adams

BONUS VIDEO - THE 2005 HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE MOVIE TRAILER

Bluetooth Boom Box

Hey kids! Now you can wang your chung in a totally rad way with the Lasonic i931bt Retro Ghetto Blaster (now referred to on some sites as the i931bt High Performance Portable Music System). You might remember Lasonic as a popular manufacturer of cassette-based boom boxes in the late 80s/early 90s so this stereo's pedigree is retro-legit, but unlike its vintage siblings, the i931bt can blast beats from a variety of modern sources. Here's a partial feature list:

• USB Port and SD/MMC Slot for MP3 Playback
• Bluetooth Connectivity to any Bluetooth Enabled Phone or Tablet
• AM/FM/RBDS (Radio Broadcast Data System)
• Real Time Clock with Full Alarm Functions
• 15 Watts x 2
• EQ
• AUX IN
• Remote Control

One nice little touch is the authentic slathering of bright, angular 90s graphics on the product's casing which mean absolutely nothing but make it look very important and exciting. The list price is $349 but you can pick it up for much less over here and probably even cheaper if you use this.