Days of Yore: Listening to Music

I know what you're probably thinking. "Wait a minute... Didn't you already cover listening to music here?" Well, yes and no. In my "Audio Recordings" post, I covered ways of listening to music and other audio recordings in the home and in your car. That included records, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs, and MP3 players such as iPod and Zune. I also mentioned the radio. But those are not the only ways out there of listening to music over the years.

Jukebox
LMPark Photos on Adobe Stock

Many Broadway fans are familiar with the concept of jukebox musicals. These are musicals using songs that were not written for the musical. Someone decided to use existing songs and build a story around them. There are several kinds of jukebox musicals. Some, such as Mamma Mia!, Jersey Boys and others, feature the music of a specific artist or group (ABBA and Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons, respectively, in these two examples). The playwrights of Mamma Mia! came up with a fictional story based on the songs of ABBA. Jersey Boys tells the story of Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons and incorporates their songs. Many jukebox musicals follow one of these two patterns. Others, such as Moulin Rouge, gather songs from a wide variety of artists. The original musical, The Black Crook, even gathered a lot of its material from existing songs from multiple sources, and also new ones.

But I wonder how many people in the younger generations, who may have varying opinions on the existence of jukebox musicals, know what a jukebox is? The picture above is a jukebox. They were common in the previous century in restaurants, dance halls, and anywhere that you wanted to have a good time. Each jukebox had a set of songs which you could see through the glass at the top and scroll through. You could select the song, put your coin(s) in the slot, and start it up. Voilà! Your song played for everyone around to enjoy! Some restaurants had smaller jukeboxes on each table. Though they aren't nearly as common now, I have seen them on occasion in '50s-style diners.

Over the years, there have been a variety of ways of playing music for a crowd. There's live music played by artists on a stage. There is recorded music curated by DJs (disc jockeys), who have used various kinds of equipment, often using vinyl records or more electronic types. Milli Vanilli got in trouble for pretending to do live music while in fact playing songs that were previously recorded by someone else. Karaoke has used records, CDs and other forms to play the accompaniment track (just the music without the singing) for someone who may or may not have a talent for singing to stand on stage and sing their hearts out, following along with the words on the screen. We also used accompaniment tracks for other purposes, such as special numbers in church. I performed songs in church and choir class in high school using both cassettes and CDs. In the Philippines, they called them Minus Ones. In my interview for a design internship a few years ago, I used the accompaniment track to parody "This is the Moment" from the musical Jekyll & Hyde and showcase my design skill set. I downloaded the track from Amazon and saved it on a thumb drive so I could play it on the classroom computer. (Disclaimer: I did not warm up ahead of time, and I could have used more rehearsal, but hey, I got the internship! If I ever perform this again for Broadway, I promise to rehearse more and warm up ahead of time.)

I did the same in a class presentation around that time period to parody "Bui Doi" from Miss Saigon, regarding my dream of becoming a graphic designer. (Note: While Jekyll & Hyde and Miss Saigon are musicals, they are not the jukebox variety.) In that same class, I did another presentation using the same way of playing, but in a silent movie format to showcase how I had overhauled my website. I was The Great Steverino, a celebrated magician of yesteryear who could magically transform websites. No sound came out of my mouth, but I mouthed the words, and they appeared on the screen. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor played on the organ in the background. (Sadly, that was not videoed.)

In a previous blog, I mentioned various ways we have played music over the years. Record players, 8-track players, tape recorders, CD players, Walkman, Discman. Over the years, various websites have offered options for playing music. Napster, YouTube, Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, iTunes and others. SiriusXM offers streaming radio that you can listen to in your car or just about anywhere.

I'm sure it will come as no surprise that I listen to most of my music on my cell phone and the computer these days. I mentioned as much in my post about Audio Recordings.

Days of Yore: Audio Recordings

Girl you know it's —
Girl you know it's —
Girl you know it's —

That was the beginning of the end for the popular band Milli Vanilli. As it would turn out, contrary to their claim in the song, it was NOT true. (I trust you read that last sentence in Morgan Freeman's voice.) We did not see the MTV broadcast where a hard drive issue caused the track to skip and repeat in the middle of the title phrase of the song "Girl You Know It's True," but it was big news in the Philippines, where we lived at the time. A technical glitch from a computer in 1989 exposed for the first time that the band was not singing, but was in fact lip syncing (though some had suspected it previous to that). As Rob Pilatus of the duo later remembered, it caused him to panic and he ran off the stage. He had to be coaxed into completing the concert. The irony of that happening on a song about how "you know it's true" is very interesting.

Though that example was due to a hard drive, the same thing happened with vinyl records sometimes when we would play them at home. The black vinyl disc would be playing the song "My Grandfather's Clock" until suddenly... "Ninety years without slumbering, tick tock — Ninety years without slumbering, tick tock — Ninety years without slumbering, tick tock — Ninety years without slumbering, tick tock —" That was when we knew we had to go move the needle because it was skipping due to a broken record. Records have been making a bit of a comeback in recent years, but they have not been nearly as popular as they were when I was young. When they were not skipping, they were great. They were double-sided, so once you reached the end of one side, you had to turn it over to listen to the rest.

Then there was the 8-track. It was a large rectangular cassette with a notch in the corner. We had an 8-track player in our car, and we would play music on long road trips. Ford began putting 8-track players in their cars in 1965, and music has been a regular feature in cars ever since.

8-track, cassette, record
Photo by Wynter, Adobe Stock

Once the 8-track started decreasing in popularity, the smaller cassette tape became more popular. Like records, they were double-sided and you had to flip them when one side ended to listen to the rest. Like 8-tracks, they had a long film on rollers inside the cassette. Sometimes the film would get tangled up in the tape recorder, and we had to untangle it and then roll it back into the cassette, using either our fingers or a pen or a pencil. Radios with tape recorders were also very handy for recording songs and other things on the radio so we could listen to them later. In the Philippines, they played "Good Morning" from the musicals Babes in Arms and Singin' in the Rain every morning at the same time, like clockwork. (I tried just now to find the specific arrangement they played, and didn't find it.) It always made us happy, so we recorded it. We recorded a bunch of the songs that they liked to play on the radio, such as "Put On a Happy Face" from Bye Bye Birdie, "Make Someone Happy" as sung by Jimmy Durante, and others. We could also record ourselves, speaking or singing into a microphone or into the tape recorder. After our car with the 8-track player, subsequent cars had cassette players. If you didn't play a cassette all the way through on both sides, it was necessary to rewind.

There were several different kinds of players to play cassettes. They were much more mobile than previous kinds of recordings. Boomboxes often had tape recorders. There were simple tape recorders that only played (and recorded) cassettes. Many radios accommodated them, as did cars. They even made Walkmen, which were small tape recorders you could carry with you and connect headphones. Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy has one. The Walkman was very handy as you could carry it in your pocket (provided your pocket was big enough), and some had a clip so you could clip it to your belt.

Record, cassette, 8-track, CD, not to scale
(Note: They did not typically have smiley faces) 😀
Drawing by Steven Sauke, June 2022

In the 90s, we were introduced to a new kind of recording: the CD (compact disc). It looked a bit like a record, but was smaller and fit in a slot rather than setting it on the player like a record, though some CD players do allow you to place it on there, similar to a record, but then it retracts into the player to play the music. Also where the typical record is black (though they did come in other colors occasionally), the typical CD is silver and shiny. They are still relatively common today, though not nearly as common as they were in the 90s and early 2000s. Recent cars have had CD players rather than cassette players. 

Everything that could play a cassette eventually adapted to be able to play CDs. The Walkman turned into the Discman. The Discman was similarly handy, though harder to fit in my pocket because CDs are bigger in diameter than the cassette, albeit much thinner. Recording things on CDs was more complicated than doing it on cassettes, however.

As the early 2000s moved on, the iPod and Zune (and other brands of MP3 players) came out. iPod lasted longer than Zune, but they were pretty cool. I had a Zune for a while. Much smaller than your average Walkman, they had the music stored in them in MP3 format, which you could upload to it. They similarly had headphones attached.

These days, I hardly use any of those any more. I have music on my cell phone and computer, and can easily download it from Amazon and elsewhere and play it on any of my devices (computer, cell phone, Kindle). I have SiriusXM (and a CD player) in my car. Recordings have come a long way over the years.