Cassette Music Memories

‘Of all the decades that make up my life, I treasure the 1980s the most’

Photo by Tom Poland

By Tom Poland

A while back my writer-daughter, Beth, wrote a story about her MTV years. She recalled the 1980s watching music videos. She wrote, “When my sister and I visited Dad in July of 1984, we fell into a treasured routine. Cookie Crisp cereal for breakfast, swimming at the neighborhood pool for the first half of the day, and lazily watching MTV for the rest of the afternoon. We watched it so much we’d often see the same video three times in one day.”

As I read her words “I Want My MTV” popped into my head and a kind of time-travel dream took over me. My heavy Hitachi TV came into view … my old Sony Walkman materialized and cassettes in a custom pine box appeared out of nowhere.

Of all the decades that make up my life, I treasure the 1980s the most. As bad as my life had been, I was in a good place then, and music was a big part of it. Perhaps some of you can relate.

Do you remember those great groups that sprung up like mushrooms after a night of rain? Tears For Fears, the Eurythmics, the Talking Heads, Queen, Blondie, Foreigner, the Pet Shop Boys, and R.E.M.

Remember the bands whose names kept you guessing what they meant? Spandau Ballet, Wham!, The Bangles, and A-ha, to name a few. Whether a great name like Dire Straits, the Eagles, and the Police, or something hard to decipher like Depeche Mode (fashion update), we played them in our cars, in our homes, and in our ears via a Walkman. I see folks today wearing white earbuds. They must be pretty good. I see a lot of them.

Photo by Elizabeth Poland Shugg

My hands pushed a lot of cassettes into my dash in the 1980s. I played them in my car all the time on a Blaupunkt. We’re talking high tech here back then. But cassettes would malfunction. The tape would get loose and spew out. Using a pencil you could wind it back into the cassettes, but not always. I recall seeing cassettes on the highway, their shiny brown magnetic tape all coiled up, tangled, blowing about. As your eye followed the mess there lay the source: a cassette that sealed plastic unit containing a pair of spools. Frustrated listeners would toss the cassette out their window into the highway.