A True Story About The Sony Walkman Sports

Photo source:  Underwood & Underwood, photographer / Public domain

[suggested track:  Def Leppard “Armageddon It”]

Vinyl might always be the Cup of Christ for audiophiles, but are other formats as important to music fans?  Can you be a music fan without being an audiophile?  An audiophile alone?  I am of the cassette tape generation.  Yeah, my first ever music purchase was Def Leppard’s Hysteria on vinyl. The true transcendental format for me was not vinyl, however.  It was the cassette tape.  

[suggested track:  Ween “Awesome Sound”]

[suggested track:  Smog “Natural Decline”]

Tapes were smaller than records.  They smelled really weird/awesome.  One could also pilfer one’s mom’s Pointer Sisters tapes from her Buick Regal, then put Scotch tape over the copy-protect tabs in order to make mix tapes over top of So Excited! to fool one’s friends.  In addition to the dubbing options, there was also the 4-track cassette recorder that would equip an entire generation of musicians if only Smog and Robert Pollard.  I’m tellin’ ya’!  Cassette tapes are (were) the best.  Plus, thrash metal as a genre would not have gotten off the ground without the punky thrash kids tape trading themselves silly.  Death metal too would have died a stillborn demise without the wonders of cassette as well.  

[suggested track:  Metallica “Metal Militia”]

[suggested track:  Death “Suicide Machine”]

I digress.  The real reason for this article, and the real reason that the format of the cassette made such an imprint on the author, was not the format itself but the portability of playback.  The Walkman should get the credit here.  Yes, kids, before you glued your smug faces to your stupid “phones,” there was another device that was walking around in everybody’s pocket.  Well, probably clipped to everybody’s belt, but It wasn’t pinging and buzzing, nor was it ringtoning “Ironman.”  Good guess, but it wasn’t the iPod either (Zune, anyone?).  Marty McFly had his device in his backpack.  What device, dear readers?  The portable cassette player.  You could totally skateboard down the driveway while listening to “The Power of Love” by Huey Lewis and the News.

[suggested track: Huey Lewis “Power of Love”]

Indeed, it was the Walkman.  I got mine from my dad, probably because he was tired of hearing Billy Idol or the aforementioned Hysteria record blasted from my room.  Or maybe he was just a suburban dad of the 80’s who thought the idea of a personal listening device to be high tech and therefore nifty.  I first re-appropriated his Walkman so I could have accompaniment whilst thrashin’ down the driveway on my Vision skateboard, powered by the “Power of Love.”  It should be noted, however, that my truly cherished cassette player of preference was released in the early 90’s.  It was, of course, the Walkman Sports.  

[suggested track:  Viagra Boys “Sports”] 

The Walkman grabbed hold of me in 1986, but it really squeezed me some years later.  I loved music already, and I had already bought tapes and Metal Edge for myself down at the strip mall, but there was a precise moment that the Walkman delivered me into the listening world screaming and writhing.  It was 1988, and the Bengals had just lost the Super Bowl.  With all his shit in the moving truck, and his two boys tucked into the back of his Ford Ranger extended cab, Dad moved us from Cincinnati to Charlotte.  In addition to the BetaMax, dear dad was also into truck stops and C.B. radio, so it only took a few miles before we had to resupply and gas up at the Flying J.  

My brother and I were loading our Dr. Peppers and Twizzlers onto the counter when I noticed a spinner of cassette tapes next to the register.  There on the bottom row was this box that said:  Rush Hemispheres.  Hey, wasn’t that what my buddy’s brother was always talking about?  The cool one with the earring and the guitar?  I asked dear old Dad if he could buy the tape for me, and I bet he thought it would ensure an hour or so of silence in the Ford, so he pulled the trigger.  Ka-pow.

[suggested track:  Chuck Berry “Dear Dad”]

Dr. Pepper in the cupholder and Twizzlers a-twirlin’, I popped Hemispheres into the Walkman.  The cover had this naked dude standing on a brain pointing off into the distance while another, suit-and-tie dude looked back incredulously.  It was weird.  But before my 5th grade brain could even start to wonder about Hugh Syme’s cover art, the title track burst forth and ear-clapped my ass right in the listening hole.

[suggested track:  Rush “La Villa Strangiato”]

The chorus-y crescendo of the opening chords chimed a few times, then it dived into a synth-laden trot.  Soon, the throttling drums and dizzying basslines would overtake me.  This tape would not offer me a chorus from Motley Crue, but it would instantly solidify in my ears like the complex classical music that I saw on that field trip to the symphony.  It was amazing.  I knew that this was clearly different, and with each listen I could suss out some further detail enriching my listening experience.  The first side of the tape was also all one song, so I could easily get lost swimming in symphonic rock for the entire 18 minutes.  Now this was music.

I would listen to this tape so much that I could fast forward, then stop, then play, and only hear a nanosecond of the playback before instantly knowing exactly where I was in the recording.  If you’ve made it this far into this article, I bet you had at least one tape with which you could do the same, knowing each note and drum hit instantaneously.  Which was it for you?

[suggested track: Veruca Salt “With David Bowie” ]

This highlights the Walkman’s primary offering:  solitary listening.  Sure, you could plug your coiled ¼” headphone plug into your home stereo monolith, but that’s just it.  With the Walkman you could walk.  You could journey.  You could climb the mount of Olympus on a tour bus with a tailor-made-by-your-ownself playlist that could ebb and flow and crest and trough with your emotions and your surroundings.  You could tune out your dad yelling at you to take the trash out.  You could get your homework done with quickness.  You could mute the aching sting of unrequited love snuggling between the foam padded headphones plugged into your Walkman.  And you could do all of this wherever you wanted.  At the mall, on the couch, in the bathtub.

[suggested track: Frank Black “I Heard Ramona Sing” ]

Fast forward once more, friends.  To put us on the timeline, we were well experienced with listening to CD’s in our Discmans, and The Verve Pipe had only just proved streaming music was viable and Napster was just pulling off the ground.  Betwixt the eras of high-speed dubbing and high-speed internet, I was cruising around in a late model Jeep Cherokee.  It was badass.  I was badass.  Then the Fates dealt to me a deafening blow to the side of the face. 

When some jerk tried to pry the CD deck out of my car, said jerk was unsuccessful.  They did manage to jack up the front of the dash so bad that I could no longer load any CD’s.  This is the deafening part.  When Jerry Lundegaard or whoever the fuck it was got squirrely with the screwdriver, they deprived me of the road-ripping joy of music.  I could no longer listen to the juke box zipped up inside my 100-disc CaseLogic stowed in the floorboard.

[suggested track: Black Sabbath “War Pigs”]

[suggested track:  Pantera “Fucking Hostile”]

Well, dammit, I had to drive around in silence for a period of time.  Sure, the first few jaunts in the Jeep of Solitude were full of mindfulness and introspection. . . but then. . . it was. . . so. . . audibly desolate.  A wasteland of Mad Max on mute.  Do you drive around in silence?  Total fucking silence?  Pfff.  We’ll see how you like it. 

So here’s where Sony saves the day.  I happened to have a pair of crappy passive speakers that had an ⅛” male cable coming out.  Perfect for my Walkman!  I plugged these babies into my sweet Sony Walkman and threw this genuine piece of redneck engineering onto the dash of my Cherokee.  

This was a revelation for about 37 days.  It was Back to the Future 2.  With this gloriously tinny sounding contraption, I pretty much precursored the rise of the Bluetooth Speaker that you take to jam out to some Obituary on the jon boat with your fishing buddy and that 12 pack of ice cold National Bohemian you use to whet the appetites of them fishies.  Maybe lull ‘em with Les Paul and Mary Ford’s “Smoke Rings.”  I was using it to take a trip down memory lane, jamming to mix tapes I had made for years.  So long, CD!  Cassette is King.   

Coda:  After a month, some other asshole stole it when I left the Jeep in my driveway unlocked.  My original copy of Rush Hemispheres was inside.  True story.  

[suggested track:  Les Paul and Mary Ford “Smoke Rings”]

[suggested track:  Bjork “Headphones”]

Photo credits: Walkman Photo:  hdboy88 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)

Headphones Photo:  hdboy88 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)