@AugensteinWTOP it looked something like this pic.twitter.com/1Ga8NOlfMs
— Cesar Canizales (@CesarinDallas) October 23, 2015
@AugensteinWTOP Me and my Sony Walkman circa 1983. pic.twitter.com/Soe854MTLx
— Jean R. Westcott (@DigiDaunted) October 23, 2015
@AugensteinWTOP taped music off the stereo so I could have my own radio show. Rewound tape with a Bic pic.twitter.com/9P8tTO9MIE
— Michael Board (@MikeBoard1200) October 23, 2015
@AugensteinWTOP The classic, Sony Discman. On jogs I would have to hold it as still as possible...that never worked! pic.twitter.com/aT8kIDONQ0
— NickZ (@nickz) October 23, 2015
@AugensteinWTOP I had one of those fisher price tape players. It went everywhere with me! pic.twitter.com/h93FYEgKf3
— Meghin Moore (@meghin_) October 23, 2015
@AugensteinWTOP when I was about four it was this pic.twitter.com/FuMJFFJhk8
— Matthew Keys (@MatthewKeysLive) October 22, 2015
@AugensteinWTOP Something like this radio, record, & 8-track player. pic.twitter.com/2E81Tua5NZ
— zedflexa (@zedflexa) October 23, 2015
@AugensteinWTOP here ya go. Very similar to this. Unsure sure how old ours was but was definitely pre-1960. pic.twitter.com/GHPN9UG6rM
— susan vavrick (@edit_susan) October 23, 2015
@AugensteinWTOP And one of these adapters to hear your new cassette tapes on your 8-track player. pic.twitter.com/EPF5HMFWG2
— zedflexa (@zedflexa) October 23, 2015
@AugensteinWTOP this was my first! And I had a bunch of superman radio drama records to go with it. pic.twitter.com/7CVHJIguKQ
— Maynard Edwards (@Maynardradio) October 23, 2015
WASHINGTON — Most people fondly remember the music they listened to when growing up.
While the melodies and lyrics remind of the relatively-carefree existence of a young music fan, recalling the device the music played upon also sparks warm memories.
On social media, WTOP listeners say they initially listened to popular music on devices ranging from an AM transistor radio, to a plastic mono record player, to a boombox, to a Sony Discman, to a Fisher-Price cassette player.
@AugensteinWTOP I remember this fondly. pic.twitter.com/OvGIL94e7W
— Amber Healy (@AmberMHealy) October 22, 2015
The pleasure derived from recalling the music of your (young) life is likely partially sparked by recollections of childhood and family.
Yet, technology changes quickly, and family members grow up, which can result in a once-favorite music player sitting unused for decades.
Jamie Forzato, WTOP reporter and weekend managing editor, recently helped her grandmother downsize, from her central Pennsylvania home, and struck gold — a 1973 Magnavox stereo console, including a turntable and 8-track player.
Amazingly, Jamie’s grandmother, Carol Goodman, thinks she still has the receipt: “I hope this is the one. Andrus Music Store, which is what I thought … Is that a Magnavox stereo? It was $400, and with tax it was $422, which was a lot of money back in ’73.”
Sitting in the living room where she grew up, Jamie’s mother, Mae Lynn Forzato recalls that console stereo “really was our life — that’s not an exaggeration.”
Mae Lynn was 9 at the time. “I was approached by my mother and my older brother, they needed my money to buy this stereo that was going to cost about $400.”
Initially, Mae Lynn was reluctant to give up her Christmas and birthday money.
“My mother did not force me, but she and my older brother kept telling me how wonderful this new stereo was going to be for our lives.”
With the promise of music in the house, Mae Lynn “turned over my $104 and contributed to the cost of the stereo.”
Unlike today’s compact music components, the Magnavox console was several feet long and more than a foot deep — the size of a small dresser.
The family television also was a console.
“They were the focal points of a home, so they had to be dressed as a piece of furniture,” explains Mae Lynn.
Carol says the cabinet was both decorative and functional.
“It’s a beautiful, beautiful piece of furniture, with louvers, that I think helps bring out the sound.”
When the console stereo was brought home, with three children, two parents, and a grandmother in the home, the Magnavox was often used up to 20 hours a day.
“I’d sit in my dad’s rocking chair which was right next to the stereo, put on the great big 1970s-style headphones, and listen to my Elton John records,” says Mae Lynn.
Her favorite song? “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” from “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy.”
Long before the popularity of karaoke, “We’d just sit there with these big headphones on, and sing, word for word,” she says. “I’d hold up the album cover and would follow the words, and sing as loud as I could — I didn’t realize how loud I sounded.”
“I just played that song over and over, so I could memorize it,” she says. “It was really important to me to memorize all the words.”
Mae Lynn’s father didn’t like rock and roll.
“I remember him saying ‘I wish you knew your bible verses as well as you knew those rock and roll lyrics’ — I wish I had a dime for every time he said that to me. And he was right,” she remembers.
The headphones helped conceal a secret, since her father didn’t want rock records in the house.
“Mom would buy and sneak them to us as birthday or Christmas presents on the side,” says Mae Lynn. “He never knew what was going on inside those headphones — as long as he didn’t see the album cover we were safe, because all the sound was contained inside the headphones.
Mae Lynn’s brothers listened to harder rock, like Led Zeppelin, The Who, and Rolling Stones.
Carol reminds her daughter, “Your dad did like Pink Floyd, which we thought was a miracle, because he didn’t like rock and roll. But Pink Floyd and ‘The Wall,’ he just was fond of that particular one.”
A stay-at-home-mom, Carol got her chance to play classical music on the stereo when Mae Lynn and her sons were at school.
Unlike her children, Carol didn’t wear headphones.
“I loved so much blasting that stereo right out here in the living room, to really hear it like it was meant to be, like the orchestra was right here in the room,” remembers Carol. “It had such a great tone.”
During the recent visit, Jamie and her mother plugged the Magnavox stereo console into the electrical outlet, fiddled with the knobs, and the sleeping giant came to life, playing the radio loudly.
“I’ll bet it’s been 30 years since it was last played,” when the last of the children went away to college, says Mae Lynn.
Carol admitted she had tried to play the stereo during the past three decades, unsuccessfully.
“I had tried to turn it on, but the problem was I didn’t know how to do it. I figured it probably doesn’t work any more.”
Over the years, the once-vital music-maker was repurposed as a table.
“It’s been used to hold my mom’s frog collection, and eventually it’s held grandchildren’s pictures,” says Mae Lynn.
Now, in the midst of the music streaming era, as Carol thins out her belongings as part of her downsizing, the question is raised: “What should we do with the Magnavox?”
Mae Lynn says since she contributed the most of any family member to the purchase of the stereo, “I think it’s only fitting and wonderful that it go to my child — Jamie — and if you could restore it somehow, and make it function as it was back in the day, since it brought us so much entertainment and joy, that’d be great.”
Jamie’s looking forward to having the console, if she can figure a place to put it.
“I would love to restore it,” says Jamie. “One of the speakers is going in and out. The needle on the record player’s not there. I would just like to have an electrician come and look at it.”
Mae Lynn laughs that her daughter is planning a major restoration project on an object that was so important in her childhood: “To you it’s considered a relic, which I just find funny because I don’t feel that old.”
Regardless of the future of the Magnavox, Carol says it has served the family well.
“I love the Doobie Brothers, and the song they sang that I remember so well was ‘Listen to the Music,’ and that’s what we did with that stereo. We listened to the music.”
