I don’t like mowing the lawn, but I take advantage of the time it takes to listen to music, a podcast, or an audio book. While I was mowing last weekend, I was thinking about the different playlists on my phone.

I enjoy being able to fit my mood with music, so I have lists titled inspiration, introspection and jam. I also have blues, classic rock, alternative and acoustic playlists.

This got me thinking about older means of listening to music. Of course, albums are always good. I grew up with albums, 8-tracks and cassettes. Radio was huge, and I remember trying to tape to cassettes off the radio. It was difficult to start and stop the player at just the right point.

We made a large number of mix tapes from CDs when that became an option. We had cassette players in the cars and I had a Sony Walkman! (read a bit more about them here). Later we had an adapter that let us plug a CD player into the cassette player in our cars.

We still have a couple of boom boxes that play cassettes, including this ancient one from the late 80s that lives in our garage. We use it to listen to the radio while working on projects out there.

A late80s boom box sits on a wooden shelf. The antenna is taped together. An old coffee can labeled fuses sits next to it.
Note the taped antenna!
Some cards from our cassettes.

The cards from the cassette cases make a great look at the music of the time. And we used them to recreate some of our favorite mix tapes to CD when you could record them at home. We still have a fair number of those. I have a bunch in my studio. They are played on this portable CD player and a set of old computer speakers.

Then technology moved on again and we got mp3 players. These could hold music on SD cards, and took up much less space than cassettes or even CDs. We copied a bunch of music onto those and were ready to go.

Next thing you know, the technology was smaller yet, and microSD cards were a thing. As our old mp3 players wore out, we moved to newer, smaller ones. And we still have those, although we only use them when traveling to keep books on tape and such on them.

This little fellow is only about 1 inch by 2 inches. It does require the use of a headphone jack, but we can connect it to our car and listen to books. One of our favorite things to listen to in the car is the Dark Adventure Radio Theatre radio plays put out by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society.

Now one can listen to music broadcast from your phone or other player to bluetooth speakers or headphones. I really appreciate the convenience of my headphones when I am working in the yard. We use a speaker for outdoor events. There are streaming services as well, where you can find music to suit any taste or mood.

As I look at these memories, I think about how music helps to shape memories. A wedding has a playlist. Walt has put together playlists for special events, like our anniversary and birthdays. I really enjoy music (in case you couldn’t tell from this post) and look forward to jamming for a long time to come.