He took off his headphones and let me listen. It was astounding.
If I had a pair of headphones myself, I could have plugged them into his Walkman and listened with him. The Walkman was originally designed with two headphone jacks. Listening to recorded music was not generally considered a purely private activity in the early 1980s.
My early 1980s Walkman eventually stopped working, and when I looked for a new one, I found that the company no longer made Walkmen with two headphone jacks, and none of the competitors did either. If I wanted to share my high-quality outdoor mobile listening experience, I had to buy a splitter.
This is not as much of a statement about technology as it is about the change in the way we listen to recorded music.
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And for the record: my introduction to the Goldberg Variations was via a cassette of Trevor Pinnock’s recording, walking in Boston with Elaine. She (or we?) found a jack that let us share her one Walkman.
Good grief: my numerical CAPTCHA is like reading the smallest line on the eye doctor’s chart.
Actually your first Goldberg Variations experience was with the silver Walkman with the two headphone jacks. It was later, when I had to replace the silver Walkman with a black one, that we had to seek out the splitter.
Oh. :)
You dined at nine,
You dined at eight,
You were on time,
Or you were late,
Ah yes, you remember it well....
Thank you, Maurice!
I remember it well....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA_OOAOYm8g
Very funny! I never saw that version before.
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