so i’ve basically worked a job since i was like 11…yeah, hard to believe since i’m such a chilled out person. and by “chilled out” i mean moody and easily annoyed.
i only mention it cus today i happened to hear RAPPER’S DELIGHT by the SUGAR HILL GANG and it reminded me of my first job (a paper route delivering the ITHACA JOURNAL) and my first exposure to rap music and something new and fantastic called a “WALKMAN”.
see one Sunday night in the dead of winter (had to be late 1979/early 1980) i was out collecting for my route. that meant going door-to-door to get the deadbeats who got the paper all week to pay up for the week. it was a lonely job and — as anyone who’s ever lived through a winter in central new york can tell you — it was a cold-ass job as well.
so i would often beg my younger brother to come with me…most of my ‘clients’ were hippie college kids, so occasionally a girl would come to the door in a towel. that was usually enough of a lure to get him to come and one night his best friend came too.
he was a cool kid who’s parents had some dough and he always had the latest toys. but on this night, he had something more magical. he called it a SONY WALKMAN. now we had a SONY “Trinatron” color TV set (purchased hastily by my father at Woolworth’s during the Watergate hearings when our old B&W set literally blew up) at home so i knew the brand name, but this was a device that played tapes and you carried them around to listen to music. i mean WTF?!…
i recall it was blue (could that be correct?) and bigger than his hand. i don’t think it even had what we would consider headphones but more like an ear plug that would come with a transistor radio…i could be wrong about that tho. anyway, this thing blew our fucking minds. it’s hard to conceive of it today, but it then it was like something that had been beamed down from another planet.
but what was even more mind-blowing was the tape inside. it was something called RAPPER’S DELIGHT…god knows where the hell he got it, but it was like nothing our brains had ever heard before. i mean were living in the disco age so we knew dance music, roller skating music, make-out music but this was a completely different life form. and they cursed!
ok, maybe not cursing but they did reference “s—m” (which in hindsight is a little creepy) and that was enough for us. i think we prolly broke the rewind button listening to the song. more than 25 years later, i still know every goddamn word.
but we didn’t know much else…we didn’t know anything about the band, the music, the hip hop scene and had no way to find out — no wikipedia to check, no music magazines to buy, no MTV to watch. we were just three nerdy white kids on a freezing cold sunday nite in upstate new york getting hit in the face by a new age.
god bless mike, hank and master gee.
god bless sony walkmans.
god bless us all everyone.
18 responses so far ↓
1 thrilliod // Nov 18, 2008 at 2:09 pm
sorry…this reads like one of those “greatest generation” BS things. i love living in the modern world and wouldn’t trade my ipod for a walkman if you had a gun to my head. just one of those things that triggers a specific memory. i wonder who has my old route?
2 Heidi Lopez // Nov 18, 2008 at 2:19 pm
I’ve listened to this song more the 100 times..all the cholo/chola family party’s…man those were some good times.dickies.reebok shoes. bandana in head. WoWzas..this song has brought a smile to my face.gracias
Classic Song Son!
3 bri // Nov 18, 2008 at 3:07 pm
you clearly let that tape rock ’till that tape popped.
4 thrilliod // Nov 18, 2008 at 3:13 pm
ahh…Hopey Glass rides again.
5 Jock // Nov 18, 2008 at 3:59 pm
http://www.digicamhistory.com/SonyWalkmanTPS-L2.jpg
6 bri // Nov 18, 2008 at 5:34 pm
I had that model! I got it along with a copy of Dire Straits’ MAKING MOVIES.
7 thrilliod // Nov 18, 2008 at 5:36 pm
MAKING MOVIES…love that one. “romeo, i used to have a thing with him” …. deadliest break up lyric ever.
8 Jason Aaron // Nov 18, 2008 at 9:19 pm
You’re old. Did this Walkman play 8 tracks?
9 Ernie // Nov 19, 2008 at 6:53 am
Footage of Will on that paper route…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWKDYJ6Ldzc
Here’s another one for you Will…
“Go on and….BOUNCE….Roooooock….SKATE….
Roooooolllll…. BOUNCE”
Or Double Dutch Bus….or Genius of Love… Parliament… Afrika Bambaataa…. the silver age of music for me…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYPfg-PqXQg&feature=related
Average movie, great sound track.
Anyway, I remember pulling out large refrigerator boxes out of the garbage with my older brother, flattening them out in the garage and spreading the baby powder on it. Slapping a tape of Rapper’s Delight or Apache in a big ghetto blaster and destroying our backs and shoulders trying to master a windmill.
10 Jock // Nov 19, 2008 at 9:09 am
i can still bust a windmill.
11 Ernie // Nov 19, 2008 at 10:19 am
Say WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?
12 thrilliod // Nov 19, 2008 at 10:26 am
i used to bust windmills with jason’s mom when i was listening to my 8 track tape of CONVOY…
13 Jock // Nov 19, 2008 at 10:42 am
Will, yesterday -
http://tinyurl.com/5usewu
14 thrilliod // Nov 19, 2008 at 11:06 am
naw…more like this
http://www.beloblog.com/KHOU_formenonly/convoy.jpg
15 Jock // Nov 19, 2008 at 12:01 pm
hahaha, yeah, fair point.
16 Jill Thompson // Nov 19, 2008 at 1:58 pm
I wish when I popped a disk in the computer it made the sound a tape made when you clachuked it into your walkman. Didn’t the actual walkman cost like, 75 bucks back then? Which of course in todays dollars was about 900 bucks? I think I got my first ‘portable tape player’ about the time when everyone was switching to cds.
And you knew someone loved you if they made a mix tape for you from songs they taped from the radio. Because they had to sit there with their finger on the pause button to edit out commercials and wait until the some they requested for you got played. And then your tape player ate it after you played it twice….
17 Brian Wood // Nov 19, 2008 at 7:53 pm
No rewind button, remember? Only FF.
http://bp1.blogger.com/_U_LSqWws0XE/Rkx0q3iYfFI/AAAAAAAAARw/y1pRdAbMaec/s1600-h/walkman.jpg
18 thrilliod // Nov 20, 2008 at 2:36 pm
hi i love XYFloyd! for just a normal man, he rulz ok!
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