by * before the Internet
November 23, 2021
All during November it’s been fun to look back at the products and personalities that dominated the pre-Web moment. Excellent media experiences live on, just in new and evolved form. I urge all like-minded pop culture nostalgia / technology loving friends to spend more time researching a variety of high-quality information. There is some trial and error involved (is this app or that app worth a look?) I have a quick hook, but I keep moving… Happy hunting!
Record and Tape Clubs – After much debate and several false starts, you joined the “Buy One, Get 12 Free” Columbia Record Club (oddly enough, based in Terre Haute). You got your 12 free LPs and took the considerable hit for the “Buy One.” And then you tried hard to remember to mail in your “Cancel Me!” to the curiously slow-to-respond Columbia staff before next month’s killer Amount Due took a $27 bite out of your summer lawn-care savings. After you scored Boston’s “Don’t Look Back” and that Kansas album you always eyed at the record store, finding the next 3-4 LPs was a degree of difficulty higher. And by the ninth choice you were looking at The Star Wars Soundtrack and asking your sister, hypothetically what she’d pick.
The cassette tape revolution / Boomboxes – Cassette players brought with them the ability to tape an album, and create mixtapes (initially laborious and filled with meaning as author Nick Hornby brilliantly captured in High Fidelity). You could buy the factory cassette rather than the album (which I avoided).
About a year after I bought the big bedroom stereo I added a component tape deck, giving me the official power, at age 16, to record albums and create mixtapes. And later on in 1982 our family owned a Sony boombox that went with Jim, Greg and me on the daily summer drive from my house to the Racquet Club pool. Because doesn’t everyone else in the venue want to hear what you’re listening to?
Regional local TV channel programming – When Eric, a suburban NYC (Connecticut) kid and co-creator of these E.M.E. thoughts, first posted this category I asked him — Do you mean syndicated national programs from childhood (“Make A Wish,” “Muppet Show”) or programming aimed directly at kids/teens (SchoolHouse Rock / ABC After-School Special)… Or are you aiming more for ‘Fright Night hosts’ and local-viewership programming (“Joe Franklin Show” on WOR)?
His response — “The latter. In New York Metro Area it was WOR (Mets, maybe Knicks) and WPIX (Yankees, Abbot & Costello, Cookie Pus, Crazy Eddie, etc.) Howard Stern had a short-lived TV show on one of those. I’m being NY-centric; those channels existed in most of the major metro areas.”
My response — “The single best item I can contribute here: WFLD Channel 32’s ‘The Sportswriters on TV,’ the original of the genre. (ESPN’s ‘Pardon The Interruption’ was modeled in large part after it.) The show started in 1985 at WFLD in Chicago and soon moved to Eddie Einhorn-owned SportsVision, the precursor to SportsChannel Chicago (now Bally’s). Crusty sports scribes Bill Jauss (born in 1931) of The Chicago Tribune, Bill Gleason (b. 1922) of The Southtown Economist and Rick Telander (b. 1950) of Sports illustrated would debate and discuss with moderator Ben Bentley (b. 1920) a boxing promoter. Gleason and Bentley smoked cigars. The show’s darkened, minimalist, poker-table set idea was later stolen by Charlie Rose. SI’s Lester Munson, who covered law in sport, was an occasional panelist. Here is a representative sample.”
Comedy albums — One of the most parent-approved ways you learned about the adult world when coming of age was via stand-up comedy recordings. During my formative years these recordings included performances by Bill Cosby, Bob Newhart, Steve Martin, and George Carlin, as well as a ten-inch 1950s Kermit Shafer “Pardon My Blooper” record my parents owned, and comedy albums from National Lampoon, Monty Python, Richard Pryor owned by friends. True then, and now. When our son Ben was 11, he’d drift off to sleep to the Pandora “Jim Gaffigan Channel” he had created. In my day, it was the comedy album.
Media “horrors” coverage – Maybe there is a full, longer category waiting to be written to include things such as Guyana/Jonestown, Lennon, Reagan, Shuttle Challenger, and other “media horrors.” I say this because the method by which the media picked up on these events (and learned to cover them intensely) has grown up in this timeframe and evolved into the 24/7 cable news world we were all trapped in until recently.
Before cable news existed there was “ABC NightLine” with Ted Koppel, a nightly national news digest airing after your late local newscast. You’d really only choose Nightline over the Tonight Show, in the event of something internationally serious (the US launched an airstrike, e.g.) or grisly in the news earlier that day. But enough of my yapping, SNL perfectly captured the moment and the behavior of networks with, “Buckwheat Dead: America Mourns.”
The Arrival of Cable TV in your Town — Our family got cable TV when I was 15. We had the cable box with the clicker to HBO that sat atop your set. It was a revelation to be a sophomore in high school and have the ability to view a full-length recent feature movie, and then watch it again the next day. I can recall seeing things a teenager would have no other means to easily consume then: Warriors, Wolfen, Sharky’s Machine, The China Syndrome, Magic, Phantasm and Over The Edge with Matt Dillon, “Fraggle Rock,” “Inside The NFL,” burlesque and more. Our family didn’t spring for MTV (debut 8/1/81) which was an extra dollar a month, but my friend Greg’s did.
Sports annuals — such as Street & Smith’s… trying to recall others. This entry inspired by The Sporting News, which I didn’t subscribe to and which my go-to stores either didn’t carry or keep for long in stock. Although I am aware it was bi-weekly, I did not consume it regularly. I’d buy the odd TSN about once every couple months. Unintentionally that made it feel like a rare treat.
Since I’m a loyal IU hoops and Bob Knight disciple (32-0 season was when I was eleven) the new Street & Smith’s that came out every November was huge. S&S was one of the only comprehensive, affordable “previews” of an entire sport that you could purchase. So it served as a college basketball reference, or “yearbook,” where you could see roster, schedules, and expert team analyses in one place. I know someone who only slammed S&S as a gambler’s bible. I never saw it that way; to me it was simply a timely reference manual that anyone else could have produced (but no one did).
Cool catalogs / Scholastic / mailing lists – Every child of the 70s recalls the arrival of The Sears Christmas Catalog, aka Sears Wish Book. For a number of years it was our one-stop source of all the latest toys and games on offer. Others got into the act soon after; Service Merchandise comes to mind. You’d get the catalog, freak about the low prices for that sweet Seiko rectangular quartz watch or Mattel football game, then bring your mowing money to the showroom. You filled out a form and then waited for the item to cruise out of the backroom on a conveyor belt, an experience not unlike waiting for your airport baggage today.
In elementary school did you receive monthly Scholastic paperbacks catalog/order form? This was my source of The Guinness Book of World Records, an annual “lock” order. This pamphlet-catalog also offered “Dynamite” and “Bananas” magazines – each of which were starter Tiger Beat titles. Because of these purchases also, you’d get added to mailing lists for more catalogs. It was a glorious time, the catalogs era…
The letter – Much to say on this topic. Despite having co-written a book on the subject (more below), I’m no longer a frequent letter writer. My mother remains an inveterate letter writer, which is fantastic, and to this day it’s always nice to get that card-sized envelope from Evansville.
She still buys stationery, and she’s a good multi-media correspondent in that you might receive from her a letter, replying to her by email (or even text) — you’ll receive an email or possibly a text response from her (the woman is skillful on her Samsung! She’s an 88-year-old smartphone and Instagram whiz.)
Will you send holiday cards season? Our plan went hybrid a few years back, so for me the answer is, “yes, but fewer than last year.” Any exchange of handwritten items from friends in the US Mail remains a small source of joy…Somebody has put in a little something extra where we’re concerned, and we treasure the effort. Of course, the way we save old media differs in the present also. I long ago digitized old photographs and many letters (tossing out some, but not all).
Sadly, social media is doing for the letter what the greeting card did to the personal note. What is the role of letter writing in digital era? Why should letter writing ever become popular again? Well, the handwritten letter:
– Carries more meaning, carries your past. The handwriting of your best friend in 1980 is individualistic and personal, and takes you often right back to where you first opened the envelope.
– Carries impact over time. It’s a living artifact of the current moment.
– Is just more personal. A simple, thoughtful note or card makes a deeper inpression.
– Differentiates you. While text email and apps offer convenience, there is still genuine appreciation for the old-school ways. In a world of convenience, email/text is simply easier and therefore less special.
In the digital realm, I maintain, nothing will ever beat a well-written letter. The power of the handwritten analog letter to stand out should never be dismissed or underestimated. I still have numerous original letters from my HS language exchange trip to Germany, from various summer-camp, school-age and college friends, distant, and now-departed relatives.
The book – I later helped my brother on his second book on the topic, a compendium of prank letters to corporations (and actual responses) entitled “Drop Us A Line…Sucker.” The book was a hit (defined then as, it went into a second printing, thus was “sold out” of the first print run), and with my publicity background I did a lot of the PR legwork to set up coverage and interviews. That project was a ton of fun. Not sure you could do it the same way, again, in the age of the email. Hmm…
The People’s Almanac Vols. I and II – formative for me, probably because my history teacher used and quoted from Vol. II often. From wiki: “The People’s Almanac is a series of three books compiled in 1975, 1978 and 1981 by David Wallechinsky and his father Irving Wallace. In 1973, Wallechinsky became fed up with almanacs that regurgitated bare facts. He had the idea for a reference book to be read for pleasure; a book that would tell the often untold true tales of history. The book arrived in 1975 and became a best-seller. Its success led to The People’s Almanac #2 in 1978 and The People’s Almanac #3 in 1981. One of the most popular chapters was a selection of lists, which spawned The Book of Lists.”
Perhaps this entry is “reference books” that you’d definitely keep current on… The World Almanac, Rolling Stone Album Guides (and others), Blockbuster Guide to Movie and Video Reviews (this was a bit later, maybe college and afterward). The Farmer’s Almanac was big for a few years (especially during the Midwestern blizzards of ’78).
Columnists — One of the joys of regional news dailies, and multi-newspaper markets such as NY or Chicago, was the ability of a reader to “discover” a columnist who is new to you. When I moved up from small-market (still 2-paper!) Evansville to Bloomington, suddenly it was easy to lay hands on [mostly sports] columnists in Chicago, Indy and Louisville. And guys like Dave Barry. IU’s journalism program revered the Louisville Courier-Journal, and had us pore over its reporting, so it was with great interest that I followed Kentucky basketball’s early 80s scandals through those writers’ having to take down something that they all probably loved.
Book and CD Store Browsing (late 80s/early 90s) — On any given mild evening in near north Chicago, I would complete a circuit of store browsing that included gleaming new Barnes & Noble and Tower Records locations as well as about a half-dozen used CD and bookstores – eclectic and each wonderfully specialized – dotting the Diversey-Clark-Broadway area. I began these outings solo in 1988 and then later, much of Christi’s and my early dates (1990-91) and post-marriage summer evenings (1992-95) were spent happily on these after-dinner browse fests. A key point regarding Barnes & Noble: For the first time anywhere, shopkeepers ENCOURAGED in-store reading rather than chasing you out for excessive browsing.
Records retail – My personal evolution, wonder what yours might’ve entailed –
- Until 1983 – Karma: Midwestern regional LPs/head-shop chain. Albums cassettes and 8-tracks, Doodle Art, Roger Dean posters, cool weeping Earth candles too.
- Mid 80s – Mall stores. Disc Jockey, Record Bar, Sam Goody’s, Peaches. Overpriced, usually pedestrian inventories but convenient to car culture and where my friends were. I was an infrequent / reluctant user. Until…
- Target! Also mid to late ’80s, Target began stocking especially good cassette inventory and seemed to “get” college-kid buying habits. Consistently, I’d find cult-ish stuff at Target, for cheap, that you’d never find in a Mall.
- College LP and CD (esp. USED) stores were awesome – cheap, amazing stock. Tons of Used options. One store at IU offered a “rental” option, knowing that kids were taping LPs.
- Chicago – circuit on North Clark, previously mentioned. Awesome, indie stores with impressive inventories and specializations.
- TOWER RECORDS. 2301 N. Clark in Chicago. So good for me through 1995, and sadly it didn’t endure past 2006. Damn Internet!
- Austin 1995-2005 – Waterloo, ABCD’s and, finally: Cheapo’s. For being a supposed music capital, Austin’s CD stores (Waterloo in particular) were surprisingly pricey and lame.
- Amazon. I wonder, what’s the last CD you’ve purchased (and when)? I bought the re-release of Tom Petty “Wildflowers” in 2020.
The Lloyd Dobler Factor: It struck me that an entire generation no longer sells, buys or processes anything: people under the age of 45 don’t own LPs, cassettes or CDs. No books, no DVDs, no videos. All of their “content” is digital. Instead of owning things, objects that they may have traveled somewhere to obtain, they have digits. They subscribe — rather than buy — so they’re really just holding those digits temporarily until they expire. Their subscription media is played on a phone, not an audio system, and the vast majority do not own an audio player larger than a deck of cards, speakers larger than the circumference of their own ear holes. (Bigger question about ephemeral ownership, aka the sharing economy: Uber, WeWork, Favor, AirBnB. What long-term impact will “rent everything, own nothing” have?)
ALSO RECEIVING VOTES:
Your father’s/brother’s/buddy’s older brother’s stack of Playboys – It was a much more innocent time and low level of raciness. A rite of 70s/80s passage was raiding the stash when the parents were gone. Occasionally, some other 6th grader would show up with one… on the playground. That’s a move that never ended well.
T-shirt culture – I’m With Stupid; Keep on Truckin’ – In the late 70s you HAD to have a cool/funny slogan on your tee. I was also a huge fan of gimme-shirts from PUMA and Adidas.
The Live Album – KISS Alive, Cheap Trick at Budokan, Frampton Comes Alive – Or the all-time greatest title for a live LP, Ted Nugent’s “Intensities in Ten Cities.” This was a Seventies trend that thankfully went away pretty quickly (supplanted later by the unplugged-LP craze).
“I want you… To want me!” The ultra-phonetic Robin Zander enunciation, Budokan-style*, never fails to elicit a chuckle from me. (The Budokan versions of “Surrender” and “I Want You To Want Me” get more radio play than their studio songs.)
The idea of the live album was to capture the raw energy of a dynamic performer, etc. But in reality it was a cost-efficient way for artist or a label to put out something “new” for that year, buying time for the artist to work on the next studio record. Live albums were not necessarily recorded on one show; they manipulated crowd effects to make it sound as if Frampton were soloing at The Colosseum on free Bacchus night.
CB Radio. Trucker craze — CW McCall’s number-one hit “Convoy” marked the high-water point of this unlikely fad. The citizen band craze grew in popularity during the 1970s, partly because of the 1973 oil crisis and a nationwide 55 mph speed limit. CB radio, previously an obscure and inexpensive mode for truckers to alert one another regarding speed traps or gas stations with available fuel, became a nationally cool thing — bigger than Bigfoot — for about 9 months in 1976.
Stuart Wade 