WALKING DOWN NOSTALGIA LANE

LARA IN THE HOUSE! 

This week, I'm buckling down into work mode. I have too many balls in the air, so I have to be focused. As we are ramping up for the music issue and as I've needed to concentrate, I've been listening to a lot of music. 

Yes I'm one of those people who needs to listen to music to concentrate and zone out the world. Some people might find it strange, especially if you need to study or have a lot of reading to do, but I guess my brain is wired that way. I constantly need a different stimulus to keep my brain active and ticking. It's all about the right kind of music as well.

My slant on music this week is actually going to feature on the gizmos. I remember listening to the radio as a child and dubbing my favourite songs on to cassette tapes. I had a collection of my favourite tapes and kept them with care so the brown sticky tape wouldn't rip. Back in those days, you had to flip the tape to the other side to listen to the rest of the album. If you were a little hasty or hadn't let the cassette finish playing/rewinding, you could end up with that dreaded chewed up tape sound, skipping past your favourite bits. (If the tape even played at all after that!)

I remember my first Walkman. I really felt like the shiznit! Lol. I kinda got in late so by the time I was rocking mine, people had moved on the Discman! Whoa! The invention of CDs! Who remembers their first CD? I think the first disc I owned was Celine Dion. My mum bought it for me with the Discman so I couldn't complain. However I rinsed that disc and played it to bits! "It's all coming back to me now..." Lol. I wish I could claim I was cooler and say my first album was Tupac or Biggie or something classic. Years later though, I finally started buying my own music and my first purchase was the Destiny's Child Album. 

Then came the invention of CD writers and MP3s! One of my guy friends bought the early first generation MP3 players - which used a mini disk! Hahaha! He paid the earth for it and it never quite caught on! I learned a valuable lesson that still holds me till now: Never buy first generation toys; they are always super expensive and the technology gets old very quickly! 

It's funny we've moved from Walkmans to Discmans to mini-disks and finally proper MP3s and iPods. I am not even going to talk about those big 10/12 inch record players. I'm way too young to know about those things beyond seeing them in a museum (Erm, have I said I'm 24? Lol). I kinda feel sorry for the industries that got left behind. Who buys CDs anymore? And what do you play them on these days? Do DJs still use them? Let's not even talk about other MP3 players - iPods have taken over and are now a new genre in themselves!

I feel sorry for all those little record shops. They had such character! I would pore over different artists and records and spend ages discovering new music. Now itunes/bit torrent (shush - don't judge me) gives me super easy access that leaves me with a slightly disconnected aftertaste. Nowadays rather than racing out for new music, I wait for months before doing big downloads of albums for my iPod. Oh well... I save my appreciation and money for concerts. I would pay anything to see some of my favourite artists perform. I am still saddened that I never got to see MJ. I got tickets for day 5 of his O2 arena show. It would have been awesome. 

Apologies - I've sorta rambled on a bit. Please leave a comment and share your 1st album stories. Would be interesting to see if anyone else is cheesier than me. Next week if I'm still on the music tangent, I'll go over some of my favourite concerts/live performances ever. 

Have a FABulous week all! 

Lara. Xx