Today, listening to music while on the go could not be easier.
Our phones allow us to carry our entire personal music collection in our pockets, while streaming services, like Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music and Amazon Music, deliver an in incredible amount of variety for just cents a day.
Things were not as simple in the early 1980s, but things were moving in the right direction.
The days of the transistor radio were over.
The small portable radios had “changed the world,” according to writer Dave Petraglia, in post-World War II America.
“It was the original Instant On. It was On Demand,” he wrote. “A revolutionary communications device and social networking appliance in one, easy-to-hold package. Kids poured into the streets with their culture held to one ear.”
But the quality of the old transistor radio was not great.
“Even when it did work,” a Post-Standard article said, “the transistor was viewed with contempt by serious music lovers, who preferred the clear reception of their stereo FM tuners at home to the lowly portable that made every Top 40 hit sound like it was being sung under water.”
Music fans looking for improved sound while on the go were in luck come 1981, when there were two fabulous new options.
Enter the boom box and the Walkman.
On Oct. 25, 1981, the Sunday Herald-American looked at these two exciting new choices and how they had changed the way we listened to our favorite tunes.
Here is a look at what the article, written by James Mulder, said about both.
Two students listen to music on a boom box at the back of their school bus in 1984.
“THE BOOGIE BRIEFCASE”
“The kids in this generation are all going to go deaf and have hernias,” said Bill Flandera of Ra-Lin Discount on Burnet Avenue in 1981, when sales of boom boxes were booming.
The “street stereo,” “boogie briefcase,” and “sonic schlepper” was a favorite for young people who “liked their music on the go” and wanted other people, even those blocks away, what they were listening to.
They often weighed between five and 20 pounds but that did not prevent users from shouldering them while walking, bicycling and roller skating. Some even came with a shoulder strap.
They were nothing like the old-fashioned transistors. The boom box came in a variety of models and many sported all types of options like multi-band radio, tape cassette players/recorders, shortwave receivers and even TV screens.
They often ranged in price between $70 and $700.
“Some of the kids today will come in and spend $200 or more on one without blinking an eye,” Flandera said.
Jay Sasson, of Jay’s Bargain Store on South Salina, said that most customers buying boom boxes were between the ages of 12 and 30.
“The real young ones will work a part-time job and plunk down all their money on a box,” he said.
Tom Hardy, manager then on Syracuse University’s radio station WAER-FM, said that a quality boom box had become a “status symbol” for many of the city’s youth.
Kevin Dean, age 13 of Syracuse, waits in line for tickets at State Fairgrounds with his boom box in 1984. He was waiting for tickets for the Fair concerts featuring YES, Frank Zappa and Rod Stewart.Syracuse Post-Standard
“It’s great man,” said Anthony Monroe, 20-year-old from Syracuse who paid $250 for the boom box he was seen carrying down Salina Street. “It’s music while you’re walking.”
The newspaper article said that “anyone who has been downtown lately will tell you the boxes are powerful,” even if you do not approve of the music, or the volume."
“THE HIP POCKET HI-FI”
For discreet music fans, the ones who may have found the boom box to be too cumbersome or “too socially obnoxious,” there was the Sony Walkman, which by fall 1981 was on its way to surpassing the boom box in popularity.
Conceived by Sony in 1979, the Walkman, also known as the “Bone Phone” and the “Hip Pocket Hi-Fi,” had been purchased 2 million times in the United States in less than two years.
Syracuse University student Amy Rose from Camillus spends some time on the playground swing while listening to her Walkman at Barry Park while waiting for her afternoon classes to start. Photo was taken in 1988. Syracuse Post-StandardSyracuse Post-Standard
For younger readers, the Walkman was a portable stereo with FM radio and a cassette player that could be hooked to your belt. It was the forerunner of the iPod and iPhone.
“Instead of blasting music out into the atmosphere like the boom box, the Walkman transmits stereo sound exclusively to the listener’s ears via a wire and set of light headphones,” the Herald-American said.
In 1981, models of Walkman’s ranged in price from $100 to $200.
The mobility of the Walkman was its top selling point. Users could plug in and escape the real world for a bit through their headphones.
Central New Yorkers used them while shoveling snow, walking their dogs, skiing, and jogging.
Jim Moran used his Walkman every day on his way to work, a one-hour trip aboard a Centro bus.
“The bus is boring,” he said. “But when you put the headphones on you can tune out all the noise on the bus. You don’t have to bother with anything that’s going on around you.”
What is funny about the rise of the Walkman is that experts spoke about many of the same concerns that are written about today and cell phones.
A Walkman can make even the monotonous Central New York activity, shoveling snow, better. Here Dean Mauro, of Liverpool, shovels his driveway while listening to tunes in 1987. Syracuse Post-StandardSyracuse Post-Standard
Were these new devices too distracting, and were they making people more “anti-social?”
The Herald-American article said:
“While all these people’s craniums are spinning with crashing crescendos are their headsets making them oblivious to car horns, fire sirens, train whistles and other sounds affecting personal safety.”
Others worried that young people of were disengaging from real life and listening to music all day long, possibly at volumes unsafe for human ears.
BOOM BOX OR WALKMAN?
So, what was your favorite musical device of the 1980s, the Walkman or the boom box?
It probably depended on you were in the rest of the life.
Did you prefer the insular, private Walkman, or were you an extrovert, who was a fan of the window-rattling sound of a souped-up boom box?
Here is how WAER’s Tom Hardy put it in 1981:
“It’s like the difference between the Cadillac owner and the Porsche owner. They’re both expensive cars, but the Caddy owner is out to impress other people while the Porsche driver wants to please himself.”
Read more
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Carrier Dome concerts: Look back on 40 years of Dome music acts (video)
1981: Best pizza? Best athlete? Best job? See what readers thought was the ‘Best in Syracuse’
Check out our true-crime podcast
An invention from Upstate NY soon became the preferred method of execution across the United States -- the electric chair. In “The Condemned,” we trace the history of the chair through the stories of five men who were sentenced to death for their crimes. Explore our series here.
This feature is a part of CNY Nostalgia, a section on syracuse.com. Send your ideas and curiosities to Johnathan Croyle at jcroyle@syracuse.com or call 315-427-3958.
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