It’s a rainy crappy weather day in Brooklyn – lots of “skyarrhea” out there as I like to call it. What better time to wrap up a couple of retro synth and guitar solo-drenched Planet Ekim tunes I’ve been whittling away at over the past few months?

VidStar

I vividly remember when my pops came home in 1981 or 82 with a doodad called a “VCR” – the model in this advertisement, as a matter of fact:

That ad copy is hilarious:

“SIMPLE. IT ALMOST THINKS FOR YOU”

Ummm.. yeeeah. I recall programming the thing to tape shows when we weren’t home and respectfully disagree with that bold claim.

I love how the lady is gazing into the TV. Meeeow. I wish that was me. If I remember the buttons on the remote correctly, I think she’s got her thumb on STOP. Maybe she intended on hitting pause to go put on some Enjoli to seduce her man but is so consumed by passion that she’s oblivious to what button she’s actually pressing. Or maybe she’s pretending it’s his unit. That’s a corded remote, too, that plugs into the front of the machine – and it doesn’t appear to be plugged into theirs. Maybe I’m totally wrong with my previous theories and she’s actually thinking I should go plug this in, because we’re definitely rewinding this scene.

“JVC presents the 8:00 movie. At 2:36 A.M.”

Now that whole concept completely blew my 8-year-old mind. So not only can I watch a movie at home, with no commercials… but I can watch it again? And whenever I want? I can’t begin to imagine how many times I watched Star Wars, The Jerk, and Stir Crazy. Star Wars is one I revisit every few years, but the other two are still regular viewing staples to this day. Anyone who knows me knows that The Jerk is an all-time fave, and it is for my family as well. I remember waking up before everyone one Saturday morning and popping Stir Crazy in for the first time. I wasn’t sure what to think of Willy Wonka playing a prisoner but I gave it a go, and loved it!

Although I’ve learned to embrace modern-day services such as Netflix, YouTube, and all of that other streaming malarky, I sometimes miss that old VCR. Not enough to buy one on Ebay, but enough to write a tribute song for it. Like to hear it? Here it goes:

 

WALKMAN

When I unwrapped my first Walkman on Christmas Day morning of 1982 I was even more blown away by that than I was the VCR (good job, Santa!) My sis got one too – it was an FM radio version, no tape deck, and the size of an iPhone. It came with those sweet headphones with the orange foam on the ear thingies. I was obsessed with listening to records at a pretty early age, and up until that point the only music listening experience I knew was sitting in front of a record player or having the radio on in the car. To be able to put headphones on and walk around the house or outside in the snow was nothing short of the most amazing thing ever. Plus I could listen at night when everyone was sleeping as loud as I wanted. Holy shiitake, Batman! Plus it had teeny LED lights on it – red indicated that you were getting a shitty signal (as if your ears couldn’t tell you that) and green meant you were properly dialed in. High tech stuff.

I remember that day when the fam got into the station wagon to go to Christmas Day dinner at Grandma Gerties – my sis and I were in the back seat with our headphones on just like Russ and Audrey in the back of the Wagon Queen Family Truckster in Vacation. My favorite song at the time, “Stray Cat Strut” started playing on WLOL and my dad had that station on in the car as well, so not only did I have it cranking in the headphones, but it was reinforced by the car stereo. Surround sound Stray Cats.

Eventually I upgraded to the cassette tape Walkman which really expanded my mind, duuuude. I transferred all of my KISS records to tape and could listen to them on the go. Listening to KISS at the park in headphones for the first time was pretty badass. Plus I started getting into weirder stuff like DEVO, Art of Noise, and Herbie Hancock. Stimulating my brain by walking around the streets of Cottage Grove piping music like that into my head vs. being tethered to a record player was badass.

I had this exact carrying case. The struggle was real.

This tune had no name and for whatever reason reminded me of those first few years of music on the go. It’s crazy to think about the evolution in portable music I’ve grown up with:

  1. Walkman
  2. Boombox
  3. Discman
  4. my love-but-mostly-hate relationship with mp3 CDs (remember those? Yeeech.)
  5. iPods
  6. And now just my phone.

Sometimes when I’m scrolling through the billions of options at my fingertips in Spotify or iTunes I chuckle and think back to the days when I carried around a briefcase of 24 cassettes. The struggle was real.