Your Playlists
By: Aldrin Silva
Tags: Nostalgia, Songs, Music, Playlist, Recording

credit: pexels.com

One of the first tasks when going cycling or driving — find your playlist. Get on Spotify (or your streaming service of choice), select your mood and press play. All of 20 seconds to complete this task, freeing your mind to focus on other areas of preparedness.

While slipping on the cycling gloves or putting on the seatbelt, your mind drifts…

10 years back

Listening to the Radio, Bruno Mars Just The Way You Are comes on, which, after a few play throughs, you sing to that special person sitting next to you. If you’re like most people you go to the music store and buy the CD, allowing you to play it on your stereo at home or in the car.

If you’re like me you would have downloaded the MP3 from your selected torrent site (illegal, yes, but… you know), either the song, or the album, or even the artist discography. In that case, you have the songs set as a playlist in a folder on your phone, or on a USB stick, both of which you find ways of hooking up to your home or car stereo through makeshift arrangements.

The critical piece of a makeshift arrangement

You also could have set the playlist to a CD, recorded on your CD Re-Writable Drive on the PC, using Nero or some other software designed for this one purpose. You’re either keeping them as MP3 files, so you could fit a lot more songs, or a regular CD format, depending on the system you were playing it on.

As you press play to start the tunes, your mind drifts…

24 years back

A Dual-Tape recorder on the stereo is a necessity, allowing you to record from the Radio, a CD or from another Cassette. These playlists required a little more planning, what with the choice of 60- or 90-minute cassettes to record onto, with the time taken to ensure all of the songs from the various sources are lined up so you could hopefully finish in one go.

You had the need of making sure you keep the 3–4 seconds of silence between each song, so that the automatic rewind/fast-forward will stop before the next song. Finally, making sure you get the maximum recorded space on each side so you don’t lose out more than a few seconds of dead air on the tape.

credit: Shutterstock

A successful completion followed by the official naming of the tape, with the songs list written on the paper insert, possibly decorated and colored by those of the more creative sort. Sharing these playlists with a friend, a crush, or trading them for another one to record and re-record.

You put on the headphones of your Sony Walkman and press play, and as Def Leppard’s When Love and Hate Collide starts playing, your mind drifts…

32 years back

The Sansui Entertainment Cabinet stands 4 feet high in the Living Room, kept in a corner away from the usual walkways, yet central to the motions of the day. Looking like a mini server cabinet, it contains the Amplifier, the Equalizer, the FM/AM Tuner, the Single Cassette Tape Deck, the CD Player and the Record Player, each unit standalone, and roughly the size and weight of cinder blocks.

credit: hilberink.nl

The wires connecting them behind seem to operate on the same principle as a 1950s telephone switchboard, all with a specific purpose. The speakers connected were Bose 301s, fancy, powerful, yet innocuous enough to disappear into the room, speaker wires hidden on the red carpeted floor.

Recording your playlist is pretty much the same unless you want to record from another tape. That requires a few more deft wiring skills, some makeshift, possibly even the use of a microphone with the hope that no one makes any noise until you’ve completed your recording. But, once completed, the sense of accomplishment is akin to winning a Grammy Award for Producer of the Year!

As you set the needle on the record player, and Ritchie Valens starts professing his love for Donna, you press record on the tape deck, while checking your equalizer settings haven’t changed, and your mind drifts back to…

…hmm…before recording equipment was commonplace? Just listen to the Radio and wait for their favorite songs?

Capital Radio was what used to be playing the whole day, RJs who had day jobs, and were allocated time to play their personal favorites on the radio, usually from their own collection, but also from the common collection set at the radio station.

Playing Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven as the last song on their list so they could leave the studio a few minutes earlier, leaving the next RJ to make sure they come in just before the song was ending. The National Anthem playing later at night to signal the end of the day. Also playing the unofficial Anthem of the UAE Life in the Emirates by The Establishment.

That’s a lot of music history going back 40+ years in the UAE. Seems a little daunting now, but there was effort put into putting music together for different reasons. What you wanted to say to your crush, what songs to be played at a party to keep it cool, what you wanted to listen on the bus to school and the ride coming home, or just plainly what you were feeling at any given time. It’s easier now to get your mood music, but, perhaps, not as rewarding.

Or is it? Wait, I know that song!…Phone’s dead — hope I remember it when I get on Spotify later.