MovieChat Forums > Rock 'n' Roll High School (1981) Discussion > Did people really listen to music like t...

Did people really listen to music like this during the 70s??

posted 14 years ago by cryptical70
19 replies | jump to latest

There is one scene in the movie where P.J. Soles' character is bopping thru school with a huge radio listening through a small earpiece in one ear. I know in the late 70s the Walkman was not yet marketed to the general public. But this seems a rather difficult way to listen to music, especially if it is in stereo. Was this the way people were actually listening to personal music back then or where there smaller and easier devices available?

[–] deheor 14 years ago

Afraid so. The lucky kids had smaller transister radios which also used the single earplug style headphone but if you wanted to listen to your own tunes you needed a desktop cassette player and 4 D batteries.

Oh yes, we knew how to rock out!

"Now we are carrying so much hate and jade that we're not much better than you"

[–] 14 years ago

[deleted]

[–] lroy77 14 years ago

Uh...yeah. In fact I still do, even after 30 years. The three you mention are all very good songs. Not necessarily punk...maybe hard rock like KISS, definitely disco, AOR ("album oriented rock" for those of you under 30), easy listening.

Would you like the list in order of preference or alphabetical order?

Hard to believe that they're now considered "oldies".

Are we getting old or what?

[–] Slug-3 13 years ago

Transistor radios were inexpensive and probably the most common device for listening to the radio on the go. I don't remember if portable stereo radios were available, yet, but by my recollection, I think the first Walkman's appeared in the late seventies. I may be wrong, but it seems like they appeared around '79 and were an immediate hit with health nuts.

I haven't seen this movie in years, but it sounds like the huge radio is a "jambox". I have no idea if kids call them that today, or if they're even made anymore, but break dancers originally made them popular. The bigger, the better; at least as far as image was concerned. For the record, they made better, smaller "jamboxes", but the size of the unit was every bit as important as the sound, back then.

[–] gobears87 13 years ago

"Jambox"? I think you mean "boom box".

They were also (briefly) called "ghetto blasters". The term went out of fashion pretty quickly, for reasons which are hopefully obvious.

[–] jennyramone 13 years ago

She didn't have a boom box. She was listening to a Ramones tape with one of the old tape recorder/players. A smallish, rectangular shaped contraption with a spot to put the tape in and a little speaker. You could plug a microphone or earplug/earphone wire into it. I never had one, but I remember them from school when we would listen to our "Hooked on Phonics" tapes.

The Dream Police, they live inside of my head

[–] AltaireIII 13 years ago

"Was this the way people were actually listening to personal music back then or where there smaller and easier devices available?"

Yes and on a mass marketing basis that was the latest technology too!!! One day the iPod will seem primative by comparison.

[–] jayanxiety 13 years ago

People don't realize that the "latest" technology is most likely at least 5 years old or more. For instance, CD's were being perfected by the late-70's and released in 1982, yet most people can only remember their existence from the mid-80's onward. MP3's made their debut in 1991, yet nobody actually heard of them until the Internet-era and early download sites such as Napster. Tomorrow's technology is already invented, we just haven't seen it yet.

[–] Huskie_Jon 12 years ago

What about the day after tommorrow's technology?
_______________
A dope trailer is no place for a kitty.

[–] jayanxiety 11 years ago

The day AFTER tomorrow's technology is probably in someone's brain right now just waiting to be released!

[–] HeyRick 11 years ago

"MP3's made their debut in 1991," - following work on analysing audio and ways of compressing it since the late '70s; the draft for MPEG audio level III was ratified in '91. It was finished in '92 and published in '93. Standards bodies move at glacial speeds, as anybody online during the browser wars (remember Navigator vs IE3? remember frameset?!) will recall.
MP3 was finally "released" in 1995, however the software encoder "L3enc" had been around since mid '94. The first WinAMP arrived in 1997 and from there MP3s took off, and the following year the first hardware players, though many of the early MP3s tended to be 128kbit due to hardware limitations.
Blah blah blah. ;-)
Suffice to say that while MP3s have been around for longer than the commonly known history, I would say that they date from '95 and not '91. That's when it "went public".

[–] jayanxiety 11 years ago

I agree with what you're saying, but my thought was that the technology had been "invented" years before. Just like tomorrow's brand of video technology is already poised to replace the Blu-ray. It just has to go through a number of licencing issues, testing and such before it enters the market. My point was that your "latest" technology was invented years earlier and someone in a lab somewhere is hard at work with a goal to make it obsolete.

[–] vonkant15 12 years ago

Yep that's how we did it.

[–] duramatters 11 years ago

this is a comedy, it is slightly exaggerated... only slightly/ the "boom box" was popular in the 70's and 80', even as the Walkman caught on, some people opted for bigger is better. and some people did carry these big boxes on their shoulder up near their ear.

[–] YouKnowMyName68 10 years ago

Depends on what area you're asking. In northern California, specifically, San Francisco, in the late 70s, I never saw teenagers with big radios.

"You know, my name..."

[–] Devans00 10 years ago

Yes.

As far back as around World War 1, people listened to radios with individual headsets. Less portable than transistor radios or Walkmans but it was done.

No two persons ever watch the same movie.

[–] yourchuckbuddy 10 years ago

yes, and this movie ruled. for us anyway

[–] pugsley_lover27 9 years ago

I had a cassette player exactly like the one Riff Randall had. I used to carry it around and listen to it. I graduated in 1981. I didn't have a walkman until like 83' or 84'.