When I was a teen, back in the 80s, I had not one, but two, count 'em, two bigass boomboxes. The first one, a SANYO, lasted a few years and then fell apart. But the second, man that second was pure gold. And it went with me pretty much everywhere. It was a Panasonic RX-CW50, with detachable speakers and an EQ and everything. I had the outside covered in stickers of all kinds, from skateboard logos to underground band logos, to those "itallian!" stickers I was supposed to be putting on the boxes when I made the sandwiches at my weekend burger job.

Lovely foto:
http://i50.tinypic.com/6ykz9d.jpg

Unfortunately, after many years of loyal service, I did a dumb thing. I took it to work in one of my many and varied jobs, and on the day I was eventually fired (for not kissing up to the boss's toady) I was so bent out of shape that I just plain forgot it. It remained behind, in the back print room at a place called Today's Graphics, in Philly PA. Which is no longer there, as I later went back to check.

Anyway, the point of all this is, over the lifespan of both boomboxes, I had cassette tapes. And I still have almost all of them. Two big bins full. My magnetic vault. Some of the tapes are a bit cracked. I have one on the desk here in front of me with half of one side missing. But it still plays.

And what's on them? well apart from the store-bought ones, the rest of them are like unto an audio collage of what was coming out of my boombox at the time. Songs, snippets of DJ banter, and even the occasional commercial fragment. And the station? Phiily's home for Hot Hits, 98-Now, WCAU FM. The station where the Hot Hits programming phenomena came into its own:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Hits

As some of you folks know, I've been taking on a somewhat unending project in my spare hours - cataloging my mp3 collection. I've been working on collecting not just the albums of my youth, but also cataloging the singles from them as well (with cover/label art, not an easy feat) and as I've been going through these old cassettes to list the songs on them, I've been surprised by how few of these singles I actually have. I have some of the songs as part of an album, but a good majority of them I didn't have at all.

So now I've given myself a new quest. To catalog the singles on these old cassettes, and build myself the ultimate kickass 80's hot hits collection. Everything I used to listen to on the radio.

And thanks to modern technology, I'll be able to carry all of them around in a pocket, on my ipod. My big bin of busted dusty cassettes is gaining a new lease on life.

Here's a sample of the stuff I've found on the cassettes:

nena - 99 red balloons
eddy grant - electric avenue
rockwell - someone's watching me
journey - only the young
matthew wilder - break my stride
lionel richie - running with the night
duran duran - union of the snake
julian lennon - too late for goodbyes
glen frey - the heat is on

Heh, now if only I could find a good clean collection of the 98-Now call-sign jingles to play between the tracks.

EDIT:
Found a foto of the SANYO boombox, too:
http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/.....19569e899f.jpg