It was the sound of our youth. It was the soundtrack of our lives. It wasn’t pristine music piped into our brains through the ear buds of an ipod. It wasn’t overpowered by the exaggerated basso profundo of a passing sedan. It wasn’t satellite radio or HD radio and was far from crystal clear but, oh, the glorious sounds we heard.
The source of music in the fifties and sixties obviously wasn’t ipods. It was transistor radios and they were just as ubiquitous. They were rectangular hunks of plastic that fit into the palm of your hand...barely. They could slide into your shirt pocket. Well, okay, stuff into your shirt pocket. Maybe. If you were lucky. They weren’t powered by pill-sized cadmium batteries and microchips. No. The magic of their science was transistors, resistors, capacitors and a chunky 9 volt battery.
There wasn’t much to manipulate on transistor radios. Until the 1970’s there was no AM-FM toggle. FM wavelength hadn’t yet been perfected. There was no Stereo toggle. Stereo was only for home sound systems and indicated state-of-the-art design. There was no ultra-bass. There was no high end or low end at all. Just a metallic, nasal sound reproduction. There were two knobs, off-on/Volume and tuning (manual tuning, no preprogrammed preset). Cranked to the max those babies could pump out a room-shaking 3 watts of audio!
Just like today’s ipods our transistor radios went everywhere with us and could be found just about anywhere - the back seat of the car; the front porch; the back porch; under the Christmas tree; the community swimming pool; the beach at Erie. There were places where they were forbidden but where we still took them nonetheless - Church; the school bus; the library. They would nestle next to your ear, barely audible and defiant.
There were various methods of listening to a transistor radio. There was the bulky prototype of the ear-bud that could be stuffed into one ear canal. (I once “Frankensteined” two earplugs together to simulate stereo sound.) There was the method of holding it directly in front of you, staring at the box and visualizing the performers - an imaginary MTV.
The best way to listen to a transistor radio, and the method I utilized and highly recommend, is right up to your ear, flesh to plastic, eardrum to 1 1/2 inch speaker.
And sweet Mother of Music, the sounds that came out of those cheap collections of knobs and diodes - Motown, The Beatles, The Mamas and the Papas, Elvis, The Association, Three Dog Night, The Beach Boys. It was endless hours of the sweetest music ever recorded. It wasn't our parents’. It’s not our kids’. It’s our sound - sublime static.
I miss those days - Sitting on the front porch of 106 Homer Place in the middle of a never-ending summer under the shade of the massive maple tree. In one hand was my transistor radio propped up to my ear. In the other hand was a sweating glass of my mother’s home-made iced tea. I listened to Brian Wilson ruminate about how nice it would be to have the independence of adulthood. Yeah, Brian, I nodded my head in agreement back then. But the carefree endless summers of our youth still kindle the fondest memories.
