Panasonic Boom

I spent the summer of 1993 working at Oklahoma Graphics as a stacker. I have gone on the record many times to say that it was the most miserable job I ever had. I stood on concrete for 12 hours a day, 3 days a week, stacking books. I made $6.67/hour the first three days of the week, and if someone took vacation, I’d work the other half of the week too at time and a half. I had moved back home that summer and, with minimal bills or financial obligations, I found myself for the first time in my life with an abundance of disposable income.

I bought my first real (name brand) electric guitar that summer. I bought a ton of CDs. I bought a giant pair of speakers. I also bought this Panasonic 5-disc CD changer.

It’s the big black box on top. I bought the VCR below it that same summer.

I got my first CD boombox around 1991, but I didn’t fully make the transition from cassettes to CDs until 1993. In the summer of 1993 my car got broken into and 60 of my best cassette tapes (along with a ton of audio gear) got stolen. I replaced the stolen cassettes with CDs, and thus my CD collection was born.

I built my first component stereo system that same summer. I bought the speakers (two giant wooden boxes with 15″ subwoofers) on closeout from Circuit City, and the tuner from a fellow pizza delivery driver. A couple of weeks later, I picked up this 5-disc CD changer and added it to the stack.

For a 1993 model, this unit has some interesting options. For example, not only can you play songs in random order from a single disc — you can play random songs from all five CDs. It also has a “spiral mode”, which plays all the track ones from each inserted CD, then the second track from each CD, and so on. Apparently in the 1990s, CD manufacturers wanted to drive home the point that CDs weren’t analog, and songs could be listened to in any desired order. Seems silly in today’s mp3-based world, but back then it was a novel concept.

I got married in August of 1995. Susan and I were so broke that we decided to provide the after party entertainment ourselves. There was no DJ — it was just me, playing my own CDs. I started the night by loading five CDs into the changer, programming in five songs, and then mingling with guests. When the fifth song started I knew it was time to run back to the CD changer, pop in four more CDs, and program in four more songs. This was before I had access to a CD burner, so burning a “mix CD” was out of the question.

Like many of the other electronic gadgets I’ve mentioned over the past month, this CD changer has been “along for the ride” with me. It was a part of our living room entertainment center for many years.

It takes a while after moving into a new house to figure out how things are going to work, so when we bought our current home back in 2002, I didn’t know if the home stereo was going to go downstairs in the living room or upstairs in the den. Eventually I put together two home stereo systems, and purchased a second CD changer for the upstairs system. It’s similar to the original one I bought, except it’s silver and it also plays mp3s off of CD-R discs.

Around that same time I quit listening to CDs at home, or at least on my home stereo. I’d listen to CDs in the car, but any disc that made its way into my house was quickly converted into mp3s and filed away. I kept the physical discs displayed on the wall like musical trophies, but I quit listening to them at home.

Today, my entire music collection is in mp3 format. If I wanted to listen to something upstairs, I’d stream it through my PlayStation 3. Downstairs, I have a computer hooked up to my television. In the bedroom, it’s Boxee. Both of my CD changers have been collecting dust out in the garage for years. About a year ago, I boxed up all my CDs and put them out in the garage, too.

I decided to keep the newer of the two, the silver one that plays CDs and mp3-CD-R discs, just in case Mason wants to dink around with one or a need for one pops up. This is one of those things that’s hard to part with on an emotional level, but makes total sense on a logical level. The thing’s been out in the garage for almost a decade collecting dust; it’s time to pass it along to someone else.