I want my MTV! I miss the thrills of the early New Wave era

I think spent more money on the songs of the early 80s than at any other time. At the age of 18 i bought my first HiFi with money that I had earned. I remember it well. £850 , or £2,500 or more in today money. I still have it, and it still sounds better than most of the stuff on the market now.

 
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Magna-Carta said:
I think spent more money on the songs of the early 80s than at any other time. At the age of 18 i bought my first HiFi with money that I had earned. I remember it well. £850 , or £2,500 or more in today money. I still have it, and it still sounds better than most of the stuff on the market now.

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I really empathize.

My mom gifted me a combo turntable radio and dual cassette deck when I was around 14.
When it eventually wore out I took it to Sears repair dept.
A month latter, got a postcard to come pick it up.
The repair bill was more than it cost to buy brand new and only one part had been replaced~!!
I did not express my anger, I just silently walked away without paying.
Who knows what eventually happened to that beloved device.

Thus was born a lifelong hatred of the idea that it should cost more to maintain things than to just
put them in a landfill and buy new stuff imported from Japan or Taiwan. (China did not dominate imports yet)

When I finally got my first apt, I desperately wanted a color TV and could not afford one. I remembered that my older brother had built his guitar amplifier when he was a teen, from a kit ordered out of a catalog. I mailed away for a catalog, and yes they had "build it yourself" TV kits, for more than DOUBLE the cost of buying a tv in a store!

Why is skilled labor so expensive in America and so cheap everywhere else? I've never understood.
Millions for mandatory recycling, but where is the funding to teach kids how to repair things?

Sting wrote a song line , "When the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around"

As a teen, unable to afford to buy LPs or tapes, I would record directly off the radio onto tape, technically illegal.
In the recessions of the 1980s this was so common that a band made a song based on the practice:


As an alienated teen, I lived in rural NH, far from the culture center of Boston Massachusetts, but with some work I could tune in WBCN or WCOZ.
WBCN in particular was among the first to play Punk and New Wave music. Duane and Oedipus disk jockey gods.

Like many broke rural 1980s teens I drove to the only mall and walked around. I saved up and bought a huge rectangular boom box, and I still remember the immense feeling of power walking through stores, hijacking the crummy overhead Muazk with my boom box.
 
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