Filed under: Audio A | Tags: audio, audio engineering, boombox, disco, discolite, retro
A new display at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art will be turning eyes, and ears. Rewind Remix Replay: Design, Music & Everyday Experience is an exhibit celebrating the “material culture of music.” The display features everything from the classic Fender Stratocaster guitar to the iconic iPod. There’s even a whole section devoted to the humble boombox.
The boombox had its own subculture, and a style meant to attract attention. Sadly, bling was many times more important than sound quality. How loud more important than how good. Collector and photographer Lyle Owerko, who calls them “gargantuan conglomerations of electronics, lights and chrome-plated gadgetry,” thinks of them as “symbols of rebellion.” According to the museum, boomboxes were “designed deliberately to be as large and flashy as possible. They featured imposing speaker grills, large buttons and flashing lights and they broadcast big sounds. Highly conspicuous aurally and visually, they were effective as mechanisms of public display. The DiscoLite featured in this exhibition, for example, is a monolithic object whose flashing colored lights draw almost as much attention to its visual quality as its sound. The sounds of hip-hop and rap, the energy of break dancing, the writing of graffiti, Adidas shoes, cassette tapes, turntables and more all served as the signifying props of a unique aesthetic expression.”
So, what audio systems do you have that are museum quality? –Leslie Shapiro
