Uploaded November 2013 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
Some 33 or 34 years ago I was ushered to mum's bedroom to be shown the sweet gift she was giving my (now late) brother.
I really wasn't into music at the time so I wasn't all that jealous and he did let me use it whenever I could scrounge up a cassette to record on - ironically the one song I most remember recording was an extended remix of Gloria Gaynor's 'I Will Survive'. He was into taping music and used his boombox pretty much to the death...
...of the machine - he lasted maybe a decade or so longer before mental issues arising from the brutal chemotherapy treatments he was obliged to endure from the mid-70s to the mid-80s. Taping music was his relief and probably a precursor to the obsessive-compulsive disorder that finally drove him to the banks of the river 19 years ago this month...
To be fair and balanced, nobody is sure if he jumped, fell or was pushed in. He had just withdrawn money from the bank and often walked along the riverbank to get to dad's house. He had also just checked out of the psychiatric center 'against medical device' - after leaving a message on mum's answering machine looking to bum a ride. Maybe a month later we got a call from the city detective saying he was missing.
He eventually turned up with the Spring thaw - the same week the management at his apartment complex chucked all his personal possessions into the dumpster. I saved a few bags of his recorded cassettes but all the music he'd bought over the years was gone. A Spanish-speaking fellow had claimed a (Sanyo?) boombox he'd bought in the 80s while I was rooting through the pile. Don't know the language so I couldn't take it from him.
Funny enough, my brother had taken such a liking to this bit of Latin music played on Seseme Street that he went and recorded it. Wish I could remember which boombox he used...
To commemorate his love of music recording I brought up one of the tapes of his I'd saved - some radio recording from the mid-80s. Don't know the song on it as I can't make out his writing and I'm not sure the tape is in the right case. Also put on a bit of my 'Boombox Beats' tape - that song is 'Beatbox Rocker' by Westbam.
Some 33 or 34 years ago I was ushered to mum's bedroom to be shown the sweet gift she was giving my (now late) brother.
I really wasn't into music at the time so I wasn't all that jealous and he did let me use it whenever I could scrounge up a cassette to record on - ironically the one song I most remember recording was an extended remix of Gloria Gaynor's 'I Will Survive'. He was into taping music and used his boombox pretty much to the death...
...of the machine - he lasted maybe a decade or so longer before mental issues arising from the brutal chemotherapy treatments he was obliged to endure from the mid-70s to the mid-80s. Taping music was his relief and probably a precursor to the obsessive-compulsive disorder that finally drove him to the banks of the river 19 years ago this month...
To be fair and balanced, nobody is sure if he jumped, fell or was pushed in. He had just withdrawn money from the bank and often walked along the riverbank to get to dad's house. He had also just checked out of the psychiatric center 'against medical device' - after leaving a message on mum's answering machine looking to bum a ride. Maybe a month later we got a call from the city detective saying he was missing.
He eventually turned up with the Spring thaw - the same week the management at his apartment complex chucked all his personal possessions into the dumpster. I saved a few bags of his recorded cassettes but all the music he'd bought over the years was gone. A Spanish-speaking fellow had claimed a (Sanyo?) boombox he'd bought in the 80s while I was rooting through the pile. Don't know the language so I couldn't take it from him.
Funny enough, my brother had taken such a liking to this bit of Latin music played on Seseme Street that he went and recorded it. Wish I could remember which boombox he used...
To commemorate his love of music recording I brought up one of the tapes of his I'd saved - some radio recording from the mid-80s. Don't know the song on it as I can't make out his writing and I'm not sure the tape is in the right case. Also put on a bit of my 'Boombox Beats' tape - that song is 'Beatbox Rocker' by Westbam.
