70' Stylophone pocket synthesizser caused trauma to dogs...and TV's!

My dad had one of these 'gadgets', and so did David Bowie, as heard on the classic single Space Oddity (1969), Kraftwerk also fiddled about with this pioneering electronic contraption, as did Erasure, amongst others. I know Rolf Harris definitely had one, well he did when he was flogging it on TV. I suspect however, he preferred his beloved didgeridoo to a small organ any day! You played it using a stylus, or 'pen' and tapped or dragged it over the keys to make a sound...and what a sound. Can't describe it really apart from irritating! My dad loved it though and so did I. Local dogs didn't however and neither did the TV! Many happy hours were spent polluting the air with 'noise'. Dogs would bark outside and the TV would suffer interference! Happy days.

My dad also had a tape recorder, the type with two large spools, which looked like it would be at home in some mad scientists lab or mission control for the Apollo 11 moon landing. He had it for years and the sound quality was brilliant. I think it was a Philips or Marconi, and it must of been expensive at the time. I used it to record Jean Michel Jarre's ambient synthpop classic Oxegene and played it after one of my dad's LP's had finished on the Radiogram/music centre. Nat king Cole followed by Oxegene - now there's a scenario! didn't go down well at all... 'turn that rubbish down Ian, for god's sake'. Oxegene rubbish - pretty strong statement, don't you think?

My uncle's Vauxhall Ventora had an 8 track stereo, which was the gadget to have back in the 70's as far as I was concerned. I was car daft and this was for me the ultimate accessory. The music cartridge was huge, about the size of a paperback book almost, but the sound quality was superb. I think it was a Motorola and everybody in his street was jelous when he turned into his cul-de-sac, window down, elbow sticking out and blasting James Last or Klaus Wunderlich's Hammond organ at full volume! Having said that, he did have Tom Jones, The Beach Boys and Engelburt Humperdinck in his glovebox (those Vauxhalls had big gloveboxes!) I used to sit in his car and drain the battery listening to What's New Pussycat?, Surfin' USA and Release me etc. Never really got into James Last or the aforementioned German organist for some reason! Who'd of thought then, that today you can have thousands of tracks on a tiny memory stick to plug into your car hi-fi? Yes it's very convenient to have all that music at your disposal, but there was a quality and a physical presence (if that's the right phrase) especially with an LP. You could touch, read, look at the artwork, and love your LP, cassette, and possibly cartridge, but can you love your memory stick or music downloads?