Perhaps the Milton Glaser cover to this sampler album provides an "ancient Heath Robinson arrangement"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RockMachineTurnsYouOn.jpg

to hang a radio cassette player off the handle bars of my BMX so I could listen to Public Enemy and NWA while cycling around the mean streets of Compton...sorry I mean Cullompton in Devon.

When I graduated to skateboarding at the age of 13 it sat in the truck loading bay of Somerfield playing the same tunes while we would try to learn how to do ollies.

Puts kids with mobile phones playing tinny music out loud on buses into persepective. This thing was *really* loud - we must have been relaly annoying, what with the sweary music and all

There was a horrible few years just before the Walkman/personal stereo was invented when the ghetto blaster was all the rage. This meant everyone was subjected to loud, atrocious music in public. Well, guess what - those days are back, via inconsiderate twats playing music on mobile phone/iPhone speakers loudly. Trips on public transport are hell. There's always someone thinking the whole train/plane/bus wants to hear their choice in music. We don't.

which I'm looking to get rid of. It has a whole section devoted to Hi Fi with some hilariously large ghetto blasters and looking at which fine object was the best Walkman or equivalent. They looked like something from another time and in reality they probably are now museum pieces.

Of strapping a transistor radio to my bike handlebars while cycling from Lewisham to Charlton (for band practice) so that I could hear the first radio play of Quadrophenia. Damned good it was too.

Someone's put an iPod dock in an 80's style ghetto blaster

http://gizmodo.com/341871/legendary-lasonic-i931-ipod-dock-ghetto-blaste...

A mate of mine carried one round with him in the summer of 1984, to impress the girls I think. I won't tell you the songs that he used to play, but it's everything the 80's were bad for.

To an extent, unbelievably, it was a hit with the girls and it was whilst we were in one of the rougher areas of Barnsley trying to impress some girls that a bunch of local hard nuts decided enough was enough and chased us out of town, so to speak. Maybe it was the threat of the impending pasting that inspired him, but my mate didn't let the weight of the ghetto blaster stop him from running as fast as the rest of us. I fear that if I had been carrying it though I would have received a beating and we would have parted company with the mobile entertainment. Either that or I would have simply offered it up as a gift to ensure safe passage, doing all of us a favour in the process.

one of the modules included lectures on cassette
tape, necessitating the provision of very ropey players. Came in handy for the compilation tape playbacks after hours in the bar.

of remembering the in car entertainment in my opel manta circa 86. Huge Philips soweto suitcase on the back seat powered by the fag lighter powering 2 shagged bose 301s in the boot. Wham, u2 & style council blaring out. They were all boycotting sa at the time! Shiver!

was for several years the extent of my music playing capacity, both portable and non-portable

I ever recorded was with a band called Kinky Machine and I brought one of those to record it with a proper mic plugged in. They thought this was really funny. I've still got it and it still does the job wheras I've probably gone through 3 dictaphones in the last 5 years.

Yeah I had one of those babies (in spt's posting above) too - my first car only had a car radio so the mono portable cassette player (also an essential accessory for the ZX Spectrum) provided recorded audio joy on long journeys - sitting on the front seat or lap of passenger. Required 4 D cells (or was it 6?)

Then there was the horror of the portable CD player - I got one in 1995 that was sold as an in car player: no headphones, cigarette lighter power plug and a cassette-shaped object to output to the car stereo. It had a memory to store enough music to get over a bump or two but it never really worked properly. I quickly went back to taping CDs for in-car enjoyment!

I gave up with portable music until 2 yrs ago when I finally got an iPod Nano. And cars now have headphone compatible input sockets too. Hopefully soon we'll have next track/prev track buttons on the steering wheel that work with iPods as a standard feature.

the top 40 from my portable radio onto my big sister's tape recorder on a Sunday evening. Inevitably, usually through my favourite chart hit (probably something by Adam & The Ants) my mum would burst into my room and ask, in a very loud voice, if I had got my socks and pants ready for school the next morning, thereby ruining my recording. I remember recording the Kenny Everett Television Show too, by holding the tape recorder next to the TV speaker.

Look how far we've come, eh?