Here’s the Sanyo M9970, my favorite (and by far the best-performing!) of the half-dozen boomboxes I’ve owned since the mid-’70s!
It was purchased on 28th August 1980 for $149.00, at the Woolworth’s in my hometown of Havre, Montana, per my mom Elaine’s meticulous notations in the owner’s manual.
Such an incredible addition to my senior year in high school, and my salvation during the final month of an awful first half of my freshman year at Brown (largely induced by a supremely awful, borderline-sociopathic, roommate, who—among other things—listened to NOTHING but The Beatles or ex-Beatles’ solo LPs)!
The M9970 had the smoothest/most inaudible Pause function I’ve ever encountered in such a device, a very effective VU/tuning meter, an impressively sensitive stereo condenser mic set-up, a chrome/normal tape selection switch, an ingenious pair of coaxial speakers which could achieve near-deafening volume with clarity, and the oft-mindblowing “Stereo Wide” setting, which tended to foreground lead guitar in ways that transformed The Yardbirds, Jimi Hendrix, Iggy and the Stooges, The Velvet Underground’s “I Heard Her Call My Name”, and The Clash’s “Complete Control” into gloriously head-shearing treble fests!
I used it to make a number of the relatively few “air check” recordings that still exist from the early years (1979-82) of Northern Montana College’s KNOG (now KNMC) 90.1 FM in Havre.
It also made astonishingly good recordings at gigs or for living room recording sessions, many of which I’m still enjoying almost FORTY years later. A few of those may appear later this year as part of an official double-album compilation devoted to Montana Punk, Postpunk, New Wave, and Hardcore from 1978-1990! (More on that wonderful project as its release approaches….)
I used one such tape in 2015, as the climax of a presentation I made at the annual EMP (Experience Music Project) Pop Music Conference, held at Paul Allen’s Frank Gehry-designed monster, now called The Museum of Popular Culture (aka MoPOP) here in Seattle!
Sadly, I took an icy spill during a Xmas 1982 outing in the mountains with my forester father Hank, and the tape section of the Sanyo was never quite the same, though I continued to use its excellent AM/FM radio for decades afterwards!
Though currently dis-used, it occupies a position of honor in my garage, and is the SOLE piece of electronic equipment I still own that predates 1985.
It’s right there at eye-level, every time I pull my car into or out of its parking spot, and—if it ever came to it—I’d likely dispose of EVERY OTHER high-priced component I own before I’d let the M9970 slip outta my hands!
Quite literally, it’s HISTORY, as Comsat Angels once put it.
By the by, when I ruminate upon how most folks listen to music these days—via shite earbuds, crappy plastic computer speakers, or too-pricey/so-called “premium” headphones attached to their smart phones, laptops, or other streaming devices—I’m both startled and saddened to recall how much more SUBSTANTIAL this rather modest, decidedly non-high fidelity component sounded during its aural heyday.
Mere “convenience” and “portability” are of some concern of course, just as they were way back in 1980, which is how devices like my old Sanyo M9970 came to be both so well-engineered and so popular.
But there’s nothing quite like POWERFUL MUSIC pouring out of a sufficiently-robust machine INTO THE AIR around us!
Here’s to those who remember when….
