I’ve always had a moody relationship with music, meaning when you ask me what kind of music I like, I’ll tell you it depends on what mood I’m in (another post is needed to explain that). When it comes to music players, though, I’m of the smaller is better, smallest is best school.

Back about the time we moved from our trailer to our house in the Golden Meadows subdivision, my father bought what, for the time, was a pretty impressive stereo system–complete with a turntable and a cassette player. Oddly, despite the impressive speakers, one of his favorite records was a master direct-to-disc recording of a thunderstorm that he mostly used to make the unsuspecting think it was raining outside. (I still don’t get that, by the way. It’s like selling plasma TVs by showing fields of flowers–who the hell cares about fields of flowers enough to watch them on TV?)

Despite the impressiveness of the stereo, I quickly found that I was not a big fan of records or cassettes. By this I mean, although I would eventually buy a few records and quite a few cassettes, I was always bothered by the 80-20 rule of albums: 20% of the songs were good, 80% were crap. This meant I wore out cassettes playing and rewinding the same songs over and over. I’m also pretty sure I remember jamming the buttons on the stereo a couple times. Then there was the need to constantly flip the record and/or LP to hear the other side.

A large stereo also meant that I was subject to the whims of my parents’ taste in music and their shocking lack of interest in mine.

When I got my first Sony Walkman, I was immediately smitten by the portability of it. I liked the ability to carry it around and to block out the radio dead zone in Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas when we traveled to Salina. There was still the 80-20 problem, though, and was pretty heavy in the pocket.

I had a few boomboxes along the way, too, but I didn’t enjoy just turning on music and going about my daily tasks (or doing my best to avoid going about my daily tasks). Even a 90 minute mix tape required more attention than I liked giving music, especially if I wasn’t in the mood for some of the songs.

Eventually, I moved on to smaller and smaller players and even, for a brief time after I got to Japan, got a Sony Discman that was just barely larger than the size of a disc. Unfortunately, it was also too heavy and it had a more expensive version of the 80-20 rule. I eventually gave it away.

My favorite player, for a while, was the Sony MD Walkman. For lots of complicated reasons, mini-discs never caught on in the USA but I enjoyed it. The player I had could have been hidden in a pack of cigarettes and I couldn’t feel it in my pocket when I was carrying it in a jacket. Unfortunately, the MD Walkman died and Sony was like “Well, we could fix it, but buying a new one and an ounce of gold would be cheaper”.

Being me, I went without any kind of portable music for a while. During that time the digital music player revolution happened and after a brief stint with an iRiver, I finally splurged for  second generation iPod touch. This, finally, met all my insane needs for music:

1–I could buy the 20% and ignore the 80%.
2–The player was light and easy to carry.
3–It was easy to swap out music as my moods changed.

I think it’s fair to say I’ve bought more music since I got the iPod than I did in all the years before. However, even now, I’m moody about music and I spend most of my time listening to podcasts.