Instead, we brought a boombox outside the restaurant, played Prince music, and hung out socially distanced. ’till 10:00 p.m., at our favorite restaurant in Brooklyn. Every year, a good friend of mine and I do a Prince birthday brunch where we play Prince from 12:00 p.m. I brought one to a protest earlier this year. SC: I bring the radios to picnics, birthday parties, and stoop sales. I believe in using the things and not just staring at them. I am a collector of different things, vinyl included. Having them all stacked up on top of each other made it really difficult to grab the one on the bottom.ĭ: I like to hear that. I like to use the radios pull one out and bring it somewhere. It looked really great, but I recently took them all down and started building custom shelves. I had stacked them all on top of each other to the point where they’re at least seven or eight feet. My most recent solution was creating a wall of radios in a corner of my living room. SC: They do take up a lot of room, and it’s hard living in New York finding storage solutions for big piece of vintage audio equipment. There has been interest in redesigning or rereleasing some models, but nothing I’ve seen mimics or is as good as the designs that were released in the ’80s. My oldest is probably 1978, and my most recent one is maybe 1986 or ’87. SC: Most of the ones I have are pretty old. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to have it.ĭ: Is that a vintage piece? Are boomboxes still being made much? I love the design, the big chromed switches and speakers, and the electric light VU meters that bounce to the beat. All things that are kind of audio-related I have an interest in, and it also looked really amazing. SC: I’ve always been interested in audio equipment. Over 20 years, it developed into a pretty big collection.ĭ: What made you take that first one home? I got a very good one, one of the biggest ever made - a Conian C-100F. One of the benefits of living in New York is that people don’t bring a lot of things to thrift stores. I didn’t really get into the big boombox world until I moved to New York in 2000.
I got my own, but it was just a single speaker Magnavox. That was one of my first boombox experiences, because my brother got a boombox in 1984 and would constantly play the Purple Rain cassette. Prince was definitely one of the big hometown heroes and big influences. I was into from a performing aspect, but also from a listening aspect. I switched to saxophone because I found it to be more interesting.
#IN YOUR EYES SAY ANYTHING BOOMBOX SCENE PROFESSIONAL#
My brother went on to be a bit of a prodigy and a professional for his early adult life. My brother and I - people will laugh at this - but we were pretty avid recorder players. Scott Campbell: My family is pretty musical. So, we figured we’d give Campbell a call to hear more about his boombox beauties, where he finds them, and how he keeps them in working order.ĭiscogs: When did you first get really into music and when did you get your first boombox? Discogs posted it to Instagram, and it got the whole community talking. The gritty concrete and flashy speakers set a perfect NYC scene, like something ripped out of an ’80s movie. He stacked 14 of the chromed-out classics on his stoop during a move. They’re a good thing.”Ī picture of Campbell’s boomboxes recently made the rounds online.
They sound great, and they bring me happiness. “I know that might sound kind of cheesy, but I just love staring at them for a few minutes every day. “The reason why I set up that wall the way I did, I literally just put it across from my couch so I could just sit there and look at them,” he laughs. What really sets Campbell apart, though, is his collection of vintage boomboxes, of which he has about 30 taking up a whole wall of his apartment and then some. He’s an avid collector with a handful of instruments and more than 3,000 vinyl LPs. He studied music in college, and whenever his friends from the New Orleans jazz outfit Mama Digdown’s Brass Band come to town, he’ll still get on stage and play the sax. His company handles the annual World Trade Center 9/11 memorial, installing two lights that shoot into the sky where the Twin Towers once stood. He’s 45, living in Brooklyn, and working as an event producer.
Though he grew up in Minneapolis, Scott Campbell is a pretty classic New Yorker.
0 kommentar(er)
