The Boombox Project

October 12, 2010 5:17 AM

Photographer Lyle Owerko's "The Boombox Project" is a visual timeline of the era of the boombox.

Via Core77. A nice collection of links regarding "The Boombox Project" can be found in this post of theirs.

Please note: owerko.com is - in execution - a quite typical photography site; Adobe Flash heavy and confusing when it comes to some aspects of the navigation.

posted by soundofsuburbia (16 comments total)

I have that Owerko boombox gelaskin on my macbook pro and it's the bomb. er...the boom. Anyway, it's really great.
posted by mcstayinskool at 5:40 AM on October 12, 2010

That is, this gelaskin.

Also, boombox #14 in that slideshow on his site was the object of almost two years of gadget lust in my 1980s teenage years. I never did get that wall of sound double cassette deck beast from Sharp, but DAMN does it still look cool.
posted by mcstayinskool at 5:43 AM on October 12, 2010

"The Boombox Project" (a book and a gallery show) may include a visual timeline, but the sample pictures linked here aren't actually on a timeline, are they? I don't see any dates or any other indication that the pictures are in chronological order.
posted by pracowity at 6:20 AM on October 12, 2010

Funny, I was just thinking about boom boxes a couple of weeks ago. Headphones are more civilized and polite, naturally, but boom boxes give you the opportunity to hear music you might not have heard before in a public setting and (more importantly) offered-up the opportunity for completely improvisational dance-attacks.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 6:30 AM on October 12, 2010

I love it. See also The Boombox Museum.
posted by exogenous at 7:31 AM on October 12, 2010

Boombox (ft. Julian Casablanca), by The Lonely Island. (NSFW)
posted by WalterMitty at 7:31 AM on October 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

Indeed. A boombox can change the world.
posted by maryr at 7:43 AM on October 12, 2010

Are these all from outside the US? Most of them have shortwave. I never saw a boombox that could receive shortwave. My nerdy self would have loved to have one with shortwave.

(I can just imagine some guy on a California beach blasting BBC radio).
posted by eye of newt at 8:15 AM on October 12, 2010

Would it be frowned upon to de-flash these images and host them somewhere for MeFite use? I've already done step 1.
posted by codacorolla at 8:22 AM on October 12, 2010

Eh, looking at the copyright section of the site tells me that the answer is probably "no". Not like it's terribly hard to do yourself, anyway.
posted by codacorolla at 8:59 AM on October 12, 2010

Are these all from outside the US? Most of them have shortwave.

My dad had one with shortwave, bought in the late '70s at, I believe, Sears in Fargo ND; I messed around with it and put stickers on my globe of the various contries I could pick up.
posted by AzraelBrown at 9:03 AM on October 12, 2010

Are these all from outside the US? Most of them have shortwave. I never saw a boombox that could receive shortwave. My nerdy self would have loved to have one with shortwave.

I had a pretty good boombox from Sharp that had shortwave. It was my main music source for several years when I first moved out. It was actually pretty good, and looked much cooler than anything in this photo-essay. I didn't use that feature much, but I did hear a numbers station once. :)
posted by Malor at 9:17 AM on October 12, 2010

This era was also the apex of the "D" battery. Nothing worse than the sound of a cassette slowing down as the batteries die. It meant you were stuck with the radio or, even worse, being tethered to a wall outlet until you could come up with the cash for 8 more D-cells.

Now it's rare to even hear music outdoors. Everyone's got headphones.
posted by bgrebs at 10:17 AM on October 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

You don't have those annoying fuckers who play their cell phones like tinny little transistor radios?
posted by pracowity at 11:02 AM on October 12, 2010

Sweet. But I'm disappointed not to see any pictures of some guy carrying one on his shoulder.
posted by scratch at 4:35 PM on October 12, 2010

See also The Boombox Museum.

And then there's my hometown's Boombox Parade.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:24 PM on October 12, 2010