I REMEMBER MONO

Someday I'd like to figure out the electronics business. I started out listening to records, then got interested in the machines I needed to play them, that led to the realization that the plastic metal mass media hardware was as important as Hendrix's guitar licks and Joplin's vocals. More important — without the hardware they'd probably still be alive. Electric magic boxes have to do with so many past events: the radio in my room and in my car and the first time I heard Venus In Blue Jeans; the tape recorder and microphone into which Jimmy Clanton sang; my first TV set and my first collective experience — The Beatles on Ed Sullivan; the TV camera that watched Oswald shoot Ruby. Round and round it goes. I wonder what it would have been like not to have' been there for the first step on the Moon.