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In this episode of The Secondhand Podcast, Bert Jerred talks about vintage electronic keyboards. When, how, and why did they come about? How do they represent cultural change in the realm of music-making?

In a 2010 article in Music Trades called, “A Century of Premature Eulogies for the Piano,” I read about the introduction of the portable electronic keyboard and what its successes meant for the traditional piano industry. We’re talking about Casio – and soon thereafter, Yamaha – in the year 1980. Traditionalists’ responses tended toward the morose: that the eclipsing of one music-making technology by another heralded the end of an era.

Certainly, the piano as we know it holds the musician and listener alike with a firm, emotional grip. Of all the voices and features of my ’07 “Portatone” (acquired for $5 at a local thrift store, thank you very much!), the piano alone plays from high-resolution stereo samples, versus generated, simulated tones.

A similar retrospective, “Mozart Meets the Microchip,” written in ’88 by Robert Scott, provides a more enthusiastic survey of what had been called a digital revolution – alongside the rise of video games and personal computers. Again, the sudden popularity of electronic keyboards, synthesizers, and drum machines, catalyzes a form of culture-shock. In fact, many of the articles I’ve read on the subject present, alongside the consumer shake-up, anxious ambivalence about the relationships between instrument choice, performance context, and the cultural sanctity of musical traditions.

The artifacts featured in this episode are two Yamaha “PortaSound” keyboards from the 1980s – one purchased (again) at my local thrift store, the other rescued from a dumpster. In order to understand their significance and value, I read about (and, personally, recalled) their arrival; I also looked into the Yamaha backstory with a focus on the company’s musical instruments, which – in the U.S., where I live – goes back to the 1960s. The funny thing is, these devices are, for me, nostalgic the ways pianos were for others in the pre-portable days.

More current analyses, like Malcolm Doak’s 2017 article in emusician.com, entitled, “Are Mini-Keys a Deal Breaker?,” offer a fascinatingly detaile

All week, I’d been teaching about information – how to find it, how to evaluate it, how to use it. So, for this secondhand quest, I went out looking for things related to information systems and I found it in the form of Mid-20th Century Design. Specifically, I found two cool records and three engrossing books at one of my favorite thrift stores in the suburbs of Syracuse – and one I like, specifically, for their book selection. I’ve been coming here for years, and they really keep the inventory moving. For junk enthusiasts like me, this keeps the game alive and suspenseful.

Audio Clip: El Cumbanchero, written by Rafael Hernández Marín and recorded by Charles Magnante for Command Records in 1964. Cover art by George Giusti.

In my last episode, I was preoccupied with stories of justice and reinvention. I looked into The Lego Group’s complex system of corporate governance, the Android ecosystem as an example of clever and determined re-purposing, and a political memoir, which served as a lens through which I could re-evaluate the dynamics of current events. For this episode, the workday spillover is about information systems. The question I am asking myself is this: In what ways might information systems influence our understanding of cultural priorities? Is this influence overt, or implicit? And, finally, how might a few semi-random secondhand artifacts reflect shifting cultural values?

The books I found are design annuals from the 1940s and ’50s. These are fascinating visual summaries of advertising art, and they provide an overwhelmingly complex study of social and technological information. Color, symbol, abstraction, perspective – all analytical fields in which I have no expertise. But, like the records I’m listening to from the ’60s, they also provide something that seems to be timeless. The other vinyl that I found is called, “Let’s Dance the Bossa Nova,” recorded by Enoch Light and his Orchestra – again, for Command records.

Audio Clip: O Barquinho, written by Roberto Menescal and recorded for Command Records in 1963. Cover art by Charles E. Murphy.

All told, I spent about $5 on what could easily be months of self-guided study. I don’t pose these questions because I have some sophisticated answer, but I suspect there is something worthwhile in the effort of looking back. And, more to the point of this podcast, I can try to understand the shifting nature of value by refining my original questions.

I read in these international advertisements a fascination with the exotic, primal things within; the core-level symbolism that is ambiguous while its immediacy is arresting; a colorful pause in the heretofore prevalent constructs of “traditional” relationships; I read playful ferocity; I read the obituary of typesetting, the birth of televised commercials with cartoon ch

In this episode, I talk about LEGO’s Ultimate Building Set No. 6166, Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color, and a 1965 Book-of-the-Month Club copy of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’s JFK-era A Thousand Days.

The Lego Group seems to have a magical recipe for consistency and innovation. Barnes & Noble got into the tablet market and made a surprisingly durable Android-based tablet. And Houghton Mifflin published a story about the American presidency that made me nostalgic and hopeful.

Listen as I veer, amateurishly, into supply chain economics, industrial design, and political philosophy – all for having stopped at two thrift stores over the past couple weeks.