In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 163: The CD Turns 40, 1970s Fast Food Fails, Road Trip 2024 Part 2, A NYC Time Capsule(9-25-2024)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 163

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The compact disc hits middle age. Wacky fast food fails of the disco era. More sights from a Northern New England road trip.
Episode 163 kicks off autumn by falling into some fun nostalgia.
It begins with Part 2 of a recent 3-day road trip into New Hampshire, Vermont, and Western Massachusetts. We'll get into more places that are worth visiting including a spot on my morbid Bucket List. What places might need to be skipped? We'll uncover all of them.
For many Gen-Xers, the compact disc was the definition of high-tech when it came to music media. Now as the CD hits its 40th anniversary we go way Back In the Day to look at how the CD changed music and how consuming music has changed over the decades.
The 1970s were a unique time, with disco music, Pet Rocks, and odd choices by fast food establishments. This week's Top 5 looks at 1970s fast food fails including some by giants of the industry.
The new This Week In History and Time Capsule gets meta as we look back at a time capsule buried in New York City as part of the World's Fair in 1939.
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Speaker 02:

Hello world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 163. It's the final podcast of September, the first show of fall. We've got a lot to get into. It's going to start off with part two of my excellent northern New England road trip from now about a month ago, New Hampshire, Vermont, western Massachusetts. We're going to go way, way back in the day and make all of us Gen X kids feel super old as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the creation of the compact disc. Top five is going to be Fails R Us as we look at the top five fast food fails of the 1970s. And there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time capsule that's going to get very meta as it's centered around a time capsule buried at the World's Fair in New York City. All of that is coming up right now as we fall into the podcast here on episode 163 of the In My Footsteps podcast. What kind of wackiness, what kind of shenanigans are we going to get into this week? There's already been way too many fall puns just in the first minute of this show. I will say in all seriousness, wherever you are listening to this from, I hope that the beginning of fall has been good to you. And thank you so much for tuning in. The month of September is shaping up to be another amazing month for downloads of the podcast, for views on my YouTube channel, all this content. I figured eventually if I had enough content, more people would stumble upon something I did and then maybe enjoy it and then dip their toes in further. And before you know it, you're in the quicksand that is the vortex of my wackiness. The rulers of that vortex are definitely my Patreon subscribers. Shout out to Laurie, Mary Lou, Ashley, Kevin, Marguerite, Leo. Thank you all so much for being the financial backbone of my content creation habit. I just can't shake it. $5 a month gets you access to bonus podcast episodes where I go in depth about an old blog I used to write called Initial Impressions. And if that sounds familiar, it's because I resurrected that blog this past winter and called it Initial Impressions 2.0. It's a look at my daily life, the insanity of it. It is going to end up becoming a weekly webcam podcast, a video podcast. Plans change as always. I'm getting myself a nicer webcam to put on my laptop and an actual setup with one of those cheesy selfie sticks and a tripod for my phone so I can shoot travel videos like that. So I'm not getting a camcorder. Boy, it's just always changing. One thing that doesn't change is the podcast, at least as far as when it happens changes. Those of you longtime listeners know that it used to be mainly travel and history. But I found my favorite parts of those shows were always the nostalgia. And I said, why not just lean more into that? And it's definitely worked. My downloads have gone up pretty much steadily all throughout this year once I changed over to nostalgia. And as I say that, we're going to kick off the podcast with part two of my road trip to northern New England podcast. So it's sort of an old school start to the podcast. So let's stop wasting time. The car is idling. Let's take it for a drive right now. Being a part two of my 2024 Northern New England road trip segment, I feel for those of you that may not have heard episode 162, I'll give kind of a vague wrap up of that first segment. I hadn't done a proper road trip, an overnight stay road trip in about five years. This one, just by happenstance, I happened to look up the Pemi Cabins where I stayed in Lincoln, New Hampshire in 2012. And by luck, they had vacancies the week that I had a paid vacation from my job. I said, there's no coincidence. That has to be a sign. So I booked it. And rather than it being an overnight trip, which would have been a ridiculous three and a half hour drive up and back, I made it into a three day trip, including Spending the first day taking my time going up into New Hampshire before I got to Lincoln. The second day, spending a little more time in New Hampshire before crossing the border into Vermont. Spending most of day two in Vermont. And then day three, I crossed over into western Massachusetts, specifically the Berkshires and the Mohawk Trail and took that home. Where we left off last week, I was driving south through the very rural roads of Vermont and noticing that there was a lot of construction there. In total, it was about 220 miles that I drove from Lincoln, New Hampshire down to Brattleboro, Vermont. All of this was done on back roads. That was the whole idea. I've seen so many amazing photos of these just rural farms in Vermont, green mountains, and just these stretches of open space. And then these little red barns or however it would look. Things that really appealed to me as a photographer. So I said, if I take the back roads, I'm way more likely to run into a scene like that than if I was on the highway. And I did. I hugged the Connecticut River. So basically I was in the eastern part of Vermont. There were tons of amazing views of the Connecticut River and the area around it. The problem was when I would find these scenic areas, there was typically nowhere to pull over on the road, except maybe someone's driveway, which I don't want to risk today with people shooting people that get into their driveway. Or there'd be cars behind me and close enough behind me that I didn't have time to slow down, put a blinker on. I didn't want to get rear-ended in Vermont, especially rural Vermont. I mean, granted, I got AAA specifically for this trip and never needed it, although it came in handy booking a hotel. But still, I had so much on my itinerary, I didn't want to suddenly have to spend several hours getting my car fixed or towed in the middle of nowhere. A quintessential spot that I stopped at in Vermont was the Historical Society area of a little town called Wethersfield. And when I say small, their population is about 2,800. And I think I live in a pretty small-ish town, but my town is about 10 times the size of Wethersfield. There was a beautiful red brick church across the street, an old barn just like what I wanted. I spent maybe 15 minutes there walking around taking photos. In that time, maybe two cars passed. Out of curiosity, I just paused recording this podcast and I went into my hosting site, which is buzzsprout.com. That's where I host the podcast. But it gives you a list of every single town that has listened to your podcast and how many downloads. Out of curiosity, I looked to see if anyone from Wethersfield, Vermont had listened. No, 16 different Vermont towns have listened to the podcast, but none are Wethersfield. Although Brattleboro, two downloads. Ooh, man. Hopefully if you're listening right now, if you're from Brattleboro, your town is great. I really enjoyed it there. We'll get to that in a minute. One spot that I almost missed because I started to get road weary from all the back roads and driving in Vermont. I had to check my itinerary. I really wanted to go to the Dumberston Vine Cemetery. Way back in episode 33 of the podcast, I did a full segment about the urban legend of the Dummerston Vine Cemetery in Dummerston, Vermont. The gist of it is a purported curse on the Spalding family of Dummerston. The story is that members of the family, the Spalding family, began dying at an alarming rate from an odd disease, which today people think was tuberculosis. But back then, there's the family plot, and a member of the family died, and there was this vine that was crawling along the family plot. You know, growing, not just crawling. But each time it would cross a coffin, so it crossed that first grave, another family member died. So they buried that family member, the vine grew, crossed that coffin, and another family member died. This happened six times. So what they ended up doing to try to break this curse was digging up that sixth child, family member, and moving the grave further down the family plot and then chopping the vine up and burning it. I'll be doing a video segment from that podcast episode featuring the photos and videos I took of the Dummerston Vine Cemetery. That'll be going up in a few weeks for Spooky Season. I wanted to recreate my most cherished memories from my time in Vermont, going all the way back to 2000, when I went camping in the Jamaica State Forest with my oldest friend, Barry, that you know all about, and then our friend, Amy. We did a lot of hiking. So when I went to the Jamaica State Forest entrance, I said, there's no way I'm going to pay the entrance fee and then go hiking. It was already like four o'clock. I ended up taking a picture of myself in front of the sign to be like, there's proof that I was there. The other big part of that Vermont trip in 2000 was eating lunch at a place called the Damn Diner in neighboring Townsend, Vermont. I was all sorts of excited because I had a bison burger back then in 2000 and it was excellent. So I said, oh man, get to have that for lunch. Nope. The Damn Diner was closed. I don't think it's permanently closed, but it was definitely closed the day I was there. So again, it was a picture of me in front of the sign. Not quite as exciting. I got into Brattleboro probably close to 530. The hotel was not as nice as Pemi Cabins, but it was going to be hard to top a cabin with a screened-in porch on a river. What I did enjoy was the walkability of Brattleboro. Although I did have to drive to get dinner at the Brattleboro House of Pizza, a.k.a. B-Hop, which was excellent, by the way. But right across the street was Hannaford's. I said, well, who knows when I'll see a Hannaford again. So even though it was back-to-back days, I walked over there. They had 16-ounce, 5-hour energy drinks, which I've only seen at one other store ever. I'm sure they're more common, but Cape Cod doesn't always get all the same stuff. I was so excited it took all of my self-control not to just put my arm on the shelf and sweep all of the cans into my little hand carriage. You hear that, 5-Hour Energy people? I keep saying, sponsor my travel trips. I've been saying it since 2010. I was in and out of that motel a few times. Hannaford's, then down the street to get dinner and also visit Cannabis Maximus. That was a good place. Even after eating a huge meatball sub that really was sitting in my stomach, I said, I got to go find a place to shoot the sunset here. Those of you that know me or follow me on Instagram, you see my sunset photos. I have to have something like that. But you also know I find the oddest places to take sunset photos, if possible. Brattleboro was no different. What I found was an abandoned railroad bridge that overlooked Route 9. And there was a little power substation and a parking lot that was gravel. And I could park kind of obscured, hidden behind some bushes, walk out on the bridge and get these awesome photos. Oh, and how do I know that the railroad bridge was abandoned? It had grass and flowers growing out of it all down across the bridge. I did take my life into my hands a few times because there was no railings on this bridge naturally. So I was getting to the edge to try to take pictures from different vantage points. And all it would have taken was one slip and I'd have been down in the river. That would have been a fitting end of the podcast. There'd just be no new episodes because I killed myself falling off an abandoned bridge to get that sunset photo in a slightly different angle. That'd be fitting. There was still a little time left before it totally got dark, so I drove a little further south because there was a bridge that crossed over the Connecticut River, which connects Vermont to New Hampshire. So I walked out to the middle and started taking pictures kind of in the middle to say I was taking pictures in two states at once. I posted a video on social media and even I got sick of the joke after about 10 seconds. That wrapped up day two. I shot a webcam video back in the hotel room that I'm going to have to edit and get up on YouTube. It'll have all kinds of videos and photos in it too. Day three, I was pretty much up and out early. Not that I didn't like Brattleboro, but the motel didn't lend itself to me hanging out there. There were way too many strange people on those little motorized carts. I played tourist and I went to the Vermont Maple Museum, which is on the way kind of west from Brattleboro. I was hooking around in a bit of a circle to come down in North Adams, Massachusetts at the beginning, relative beginning of the Mohawk Trail. Super nice people that run that place. So much fun stuff to get. Authentic maple syrup, stuffed animals, antiques, sculptures. There's different foods. I am lucky I got out of there only spending what I did. If I had hung out any longer, I'd have probably maxed out my credit cards again. Getting back into Massachusetts and stopping in North Adams, I went to Big Y. That's another supermarket we don't have on Cape Cod. The nearest one is Kingston, which is about an hour from me. And I'm not driving an hour to go to a supermarket. They had pork riblets in there. Ribs are one of my favorite things in the world for food. And again, it took all my restraint not to get a whole big tub of these riblets. Because then how in the world am I going to do the rest of the day? I'd fall asleep driving on the Mohawk Trail. There'd be the other end of the podcast. My car found smashed on the Mohawk Trail, me covered in ribs. That's not the way I want my legacy to end. Besides just driving the Mohawk Trail, the main attraction for me on day three was going to the Hoosack Tunnel. It's almost five miles long. It runs through the Hoosack Mountain, but it's mainly known as at least one of the most haunted places in Massachusetts because well over 100 people died making that tunnel. It's been on my morbid bucket list for years, and I'll tell you, I already want to go back because I didn't get all the photos I want. I'm going to kind of gloss through this, but don't worry if you're interested in the Hoosac Tunnel story and more of my experience there. It's going to be next week on the podcast, starting off spooky season with the story of the Hoosac Tunnel. Perhaps my biggest accomplishment of this whole road trip was the fact that as soon as I got to North Adams and I knew I was starting the Mohawk Trail, I turned off my GPS as far as directions went. My goal was to try to make it all the way home without using highways and without using the GPS for actual directions. I ended up driving over 300 miles on day three and about 800 miles in total. But the reason it was so many miles on day three is because it was all back roads. If you've never been on the Mohawk Trail, I highly recommend it. It runs all the way through western Massachusetts, central Massachusetts. It's an area that you've probably seen pictures of, especially during foliage season, which is coming up. There are too many places to count or to name that you should visit on the Mohawk Trail. Even if you don't drive the whole thing, which would take a while. If you live in New York, Vermont, Western Mass, naturally, Connecticut, it's not that far. For those that are visual learners, much like me, at some point, probably next month or maybe even into November, I'll have a video of the Mohawk Trail. I stopped and took loads of videos and photos. So that'll be going up on my YouTube channel in a few weeks. All in all, this road trip, it definitely reawakened my love of travel, doing those travel trips with the content that comes from it, blogs and videos, and look, podcast segments. I won't say where it is, but I already have another overnight trip planned that'll be in a few weeks from when this podcast goes live. So I'll have more travel blogs and videos. And if it's super memorable, maybe I'll do a segment on the podcast. But there you go. Including last week, about 30 minutes of me talking about my first real road trip in about five years. Like I said last week, I'll link to as many of these places I talked about in the description of the podcast. And keep your eyes peeled. Because as of the recording of this podcast, I still haven't finished editing all my photos. I definitely haven't put up all the content that I have. So that's still a work in progress.

Unknown:

Music

Speaker 02:

This week in history, we're going back 86 years ago to September 23rd, 1938 and the burial of a time capsule at the World's Fair in New York City. This is one of those history segments that is so meta. I said I have to do this. This time capsule that was buried at the World's Fair site has an open date of 5,000 years from then, so the year 6,938. It's known as the Westinghouse Time Capsule because Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company designed and sponsored the time capsule as part of the exhibit of the 1939 New York World's Fair, which was themed The World of Tomorrow. I'm fascinated with time capsules, not just the addition to this segment, but in general, people putting things from their time period in something that people in the future will then open and either be fascinated by or laugh at. The big thing with Westinghouse was creating a time capsule that could withstand the test of time, 5,000 years. The specifics of it, it's cylindrical in shape, about 90 inches long, 8.75 inches in diameter, and it's made from a copper alloy known as cup alloy. So with that all taken care of, it was time to put things in this time capsule relevant to 1938. Inside, there are more than 35 objects. Some of the key things are newsreel and motion pictures, microfilm reels, containing over 10 million words of text as well as newsreel footage that showcase the key events in day-to-day life from the 1930s. There are some books in there, including a specially commissioned book entitled The Book of Record, which explains the contents of the time capsule and offers guidance to future discoverers. There's cultural artifacts, a woman's hat, a child's doll, samples of then-modern currency, small household items like a comb and a fountain pen. They've got technological advancements of the time, like a slide rule, a small electric motor, some scientific instruments. They've got everyday products. They've got samples of modern food. There's a tin of cigarettes in it. vials of common chemicals, sound recordings, a phonograph record. The Westinghouse time capsule is intended to remain buried, like I said, 5,000 years. It's 50 feet below the ground at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, which was the site of the 1939 World's Fair. There's a plaque that marks the location. And records of the time capsule's existence have been distributed around the world in libraries and archives to make sure that people 5,000 years from now know they're supposed to dig it up. A question I have that some of you may be curious about too is, do you think that this time capsule will remain buried for the full 5,000 years? Maybe in the year 3500 they'll see that. Someone will say, hey, we should go dig it up now. Even though it won't be dug up and opened in any of our lifetimes and in the generations of lifetimes, it's currently still there and the Westinghouse time capsule was buried in New York City 86 years ago this week in history. Oh, but it's time to get serious with a new time capsule. This one we're going to stick to that same day. So the Westinghouse time capsule is buried in New York. What else is going on in the world of pop culture back then? The number one song was Begin the Begin by Artie Shaw and his orchestra. The song was written by Cole Porter in 1935. The song later became a popular Spanish-language version by Julio Iglesias in 1981. It was one of Artie Shaw's biggest hits of his life, the first one that broke him through, and Artie Shaw is considered one of the greatest jazz clarinetists. The number one movie was Too Hot to Handle, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing 25 cents. This movie stars Clark Gable and Myrna Loy as two rival newsreel photographers that join forces to find a missing female pilot. Although it went to number one, it was a minor hit, making back just a little more than its $1.5 million budget. And it's 52% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, so if you like classic old films, if you like Clark Gable, maybe check it out. The number one radio show, because there was no television and thus no TV ratings, the number one radio show was the Chase and Sanborn Hour. The more radio shows, the more older time capsules that I do, the more that the Chase and Sanborn Hour end up becoming the number one show. This was a comedy variety show. It was on the radio from 1929 to 1948. Eddie Cantor was the main host of the show for most of its run. It was like a typical comedy show you'd see on TV now with guest stars. They had Donna Michie, Dorothy Lamour, W.C. Fields, and their biggest claim to fame, ventriloquist comedian Edgar Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy. And if you were around back then, September 23rd, 1938... Maybe it was time to do some grocery shopping. You're going to naturally be looking for the good deals. These from this grocery ad are supposed to be able to be used at all grocery stores, including getting a box of Hecker's Farina hot cereal for one cent when you buy two boxes of H.O. Oats. Ho Oats. That was the first thing I saw. I'm like, well, we're doing this advertisement for the time capsule. If you don't want hoe oats, you can get a pound of lard for $0.10. Claps baby food, three cans for $0.23. And your choice of three different varieties of educator crackers, normally $0.19. You get them for $0.15. But that'll wrap up a new time capsule and talking about an old time capsule in This Week in History. If you didn't want to go grocery shopping for any of that fine food, I would also recommend Steering Clear of what's coming up in the top five. And those are fast food fails of the 70s coming up right now. So in full disclosure, when I record these podcasts, I typically start in the morning, take a break about halfway through, eat lunch, and then come back. Usually I have something ready. Sometimes I go out and get something and come back. I will tell you what we're going to look at this week in the top five I would never get. Top five fast food fails of the 1970s. Back in episode 118, I did a segment on 1980s fast food fails. It's interesting, there are way more fails as far as food items go in the 80s and soon I'll be doing one in the 90s, 2000s. It's different in the 70s. It's like fast food was very basic and they didn't really get outside of the lane that they were in, whatever their restaurant was, McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, Taco Bell. So less straying from their path means less fails as far as food items go, but I got enough here. As with most of the top fives, there are some honorable mentions and the top five itself is in no particular order. I'll quickly go through the honorable mentions because I'm figuring a lot of you probably will have not heard of most of these things. So honorable mentions for fast food fails of the 70s include McDonald's onion nuggets. You think french fries are good. You think onion rings are good. How about chunks of onion? That's basically what this was and it did not last. There was the Hardee's roast beef sandwich trying to compete with Arby's and it was not popular. There was the Taco Bell Bell Beaver, which was essentially a sloppy joe. This was also in the 1980s video because even though it wasn't that popular, it did cross two decades and that made it an easy fail for both. And the final honorable mention is the Jack in the Box French Fries Onion Rings Mix. Having worked in restaurants for years, I could see where people would be hoping for this to be a fail that worked at Jack in the Box. Going back many, many years, we had one guy come into the restaurant where I worked and he happened to ask if he could get a half french fries, half onion rings mix. And we made the mistake of saying, sure. Why is that a mistake? Because then every time he came back in, he got the same thing. And he could always say, but you did it last time. That's the dreaded words. But I digress. That is the honorable mentions section here. Let's get into the actual top five. And again, they're in no particular order. We're going to start it off with number one, McSpaghetti. Oh boy, I don't know where to start with this. In short, it's a spaghetti meal from McDonald's. It debuted in 1970. It was discontinued by the end of the 70s, but it's not gone. It's actually still served and still popular in the Philippines. In the old days, it would come in one of those clamshell boxes. Inside, there was typically linguine, fettuccine, some pasta like that, sauce, meatballs if you wanted it, cheese. It sounds all well and good, but how many people would go to McDonald's to get spaghetti? You can appreciate McDonald's getting out of their comfort zone a little, but that's where McSpaghetti comes from and McHotDog and McPizza and McFailures. I do find it crazy that it's still served and still popular in the Philippines. I don't know what it would be about McSpaghetti that they would like over there. I don't know, if it was me, if I had a choice between authentic Asian noodles, like a dish with that, or mixed spaghetti, I'd take the Asian noodles every time. Number two is Kentucky roast beef. This is the first of two where it's not necessarily a food item fail, it's a food franchise fail. If Kentucky Roast Beef sounds a little familiar, it's because Kentucky Fried Chicken decided to diversify and open a chain of roast beef restaurants. These spinoff restaurants started in 1968, and they closed all of them in 1970. The tie-in to KFC was the fact that the roast beef had the same herbs and spices as the Colonel's Chicken. The restaurants themselves didn't do too badly, but it came down to a yes popularity. If you're going to go to KFC or KRB, you take the KFC. But it was also hard to make freshly made roast beef in the restaurant. Anyone that's worked in restaurants knows how long you have to cook a roast beef to do it right. As I said, by the end of 1970, all of the Kentucky roast beef restaurants had been closed, with some of them just being sold off and made into other restaurants, other businesses, and some being converted into Kentucky fried chicken. Number three is the Burger Chef Works Bar.

Speaker 01:

Burger Chef, you're incredibly new! Everyone likes our new works bar, Jeff, where you can fix your own burger. The way you like them! And we still serve them ready to eat.

Speaker 02:

Self-serve buffet-style burger toppings. What could go wrong? Burger Chef at one point was the second largest fast food franchise in the country. Burger Chef and Jeff ads... The franchise itself went out of business in 1983, sold to Hardee's. But at this time in the 70s, they were still riding high with a thousand locations. The main problem with the Burger Chef works bar was keeping it clean, keeping it stocked, keeping it sanitary. You'd like to think that most people would either use salad tongs and not just drop things everywhere. But come on, you know the reality. People are putting their bare hands in. People are probably sampling some and putting back half-eaten stuff. You know that's happened. Dropping tomatoes and onions and pickles all over the floor. Squirting ketchup everywhere. It just became too much of a hassle to allow people to stack their own burger with all that stuff. So yeah, people had to go back to asking for extra stuff on their burgers from the actual people taking their order. Number four is the BK Yumbo Sandwich.

Speaker 00:

Burger King would like to introduce a new word to the English language. Yumbo. Yumbo? Yumbo. A hot ham and cheese sandwich often known to cause insatiable desire in those who come near it. Found only at participating Burger King restaurants.

Speaker 02:

What was the Yumbo? It was Burger King's hot ham and cheese sandwich on one of those longer submarine buns. You know the ones that they do the chicken sandwiches on? Come on, you can picture it in your head. Much like the Kentucky Roast Beef or McSpaghetti, this was another company getting out of their comfort zone. How many of you would go to a fast food restaurant for a hot ham and cheese sandwich? It makes as little sense as when McDonald's did the Hula Burger. That was a burger with no meat. It was a slice of pineapple and cheese. That was 60s. When we do 60s fast food fails, you'll hear about the Hula Burger. The BK Yumbo only lasted a couple of years. It was discontinued in 1974. They actually had it make a comeback 40 years later in 2014, but it didn't do much better. Nostalgia hit for a little while, and then you realize you're going to Burger King for hot ham and cheese, and it's like, ah, never mind. And finally, number five on the list of top five fast food fails of the 1970s. It's the Hickory Bell Restaurants. This is one much like Kentucky Roast Beef. Part of the more famous franchise's name is in this name. Hickory Bell was an offshoot of Taco Bell Restaurants. This was a Western-style barbecue restaurant founded in 1970. What I could see in my research for this is that there were not that many Hickory Bell restaurants and they faded away within a few years. Because just because someone goes to Taco Bell doesn't mean they're going to go to a Western-style barbecue restaurant owned by the same company. So I don't think there was much cross-pollination. And then what really made Hickory Bell special? You could probably go to more specialized barbecue places and get much better food. But there you have it. Some of the fast food fails of the 1970s. Which of these surprised you the most? And those of you that are of that age, did you try any of those? When I look at the list with the honorable mentions, I think the only thing I'd probably try is the french fries onion rings mix. I wouldn't want onion nuggets. But hold on. If going back 50 years for fast food fails doesn't make you feel old, get ready. We're going to double down by looking at the CD, which turns 40 years old this week. All right, who's ready to feel old? I'll admit now as I get further down the slide to 50, it doesn't take much to make me feel old. It's part of the double-edged sword of doing a nostalgia-based podcast is that I constantly feel old when I look back at things. So get ready to add another thing to that list as we look back 40 years at the creation of the very first compact disc. I don't know how old you are who's listening and what the technology was for music when you were growing up. For me, when I was little, little, eight tracks were still around, vinyl albums were huge, and then audio cassettes were the main thing basically until I turned 13. I think I got my first CD when I was 13. It was officially introduced in September 1984. And the compact disc, it was a culmination of decades of advancements in digital audio, optical storage, and it ushered in a new era for the music industry and consumers. We've got to go back another 20 years to get to kind of the genesis of the creation of the compact disc. Because in the early 60s, digital audio was primarily the domain of research laboratories. It wasn't something that regular people could have access to. The invention of the laser in 1960 by physicist Theodore Maimon was a significant leap, and by the 70s, researchers were exploring the use of the laser technology to store digital data on optical media. The collaboration of a couple of heavy hitters in the music media business, Sony and Philips, came together. So Philips had been working on a prototype optical disc system since 1974, and Sony was developing digital audio technology. In 1979, the two companies joined forces and they merged their respective innovations to create a new digital audio format. That was the compact disc. It utilized a laser to read digital data encoded on a plastic disc. The final version of the compact disc was 12 centimeters in diameter and could hold up to 74 minutes of audio. And it could also offer sound that was audible far superior to any analog format. I tried my best to look back and find the very first album released on Compact Disc, and it was hard to nail down one, like the first. What I found was that when the CD was launched in September 1984, one of the very first albums released on Compact Disc was Billy Joel's 52nd Street. And interestingly, it had actually been released in Japan in October 1982 as a test run of the compact disc. Once the CD started gaining popularity and acceptance, then record companies quickly began to reissue popular albums on compact discs. You're looking at Beatles' Abbey Road, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, and albums by major artists of the time like Bruce Springsteen, Dire Straits, ABBA. I had to really stop and think about what was the first album I bought on Compact Disc. Because they were more expensive, you needed a CD player, I had a regular cheapo Sony tape player. a double tape player though, so I could make mixtapes and foolish audio cassette programs with my friends when I was 12, 13, 14. The one I keep coming back to is Nirvana's Nevermind album. And the reason why I think this was the first one I ever bought on CD was that it's the first one from that time, 1991, that I don't remember actually having an audio cassette version of. For example, I have... Audio tapes of Guns N' Roses, Use Your Illusion 1 and 2, Pearl Jam's 10, those are from the same year. I have no memory of ever buying Nirvana's Nevermind on tape, and I didn't have someone make me a copy. So that's what I think my very first CD was. Do you remember yours? That's kind of a loaded question. If you first bought CDs in the mid-1980s, good luck trying to remember. An interesting stat is that compact discs by 1991, so 1991 was the first year they outsold all other music media formats. So the 90s really were the decade of the CD. And it was easy to see why. First and foremost, the CDs offered superior sound quality. The digital format eliminated the background noise and distortions common with analog formats. Like when records would get scratched or audio tapes, the tape would get worn thin. It was also helpful for recording artists. If you had albums that came out in the 60s and 70s and even into the 80s, as CDs got more popular, you could literally re-release the same music that you've already done and make a mint as far as money went for people trying to increase their CD collection. You got a sucker like me in my teens. Like I just said, Guns N' Roses, User Illusion 1 and 2, Pearl Jam's 10. I had them all on tape and then I bought the CDs. So they milked me out of double the money. CDs were a lot more portable, very thin. You could get the CD books that I think everybody that grew up in the 90s had. I still have mine. I have two of them. Still filled with CDs. The irony is now that as music media has changed, my laptop that I have that I'm recording this on, it does not have a slot for CDs. I can't play CDs on this laptop because now they're outdated. I have to get a frigging attachment, plug it in, a portable CD drive. Like I said, feeling old. Any of you that grew up in the 90s especially, remember having to get the audio cassette attachment for your car stereo to play CDs? You put the tape in there and it would have the power go from that into a portable CD player. Go over a bump and the music skips. Just like the old Discmans, you gotta get the super anti-skip. Otherwise, if you move, it's just useless stuff. For the majority of the 90s, I was a cassette and CD person, mainly because CDs had better quality music. But if you wanted to make a mix, it was a lot harder in the 90s to do that. Mix tapes were still the way to go. You just get the double tape deck like I had or a CD tape combination, which I also got. I think if I had wanted to, I could have gotten the double CD player to make a mix CD, but it was so expensive. I don't think it was worth it. One interesting little side note with CDs is once I started to make blank CDs so you could make your own mixes, this was late 90s and especially early 2000s. You had to watch out when you were buying these blank CDs, whether it was from Best Buy or any of the other big box music stores, because they had audio CDs that you could put music on, but they also had data CDs that wouldn't record music. It was more for storing files. I definitely bought the wrong ones at least once. I think then I learned because I think by then I had opened it and tried to record one and I don't think the place wanted to accept it back open because I probably threw the receipt away like a fool. At the turn of the 20th century though CDs were the norm. Mixed CDs. It's interesting because me growing up at the time it felt like CDs were the main form of music consumption for a long time but in reality it took several years for them to overtake vinyl albums and then audio cassettes so if you're looking at even late 80s 89 90 by 2005 itunes the ipod had come out so mp3s and streaming music was the hot new thing You're looking at generously 15, 16 years that the CD was number one. And think about how long vinyl albums were number one, 40, 50 years. I know I got my first iPod in 2005 and it was the little shuffle. It looked like a pack of gum. It wasn't until the late 2000s, probably, that I stopped bringing my mini CD booklet into work at the restaurant. It'd be stocked with CDs that everyone liked. Steely Dan, Wings, Santana, Earth, Wind & Fire. Because even though I knew MP3s were the wave of the future and I really enjoyed that convenience, I had spent thousands of dollars on CDs. I didn't want to just let them sit and waste away. They'd be as useless as my Beanie Baby collection. Think about that for a minute. When was the last time that you played a CD? It could be on your computer, but in your car or in a portable CD player. When was that? I'm thinking that taking out the times that I would load music into my computer via CD, that the last time I actually listened to a compact disc for real has to be 15 years ago. A fun little anecdote to kind of wrap up this segment. I had a large, large music collection, loads of CDs. And in the year 2000, those of you that have listened to the podcast from the beginning, you've heard the segment, I moved to Las Vegas in 2000. I loved my CDs though. I wanted to take all of them with me, hundreds of them. What I did was I had this old hockey duffel bag, a big one, probably four to five feet long that I actually got from my friend John. I think he just wanted to get rid of it. So he said, here, take this. I filled that thing with CDs and brought it on the plane to Vegas, had to drag it through the airport, a duffel bag full of CDs. I mean, it probably weighed 60, 70 pounds. I think all the rest of the luggage I took combined weighed the same. But there I was, dragging this duffel bag of CDs through the Las Vegas airport. All for the love of music. Now, literally, I have probably somewhere around 1,500 songs probably on my phone. And that's way more portable. As much as I loved CDs, I do not regret now having a phone that's got thousands of songs on it and access to Pandora and Spotify anytime I see fit. But there's no denying the legacy of the compact disc. It changed the world of music 40 years ago this week. I'd love to wax nostalgic and say I'm going to end this podcast and put a CD on and listen, but I have no way to listen to it. Like I said, my laptop doesn't even have a CD player. So I'll open up my old CD booklet that's in the closet and just think and pretend I'm playing music. But before I go sit and pretend to play CDs like a mental patient, that's going to wrap up episode 163 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Thank you to everyone who listens to the show, who rates it, who reviews it, who shares it. I can share this podcast and my content all I want and I do a lot, but it means more when listeners, when viewers share it and say, hey, you should check this guy out. My big goal for 2024 by the end of it is to be able to at least promote earn a little bit of money from the podcast or and or the YouTube channel, that all comes down to specific numbers of downloads of the podcast monthly and certain numbers of watch hours on the YouTube channel. We'll see. I'm pretty close, but not quite there. I don't have to make millions for my content, but it would be nice if it was actually supplementing my income because I love doing this. Putting together these shows, recording them, editing them is not as much fun, but sharing them, seeing what people like, it's so much fun because all this stuff is right from my brain. And starting next week, it's spooky season, October, so I'm going to be dipping my toes back into some scarier stuff, some true crime stuff. Next week on episode 164, we're going to have the segment about the Hoosack Tunnel. But also in October, we're going to have Notorious New England Mental Institutions. A segment on H.H. Holmes, the first serial killer in America. Haddon Clark, the serial killer that was a big part of the Lady of the Dunes documentary that Frank Durant did. And then my book, Searching for the Lady of the Dunes. And also a lighter spooky season story about the time that I briefly, or my family, briefly had a pet bat. So all that stuff's coming up in October, so stick around. I never seem to run out of content, so I hope you'll check out all that stuff and go subscribe on YouTube. Check out the blog, Initial Impressions 2.0, my weekly wrap-up. There will be a podcast at some point this year. That's been my goal. I keep pushing it off. I said for 2024. Well, we've still got a few months left. I mentioned searching for The Lady of the Dunes, my true crime book. But if you're interested in any of my nine books, visit my website, ChristopherSetterlin.com. It's got links to all of them there. If you follow me on social media, I am never shy about sharing my content. Because you never know when someone's going to see your stuff for the first time and be like, wow, I didn't know about this person. Let me check them out. You can't ever assume that all the people that follow you on social media or that see your profile on social media, that they know what you're about. That goes for any of you out there that are not necessarily only content creators, but anything in a creative field. Don't ever be shy about sharing your stuff. You work hard on it. You should promote yourself. I always say nobody should promote you who create things more than you. If you got somebody else that shares your stuff more than you, you're not working hard enough. And before I get out of here, I wanted to give an update for those that were wondering about my Uncle Bob. I've been telling you about his really serious health issues over the last couple of months. He had a series of massive strokes. And the last time I shared updates with you, it really didn't look good. He's a tough old bastard, and I mean that in the best way. But he's been released from Mass General Hospital. He is at Spalding Rehab in Cambridge. And he's on the road to recovery. Now, granted, it's probably going to be a long road, months and months. But the fact that Mass General said, okay, he's good enough to go into Spalding rather than sitting in ICU, that has to be a good sign. So I wanted to share that with you. I know some of you have been following along as I share some stuff on social media about my Uncle Bob, but I wanted to make sure I shared it on the podcast. For those of you that maybe don't follow me on socials, to give you an update on Uncle Bob, one of my favorite people and the person that I modeled myself after when I became an uncle to my six nieces and nephews. I always say if they've had any fun or good times with me as an uncle, thank Uncle Bob because that's where I got my inspiration from. And remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life because you never know what tomorrow brings. Thank you all again so much for listening to episode 163 or any of the other shows, any of my other content. I do it out of love and enjoyment. And I hope you enjoy it too. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund. You already knew me. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

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