Old farts (40 plus thread)

Can officially join this thread as of two days ago. Here I am, it's nice to know the internet isn't entirely populated by teenagers.

Just discussing with my brother here when he got his first Sony FM Stereo portable radio cassette player (or Ghetto Blaster, as they weren't yet known) - 1981. Life did become slightly easier for us at that stage, and we started having to buy our blank cassettes in multipacks. As I said in my first ramble in this thread, TDK AD90s were a significant cut above all other reasonably priced tapes, and mine still play nowadays. We got our first VCR in November 1984, so were able to start recording Top of the Pops, Whistle Test and The Tube. Also in Ireland we had an MTV-lite programme on Sunday afternoons called MT-USA playing 3 solid hours of music videos. 

I was never much of a fan of the Pet Shop Boys, although they won me over eventually. It wasn't a snooty thing about synths, because I had already loved OMD, Depeche Mode, New Order and to some extent Gary Numan and Kraftwerk, but I really struggled with Neil's singing voice. I also had suspicions initially that it was all some journalist's scam, despite my ears telling me that even if it was, West End Girls was an undeniable classic. Opportunities and Suburbia also appealed to me, and I have it on good authority from another photographer friend that you really haven't lived until you've seen them belting out Where The Streets Have No Name in front of 30,000 drunken Irish people.