Before there were iPods, or even CDs, and around the time cassettes let break dancers move the party to a cardboard dance floor on the sidewalk, there were boomboxes. It’s been 20 years since the devices disappeared from the streets. It’s high time to press rewind on this aspect of America’s musical history.
Back in the day, you could take your music with you and play it loud, even if people didn’t want to hear it. Fifty decibels of power-packed bass blasted out on street corners from New York City to Topeka. Starting in the mid-’70s, boomboxes were available everywhere, and they weren’t too expensive. Young inner-city kids lugged them around, and kids in the suburbs kept them in their cars.
“Fifty decibels” as cited in the article is not loud at all. Normal conversation, even if you’re being polite, is about 60 db and old fashioned dial tone is about 80db. It’s typical that a box loudspeaker will often produce 90db with 1 watt at 1 meter. So if we reference the 40 watt badbox in the article it should produce about 106 db at 1 meter. In addition, please note that more power is needed to produce an equally loud bass note than midrange. But is there truly such a thing as an anglican badbox?