Jun 28, 2016 3 min read

I used to laugh when the photographers I worked with at my first television station told me about shooting news stories on film. After all, we were so advanced in the late 1980s we were using three-quarter-inch videotape. That gave way to Betamax, then the smaller DVC Pro format and eventually discs.

Now, everything is shot and stored digitally on flash drives and hard drives and edited on laptop and desktop computers. We can go live using a cellphone signal.

The future is now.

This dramatic transformation in video technology is dwarfed only by that of audio technology. When I moved back to Pennsylvania four years ago, I found a box of eight-track tapes in our old garage. I was confronted with my own audio history when packing up and deciding what to do with the box full of albums I had sitting in my closet for decades. I no longer had a turntable to play them with, but I still hung onto them for sentimental reasons.

How could I let Barry Manilow, Steve Martin, Michael Jackson, Cher, Billy Joel and The Commodores go? This was the soundtrack of my youth in the 1970s, supplemented by the boxes of cassette tapes from the ’80s including Madonna, INXS, Peter Gabriel and Culture Club. Next came CDs (remember portable CD players?) and eventually my iPod. Just as with video, all you need for music these days is a smartphone.

I reluctantly got rid of the box of albums when I moved, but I hung onto a few boxes of cassettes and CDs. The other day, I found a hidden gem in the center console of my parents’ car and laughed with glee: “Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits.” This was undoubtedly the work of my mother, who liked the Piano Man as much as I did. I’d often walk in the house to hear her playing one of Joel’s difficult piano arrangements and loved it.

Finding this cassette tape made me extra happy and couldn’t have been more timely since I will have the pleasure of going to see Billy Joel in concert this weekend in Pittsburgh.

I saw him perform once before at the Civic Arena (yes, it’s always Civic Arena to me) back in 1986, and he was amazing.

I popped the cassette in the car’s player and have been listening to it for a week. What a talent! It’s amazing how music takes you right back to certain periods of your life and evokes such vivid memories.

I have always known if and when I ever get married, my new husband and I will have our first dance to “Just The Way You Are.” It’s the perfect wedding song.

If my future husband can’t get on board with that, then he’s not meant to be my future husband. It’ll be just me and the Piano Man. I still have the cassette.

Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.