CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/14/2024

Vintage 'Audio Erotica' from Jonny Trunk

It was very hard to choose an image from FUEL’s joy-inducing new release Audio Erotica: Hi-Fi Brochures 1950s–1980s—the newest vintage ephemera revelation from collector and Trunk Records founder Jonny Trunk. Featured here, an ad for “the one and only” Sony Walkman, one of the most ubiquitous innovations of the 1980s. Trunk describes the experience of being hit by a car the first time he wore his. “Wired for sound and deaf to the noise of the traffic, I had simply ‘strutted’ right into the road without looking—or even caring. Bang! Clatter! The Sony Walkman was a magic invention. The perfect poppy, portable, personal sound machine. According to legend, it was invented by the founder of Sony, Masaru Ibuka, when he spotted a guy at a Tokyo station, walking along holding a large ghetto blaster with a pair of headphones attached. He thought to himself: ‘that would be better if the cassette player was smaller.’ This may be an apocryphal story, but I like it anyway. The Walkman II I’d bought with hard-earned, saved-up cash, came with a belt hook—as well as cool-looking, comfortable headphones (these even had a button to mute the sound if you ever needed to hear the outside world). Supremely modern in its styling, it included a spare battery pack, so I could listen for hours on end. The Walkman II was the first piece of audio tech I’d bought myself …”