Soundbreaking

[ Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" plays ]

-I started collecting records at the age of 5,

and the first single I bought was

"I Want to Hold Your Hand" by The Beatles.

-I mean, my first record I bought would "Be-Bop-A-Lula"

by Gene Vincent.

Whew. Magical.

I do remember the very first 45

I bought was "I Heard It Through the Grapevine,"

and singing in the kitchen with my sisters.

-Records, cassettes, CDs, and MP3s.

These are not just vehicles for music.

They are reflections of ourselves

and the times we live in.

-So you had your cassette, and you'd put

all your favorite songs on it.

Make a collection

that you wanted to give to someone you liked.

-This is how I feel, you know, about you.

As technology has evolved,

each generation has had a format to call its own.

-When I was born, people were listening to vinyl.

-The first album I paid my own allowance for

was Larry Graham and Grand Central Station.

That was my album.

-Everything about vinyl was great.

The smell of it when you took it out of the package.

-You'd get liner notes, which I always loved to read.

-I knew who engineered that record,

and I knew who produced that record.

That was my complete and total obsession.

-This is my modern-day jukebox here,

where I can hear new music as it comes out.

They send it to me. They MP3 me.

-You get access to all the songs on the planet,

and I think that is brilliant.

-We're heading to a whole bunch of new rules.

Like, some people are, like, "Oh, I miss going

to a record store and just taking the record

and opening it up and smelling the -- Well,

I say, "Well, you're being romantic, and that's wonderful.

Let's write some books about it."

This is the story

of our on-again/off-again love affair with musical formats

and how magical pieces of wax, plastic,

and silicon changed the world.

-All people, always, think their time, their music, was better.

Mine actually was.

Okay, then. Okay.

It'll be an F for you.

Here we go.

Just one more time.

-Right after I say, "Are you sure?"

Da da da -- yeah.

Oh.

-Hal, here's how I want to do it. Takes like this.

-All right, it's fun time. Fun time.

Here we go.

-Oh, really? -17, take one.

-This will be the keeper. -