Early Memories of an Indian Audiophile Counterfeit and Pirate Music

Editor: It's my pleasure to introduce another writer to the blog, audiopro from Mumbai, India, a friend of Prem and Vivek, whom you'd remember from a previous Virtual Home Visit. audiopro also frequently contributes to the Indian forum hifivision. For some reason, these Indian friends all have kind of a philosophical bent, which is just what I like! This first article was actually an email. I liked it so much that we are publishing it here. People from the US and Europe will find it fascinating but people from many other countries in Asia and elsewhere will certainly find resonance. Even today, with wider and official availability, it is actually still hard to be an Indian audiophile. Personal Import duty starts at 40% and can go up to 75%! Wow, that really hurts!

Letter from India (2)

A walk down memory lane...

by audiopro

Growing up in India in the 80's was a different universe. I grew up on billboard and much later on MTV hits. I remember waking up at 6:30am to watch the MTV top hits countdown. Those were the days of music videos. Elton John's sacrifice, Nirvana Team Spirit, Michael Jacksons Jam, Remember the Time, Speed Demon, Thriller, Aerosmiths Amazing, Crying and Crazy and so on.

India was a shut economy those days. It was difficult to find all sorts of English music and imported audio equipment at a store. Hence there existed a large grey market where you had shops that recorded whatever you wanted. You gave them a list of songs and they recorded what they had, which was surprisingly almost everything you asked for. If he didn't have a song he'd call your landline and give you choices or leave a message and you'd call back frantically. We bought metal tapes that were carried by people visiting foreign countries. They worked as carriers and sponsored their trip by selling articles that they brought back. I remember buying Maxell Metal cassettes and TDK ones. They were my favourite. I loved the dark grey finish of those cassettes. The smooth acryllic covers. Opening the plastic foil wrapping of a cassette was like unveiling a new iphone, maybe even better! The Sony C60 and TDK B90 were the go to ones if you didn't want metal. Whenever you struggle to get something you tend to appreciate it. I had a cassette rack and a cassette drawer. Each cassette was labeled like Super Mix 80s, etc.

Then, getting a system was another story. In those days Mini combos ruled the market. You had local manufacturers who made stuff which looking back was really decent but they lacked the brand, fit and finish of a Sony or Panasonic or Philips mini compo. Sony, Philips (Netherlands), Pioneer, Hitachi did not exist in India but the grey market was so large, at least aspirationally, that they even had a few service centers in India and sometimes ran ads here! You went to a shop and he showed you a catalogue. My 10 year old eyes would shine when I saw the plethora of Japanese mini combos featured in that catalogue. I could barely reach the top of the counter but yet it was magic.

I lived in a small quiet suburb on the outskirts of Mumbai. Today the city has expanded and this suburb has become the center of it. But in those days we were cut out from the main city unless one used the train or owned a car. So we grew up in a suburb cut off from city life in a country that was already cut off from the rest of the world. Those were beautiful days and I would happily give up the internet, etc and go back to humanity.

Everyone of us had a setup, be it a walkman, radio (called a 2 in one, sometimes with a double deck) or a mini combo. My first setup was a Fisher mono radio and then came a Sony FH series mini combo with a CD player. Man! I felt like I owned a Dartzeel! My neighbour had an Akai mini combo, another had a locally made one. Sony was the standard pretty much.

Every evening between 6-8pm you played music and you played it loud. The entire locality would be abuzz with Ace of Base, Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, Queen, Guns and Roses etc. You had a rocker who wore black T-shirts and played Pink Floyd (and your grandma was scared of him), you had a pop neighbour who played George Michael and Richard Marx and so on. In fact it was an unspoken expectation where one person played lovely music into the night. I remember Madonna being played loudly for the entire locality to hear at 9-10pm which in those days was considered very late. That was the only way I could listen to the True Blue album. My dad's brother was dating someone and when I heard she had the True Blue album, I begged him to get it for me to use it for a few days. If someone owned an original Thomson cassette or an Original Billboard tape there would be a line begging to borrow it. Even if I hated the mix I'd try and listen to the tape because it was an original Thomson! Sometimes the person would lend it to you secretly and you had to hide it nor play it loud or you'd have neighbours kicking your door, trying to figure out how you got that tape! With time the official cassettes became widely available and stores sprouted up. I still remember buying an album once a month because that's what my pocket money allowed me to do. The Now series, Krushchel Rock, Meatloaf's Bat out of Hell II.

We had very little but no one really complained. It was beautiful, pure, innocent and it was all we had. We had posters of Hollywood stars in our cupboards, Calvin Klein perfumes and Denman brushes were sought after. Everyone wanted George Michaels Aviators!

TV was a similar story. You had video cassettes that you got from the local store. Again everything was bootlegged but that's how the system functioned. Robocop, Ghost Busters, Superman, Terminator, Police Academy, Top Gun, Gods Must be Crazy, Evil Dead, Blood Sport, Child's Play, Lethal Weapon, Twins, True Lies, Total Recall! Today kids take the net for granted and have no idea what they are missing out on. We were born human but ruined into robots.

Then as we grew up our parents got basic cars that didn't come with a stereo. Slowly we grew up and had our own cars. So came the aftermarket car stereo setups. Pioneer was the king and we had amplifiers with Pioneer helmet speakers and subs being fitted in the cars. As labour was cheap it was easy to modify car doors, have boxes built for your speakers, etc so that it would fit in aesthetically yet be functional.

The affluent had KEF, Sansui, Goodmans, Tannoy, B and W, JBL, Pioneers, Kenwoods, Sony, Wharfedales, Bose, etc. Again all this was available via the grey market. You didn't have much of a choice as such. You just went with whatever was brought in. Then there was a large second hand market and so on...it was beautiful.

All this sowed a seed of passion for music because it was all around us and we worked hard, very hard to source it. Today we seek DSD, lossless music etc. and talk about going back to good old NOS DAC's. In those days we wanted music, we wanted skateboards, BMX bikes, Spalding basketballs, Butterfly table tennis rackets. We valued passion, we valued innocence. I wonder what changed...I really wonder....but the memory remains...

Editor's Postcript: 

This article brought back so many memories! I came to the US when I was sixteen (on a Pan AM flight). Prior to that our home in Hong Kong was very small and there was only a TV, no music playback equipment except a small radio. Unlike audiopro, I didn't have an avid interest in music then but was aware of what's happening. As I am older than audiopro, my memory includes vinyl in its heyday. HK was a little ahead of India because it had always had a large (and rich) expatriate (colonial) and business community (including many Indian traders) who could afford the luxury goods. Also, HK has always been a free port, which is why HK audiophiles are lucky. But back in the 60's and early 70's, most people were not well off, and some were desperately poor. The radio would play western music and both official locally pressed and imported LPs were available. However those were so expensive for most people that there was a large Pirate Industry. Say, you made $100 a month and an official LP was $20 and a pirate $5. The pirated LP's were mostly pressed in Taiwan or Vietnam because the record companies did not have representations there. They had translucent and ghastly colored vinyl (now back in vogue for young people)(pic below from interesting Chinese article in popd.hk; English translation; the "Top Hit" is likely a compilation). In the West, there too have been counterfeit's and pirates too but they seem to be much higher in quality (see here). Of course, piracy was even crazier when the cassette came (you can tape off radio too). Just like in India, any song can be had and you can make your own compilation, all for a reasonable sum. I remember my richer classmates bringing to school the latest Chicago LP, whatever, for showoff and for lending to their buddies. I wasn't interested in the music but I was somehow jealous. And audiopro mentioned Butterfly table tennis rackets. Ping Pong Ball has always been popular in poorer countries, and HK was no excpetion. I spent at least a couple of hours playing table tennis everyday! The Chinese made rackets were cheap and had good wood but lousy rubber surfaces, so we would peel the surface(s) off and resurface with Japanese Butterfly!