The Eternal Ritual of Terrible Sound

 

There’s a strange comfort in how some things never really change. Step onto any street today and you’re bound to see them: teenagers swaggering down the pavement, smartphones held aloft like digital boomboxes, tinny music bleeding from tiny speakers that valiantly attempt to punch above their weight. The bass is a rumor, the treble a shriek. And yet, they walk as if their sonic parade is a gift to the world.

 

These phones—glossy, fragile, and often worth half their parents' monthly salary—are status symbols disguised as utility. They stream music of questionable compression, often sourced from apps that serve audio with the texture of wet cardboard. And yet, this noise (charitably referred to as "sound") isn’t about fidelity. It’s about presence. About saying: I am here. Listen to what I like. This is who I am.

 

But cast your mind back, if you can, to the streets of 1999. The scene, in essence, was the same.

 

Back then, it wasn’t iPhones but knockoff walkmans—glorious little devices from Piłsudski street stands, bearing names like “Panascanic” or the timeless “SQNY,” slapped in metallic font onto plastic shells that bent if you stared too hard. They played cassettes, usually fourth- or eighth-generation copies that hissed and wobbled like dying animals. If you were lucky—or rich in playground terms—your unit could even receive FM radio. That was prestige.

 

And the sound? Ah, the sound. Marginally fuller, perhaps, thanks to speakers that had just enough room to wheeze out a low-end thump. Occasionally, you’d wonder whether the tape’s wow and flutter figure had hit 100%, warping voices until they resembled underwater ghosts. But no one cared. We were kings of the sidewalk, sharing our sonic taste with the same boldness teens now radiate through Bluetooth and Spotify.

 

The difference, really, was the price tag. Those clunky plastic boxes were cheap enough for a single Polish mother to afford one or two without too much pain. Today’s tech is sleeker, smarter, and painfully more expensive—yet strangely, the listening experience hasn’t gotten proportionally better. In fact, in its public form, it’s still a shrill mess.

 

And maybe that’s the point. Maybe every generation needs its low-fidelity revolution. Its moment of sonic rebellion, blaring distorted music through whatever gear it can get its hands on. Whether it’s cassettes or compressed streams, fake brands or trillion-dollar ones, the ritual is the same:

 

Hit play. Walk proud. Make some noise. Quality optional.