#mdr g61

[2001hz]

Sony: MDR G61 Headphones Magazine ad print (1999) The Source Magazine n°112 Issue

[zegalba]

Sony: MDR G61 Headphones Ad (1999)

[dasswerke]

Sony, MDR-G61 Headphones, 1997.

[cosmicanger]

Sony: MDR G61 Headphones Magazine ad print (1999) The Source Magazine n°112 Issue

[yunyantokyo]

Sony Headphones MDR-G61

[kanataueda]

SONY MDR G61

[portablefrailty]

So...I actually know the model whose magnificent partially shaved head dominates this iconic ad. If memory serves, Asha was around 19 when this was taken. A photographer, intrigued by her signature skater/goth/geisha style and peculiar Trinidadian-Indian-Irish interracial good looks, picked her out of a crowd on a NYC sidewalk.

I met Asha a year later at Rutgers--my neighbor in a remote campus housing outpost for solos and transfers tucked into the woods on the edge of Cook Campus. She had stacks of these Sony ads in her room--they were plastering blown up versions onto bus stops on Eighth avenue.

I think she gave me one but I lost it.

She came to our parties in the early days. On slow nights she'd hang out and play spades. But from the first it was clear she was radically different from everyone else. Mason-Gross to her core, Asha not only lived for art, she wore it and at times was it. Though insanely hot at all times, she was a total chameleon--a freak, nerd, tomboy, slut--you never knew. She could show up in a form-fitting kimono one day, a skin tight Misfits t-shirt and ripped jeans the next, a lab coat and horn-rimmed glasses the day after.

She modeled from time to time. She tried Gogo dancing for about a week before realising an easy wad of twenties wasn't worth that kind of ogling. She was too smart, confident, creative and eclectic to be such an obvious sex object.

She made art out of statues of the Virgin Mary, latex condoms, glitter glue and beauty magazines. She did collage, sculpture, tintype photography, silk screen. She could stipple a ceiling, shoot a gonzo horror video and make gourmet caramels. Whatever she set her mind to, really.

She turned we mere provincials on to Fight Club, the Isle of Lost Children, and Portishead before any of the above were cool.

As two opinionated Jersyans with big egos and wildly different styles (even then I was into writer chic) we were never exactly friends. Our connection instead came to be based on our common friendship with Carrie--my future wife.

All three of us met at the same place and time. Carrie and I were deep conversationalists, into one on one chilling, George Harrison and walks out in nature. Carrie and Asha were partners in crime.

They dropped E and rolled through clubs in Alphabet City--Asha talking their way into VIP rooms and scaring off pervs with her fierce demeanor. They once flew to New Orleans on an Ann Rice kick hoping to find vampires but came back with only beads.

With me, Carrie went record hunting in Princeton and thrift shopping in Morristown, stoned strolling through the bamboo forest at Rutgers Gardens or foliage gawking in New Hampshire.

We were like two halves of Carrie's psyche.

After that first year, Carrie and Asha roomed together in a loft apartment above the best sushi place in New Brunswick. It was a place full of candles, Ikea shelves and gothic seating with a big screen TV in the living room and a concrete cherub sitting on the radiator. (Asha stole it from the grounds of some random mansion. Today it's in our back yard).

I was a regular at their place. I endured Carrie's escapades with Asha throughout those early friend/crush-with-benefits days, biting hard on my jealousy. Asha and I we were were definitely rivals then. When I finally got my status upgrade, though, we became something like friends. In the end the "Sony Girl," by then an artist and professor in her own right, was a guest at our wedding (toting a big ass bottle of Veuve Clicquot) who later bought up all the most expensive shit on the baby registry when our son was born.

Sony: MDR G61 Headphones Magazine ad print (1999) The Source Magazine n°112 Issue