🎼 Ken's Music, Off-Beat Music, and TDK Cassettes: Custom Playlists and Music Collection of my teens that defined my music "choice”

Like any other teenager, I had an absolute love for music. But back then, it wasn’t the age of digitally remastered, instant high-quality streaming. It was the immersive era of sliding a cassette tape into players, decks, music centers, and boomboxes, and then cranking Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s “Dum Mast Qalandar” as loud as it could go—long before the age of noise-canceling headphones. I am sure my neighbors thoroughly appreciated my great taste in music, as I graciously let them listen along to my collection from time to time.

Lahore was home to some fantastic music shops. Spots like Ken’s Music in Gulberg, Saifi’s 99 Music (which deserves a whole separate post of its own), Sound Creations, and Off-Beat in Fortress Stadium were our sacred go-to hubs for discovering new releases.

We would drop in to buy complete artist albums as soon as they were released, or—more often than not—we would hand over a custom list of songs to be recorded in the exact order we wanted. We called it getting a tape of our “choice.” That was how you built a genuine, handcrafted playlist back in the day.

So many vivid memories are tied to this era of musical discovery, but they all converge on one truth: it was a truly special way to experience and cherish music. It was during these glory days that I bought my very first Madonna poster after hearing “Holiday” for the first time.

Decades later, I still keep a few of those original cassettes, and I cherish them immensely!