Check out Attention Kmart Choppers. https://juicytheemissary.bandcamp.com/album/attention-kmart-...
Attention K-Mart Shoppers: Piped Music Collection on the Internet Archive
51–60 of 101 posts
Re: Attention K-Mart Shoppers: Piped Music Collection on the Internet Archive
#52I've acquired a lot of 60's and 70's easy listening music from thrift stores. Bert Kampfert, Ray Conniff, Jackie Gleason, etc. I figure it's coming from estate sales.
Walter, you can't really do it anymore, but I used to get answering machine tapes from The Bins and would drive around portland listening to peoples old "voice mail"
Re: Attention K-Mart Shoppers: Piped Music Collection on the Internet Archive
#53Captain Pedantic checking in to remind our viewers that at a quick glance this does not appear to be Muzak (EDIT: no, that is definitely not Muzak), but rather ambient music played in K-Mart stores. Muzak is a specific brand of ambient music, which appears to suffer the same fate as Kleenex and Xerox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzak That page is worth a read, if only for the means of distribution used over the ye…
I worked at a restaurant that did have it and they appeared to be magnificent 16 track tapes (or whatever the alpha male of the 8-track family was). They looked like they could fit a full LP.
The YouTuber "techmoan" has done a few videos on the hardware that ran various background music systems, and one that stands out is the 3M Cantata, which had some massive tape cartridges https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WQbJ0VFrFQ
There are also systems with smaller cartridges https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_5DPvPiUMY
Stacks of vinyl records https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kCHx3_vu9M
And standard cassette tapes running at a lower speed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV2EhEd46BY
Re: Attention K-Mart Shoppers: Piped Music Collection on the Internet Archive
#54Another popular background music system was sold by Seeburg (the jukebox manufacturer). You bought a Seeburg 1000 Background Music System and then subscribed to a service that mailed you double-sided vinyl records that were stacked into the unit and played back continuously. Records were mailed back at the end of a period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeburg_1000
There's a streaming website for you to enjoy during your workday: https://seeburg1000.com/
Re: Attention K-Mart Shoppers: Piped Music Collection on the Internet Archive
#55Oh man. Exurban wastelands of Nowhere, America. Endless fluorescent popcorn ceilings and despair. Is there another word for nostalgia, where instead of missing something you remember fondly, you are grateful to have escaped from something that seemed to drain your soul? I remember these places having an almost Dementor-like effect on me long before I was old enough to be a coastal elite or a classist or an architecture snob or whatever.
Re: Attention K-Mart Shoppers: Piped Music Collection on the Internet Archive
#56This is childhood right here.
Re: Attention K-Mart Shoppers: Piped Music Collection on the Internet Archive
#57I've acquired a lot of 60's and 70's easy listening music from thrift stores. Bert Kampfert, Ray Conniff, Jackie Gleason, etc. I figure it's coming from estate sales.
Walter, you can't really do it anymore, but I used to get answering machine tapes from The Bins and would drive around portland listening to peoples old "voice mail"
I found my 20 year old answering machine in the basement a while back, and it was fun listening to the ancient messages on the tape.
Re: Attention K-Mart Shoppers: Piped Music Collection on the Internet Archive
#58Re: Attention K-Mart Shoppers: Piped Music Collection on the Internet Archive
#59I was just thinking about this a few days ago and even made a note to go look them up on archive.org. I think someone shared this a few years ago and it got picked up by buzzfeed (or whatever).
When I worked retail we had this but it was a mini-cd system that looked like a GameCube. My boss was a little bit forced into investing in it because a customer was furious that a P!nk song on the radio had the word "ass" or "hell" in the lyrics. The shuffle on that thing was horrible, sometimes the same song would come up twice and most evenings we just kept it off.
Re: Attention K-Mart Shoppers: Piped Music Collection on the Internet Archive
#60I've acquired a lot of 60's and 70's easy listening music from thrift stores. Bert Kampfert, Ray Conniff, Jackie Gleason, etc. I figure it's coming from estate sales.
henry mancini, burt bacharach, piero piccioni, herb alpert (lol), ...