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Muzak/obscure music

Started by Clownbaby, September 12, 2018, 10:36:23 AM

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Clownbaby

Someone who worked at K Mart in the 80s uploaded a huge collection of K Mart muzak onto Archive.org

https://archive.org/details/attentionkmartshoppers

I find this sort of thing proper interesting, the cassete static and warping adds a special eerie something. There's also adverts and announcements in between the tunes.

Any more obscure music/muzak I should know about?


the

Hopefully this doesn't spill over into talking about library music, which we had a recent thread about here:

      Library music discussion

(... but library music is a whole universe of stuff, not just muzak anyway.)


I suppose there's two flavours of muzak: totally generic tunes, and re-recorded pop songs (to avoid paying performance fees for playing the original recordings in public).

There was a funny Morris bit in one of his radio hostings where he rips into a re-recorded version of Something About You by Michael Jackson. Has anyone got a link to that?

buzby

Quote from: the on September 12, 2018, 11:05:36 AM
I suppose there's two flavours of muzak: totally generic tunes, and re-recorded pop songs (to avoid paying performance fees for playing the original recordings in public).
There's the third option - PRS/PPL licence-free music. Instrumental rerecordings of popular tunes changed just enough so they can't be done for copyright infringement. Kwik Save used to have these as Albert Gubay was a notorious skinflint.

the

Well that would sort of fall into the first category wouldn't it? I refrained from using the word 'original', but I meant generic, possibly derivative, but legally 'original' tunes. Including pastiche.

a duncandisorderly

my one of these (revox four channel tape-recorder) came from the muzak corporation, where it was used (briefly) to make tapes for their systems.
if only it could talk...


riotinlagos

Here's a soul-sapping album once heard in welfare office waiting rooms, as a means to help motivate the unemployed to get their act together:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPJapuW1img

sevendaughters

i have this theory that all art hits a horizon where it loses all relation to the mechanisms of capital (whether pro- or anti-) and must eventually be taken, as much as possible given the inevitable interventions of soft nostalgia and the present situation, for what it is. it was easy to write muzak off back when it was a big thing and the butt of jokes from the prevailing rockism of comedians. i'm going to dip into this but i suspect that it won't take precisely because of its very nature as anti-splenetic and cod-serene, but will try and have an open mind too.


the

Quote from: the on September 12, 2018, 11:05:36 AMThere was a funny Morris bit in one of his radio hostings where he rips into a re-recorded version of Something About You by Michael Jackson. Has anyone got a link to that?

Found it:

Morris + in-store cover versions


Loads of other good stuff in that show by the way

non capisco

I really wish I could listen again to the in-store cover version of 'I'm So Excited' by The Pointer Sisters that me and my dad were left helpless with laughter at in the Dartford branch of Texas Homestores circa 1988. It was just some wildly off-key Kentish fishwives doing it. "AH'M ABAHT TO LOSE CONTWOLL AND I FINK I LOIKE IT!" Man, I really wish I could hear that again to confirm it wasn't just some dream that I had.


Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: a duncandisorderly on September 12, 2018, 12:19:33 PM
my one of these (revox four channel tape-recorder) came from the muzak corporation, where it was used (briefly) to make tapes for their systems.
if only it could talk...



Seeing as you've bought equipment into it, I quite enjoyed finding out how they did endless muzak before cassette and later cd changers did the job.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kCHx3_vu9M&t=17s

buzby

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on September 13, 2018, 01:13:15 AM
Seeing as you've bought equipment into it, I quite enjoyed finding out how they did endless muzak before cassette and later cd changers did the job.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kCHx3_vu9M&t=17s
I knew that would be a link to a Techmoan video before I clicked on it.
The Kwiksaves I worked in had Rediffusion Reditune background music systems:

The cartridges were unique to the system (like some other BGM systems Rediffusion originally used Fidelipac/NAB standard cartridges used for radio jingles, but then developed their own endless-loop cartridge format before moving to long-play cassettes) and were 4-track mono with about an hour's worth of music on them. We used to get replacement carts 3 or 4 times a year (it was a subscription service and the carts were posted in a return mailer). They contained royalty-free instrumental manglings of popular songs, modified just enough to escape scrutiny by the PRS. The first time a new cart got played, there was always a bit of a game between the staff trying to identify what the original tunes were.

There's a video of a slightly older version of the system, though the carts we got had a bit more up-to-date music on them

Flouncer

Quote from: riotinlagos on September 12, 2018, 12:22:13 PM
Here's a soul-sapping album once heard in welfare office waiting rooms, as a means to help motivate the unemployed to get their act together:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPJapuW1img

That's fucking incredible. I like how they felt that one of the songs was so good that they made separate versions for rednecks, black people and latinos. "Urban Contemporary" is a great euphemism. The DWP could do something like this with their hold music, but they seem to be happy with the punitive approach of sending people mad by making them listen to a ten second loop of Vivaldi for half an hour.

Chriddof

Quote from: Flouncer on September 14, 2018, 08:23:59 PM
That's fucking incredible. I like how they felt that one of the songs was so good that they made separate versions for rednecks, black people and latinos. "Urban Contemporary" is a great euphemism. The DWP could do something like this with their hold music, but they seem to be happy with the punitive approach of sending people mad by making them listen to a ten second loop of Vivaldi for half an hour.

I've made a vaporwave remix of the first track, with a vaguely apocalyptic feel:

https://youtu.be/jOSjwehTxAg

alan nagsworth

Yeah wow, that Work Makes the Difference album is stupendous. Thanks very much for posting it, riotinlagos.

flotemysost

Quote from: riotinlagos on September 12, 2018, 12:22:13 PM
Here's a soul-sapping album once heard in welfare office waiting rooms, as a means to help motivate the unemployed to get their act together:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPJapuW1img

Bloody hell, that's bleak.

Over the course of various call centre/office jobs I've developed a special affection for the default Cisco hold music (especially the part around 1 minute in, where it starts to resemble the soundtrack to one of those 80s soft porn type films Channel 5 used to show): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g4dkBF5anU

Not muzak, but on the topic of telephone holding music - I recently discovered that Lastminute.com use a short looped excerpt of Peggy Lee's 'He's a Tramp' from Lady and the Tramp, which seems like a cute, quirky choice but soon becomes maddening after the first three hundred rotations.

Fun library music fact: the Mastermind theme music is a library album track called 'Approaching Menace'.

Yussef Dent

Quote from: riotinlagos on September 12, 2018, 12:22:13 PM
Here's a soul-sapping album once heard in welfare office waiting rooms, as a means to help motivate the unemployed to get their act together:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPJapuW1img

That Detroit Techno influenced track 7 though has a nice use of cowbell trigger in it mind!

Spotify is littered with bad cover versions listed as "in the style of." The cafe in one of the places I work unwittingly chucked a load in a playlist, there was one of A-Ha's Take On Me where the guy singing it clearly couldn't get to the iconic high note properly and just piercingly screams it. A concerned customer thought someone had hurt themselves in the kitchen.


Phil_A

The KPMG corporate anthem was something of an internet meme long before people were calling them that. I think it's the combination of extreme blandness and disturbingly fascistic overtones that makes it so fascinating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCvKXgp-Awo

"A dream of power and energy" "Our vision of global strategy"

George White

Quote from: non capisco on September 12, 2018, 11:30:09 PM
I really wish I could listen again to the in-store cover version of 'I'm So Excited' by The Pointer Sisters that me and my dad were left helpless with laughter at in the Dartford branch of Texas Homestores circa 1988. It was just some wildly off-key Kentish fishwives doing it. "AH'M ABAHT TO LOSE CONTWOLL AND I FINK I LOIKE IT!" Man, I really wish I could hear that again to confirm it wasn't just some dream that I had.
In Ireland, there's a chain of department stores called Guiney's. One time, I was in one in I think either Galway or Cork, and a version of Jennifer Hudson's Spotlight came on, sung by someone with a thick Tallaght/Finglas accent (the Mrs. Brown's Boys accent) who couldn't pronounce solid consonants. Spohlih.

Quote from: the on September 12, 2018, 11:05:36 AM
There was a funny Morris bit in one of his radio hostings where he rips into a re-recorded version of Something About You by Michael Jackson. Has anyone got a link to that?

I was in a shopping centre this morning which was playing these re-recorded covers of old hits.  First one was Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry Be Happy", but the singer was obviously "doing the voice". Couldn't tell if he was blacked up as well.  Then it was an utterly wet reimagination of "Bohemian Rhapsody", fairly sure it was the same guy singing, but with all the musical prowess removed - the piano just hitting basic chords, no arpeggios, no crescendos, no soul. Ghastly. I left before it finished.

Poor sods who end up being contracted to do these recordings. That said, I didn't think the Michael Jackson one linked above was really that bad - he pretty much managed to capture the Wacko vocal mannerisms pretty well I thought (and it's not an easy voice to emulate, neither stylistically or in terms of range).

George White

Quote from: Darles Chickens on September 24, 2018, 05:03:06 PM
I was in a shopping centre this morning which was playing these re-recorded covers of old hits.  First one was Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry Be Happy", but the singer was obviously "doing the voice".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tmKSg5g8S0 Reminds me of this Pickwick classic. The girl singer with Reg is Clare "Great Gig in the Sky/Butterlfies theme" Torry. As Danny Baker said, young, gifted, and eh... two out of three ain't bad.



George White

Heard a particularly brutal Oirish version of Fairytale of New York.