Movie of the Week: Kmart Store Background Music & Announcement Cassettes

From the uploader: OK, I have to admit this this is a strange collection. In the late 1980's and early 1990's, I worked for Kmart behind the service desk and the store played specific pre-recorded cassettes issued by corporate. This was background music, or perhaps you could call it elevator music. Anyways, I saved these tapes from the trash during this period and this video shows you my extensive, odd collection.

Until around 1992, the cassettes were rotated monthly. Then, they were replaced weekly. Finally sometime around 1993, satellite programming was intoduced which eliminated the need for these tapes altogether.

The older tapes contain canned elevator music with instrumental renditions of songs. Then, the songs became completely mainstream around 1991. All of them have advertisements every few songs.

The monthly tapes are very, very, worn and rippled. That's becuase they ran for 14 hours a day, 7 days a week on auto-reverse. If you do the math assuming that each tape is 30 minutes per side, that's over 800 passes over a tape head each month.

Finally, one tape in the collection was from the Kmart 30th anniversary celebration on 3/1/92. This was a special day at the store where employees spent all night setting up for special promotions and extra excitement. It was a real fun day, the store was packed wall to wall, and I recall that the stores were asked to play the music at a much higher volume. The tape contains oldies and all sorts of fun facts from 1962. This may have been one of the last days where Kmart was in their heyday - really!

One last thing for you techies, the stores built in the early 1970's (such as Naperville, IL Ogden Mall Kmart #3066, Harwood Heights, IL #3503 and Bridgeview, IL #4381) orignally had Altec-Lansing amplifiers with high quality speakers throughout the store. When you applied a higher quality sounding source, the audio was extremely good. Later stores had cheaper speakers and eventually the amps were switched out with different ones usually lacking bass and treble controls.

The tapes are available for listening at Archive.org. Amazing!

Hat tip to Chart Attack.

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Kyle's Cassettes*: The Lovers by Lone Wolf

Lone Wolf - The Lovers (It Never Rains Records, 2012) by Kyle for Stupefaction

This is the type of record that I will commonly refer to as sounding very "VH1-esque." Some people may remember that before Behind the Music, Celebreality et al, VH1 used to show music videos that, "targeted a slightly older demographic . . . focusing on the lighter, softer side of popular music." A common block of videos might go something like this: Jan Hammer's "Crockett's Theme" followed by Simply Red's "Holding Back The Years" and then capped off with something along the lines of a live in-studio session with The Indigo Girls doing "Closer To Fine". When I was a kid I used to think that anything and everything on VH1 was, to put it succinctly, like really shitty. Of course when I was twelve all I wanted to listen to was JFA, The Dead Milkmen and maybe a little Metallica here and there. As I've grown older my tastes have matured and I have, in my own way, come to appreciate the more sophisticated nuance offered by the finer things in life such as early VH1 programming (like this for instance). So a little word of warning to all the twelve year old boys out there: you're probably not going to like the new Lone Wolf record, everyone else please keep reading.

A couple of adjectives that might aptly describe The Lovers: sprawling, sophisticated, atmospheric, sparse, orchestral, conceptual and so on and so on. People don't really use the term "adult oriented contemporary" anymore when referring to music, at least not without a healthy dose of irony. In 2012 however people will casually use the phrase "post-rock" without feeling even the slightest bit awkward. Post-rock is what you listen to when the girl that you thought you were going to ask to marry you dumps you, it's what you listen to on the flight to Europe for your first time using real luggage in lieu of some patch covered hiking rucksack. Post-rock is what's playing at the wine bar during happy hour when you think to yourself, "I'm finally doing it right." So call it whatever you want,VH1 or not, but one thing is for sure: this is music for adults.

A couple of analogies that might best illustrate what The Lovers actually sounds like: it sort of sounds like Tears For Fears producing a nick nicely album. What it really sounds like though is a busier version of either of the last two Talk Talk records. On the surface that might sound a little dismissive I realize, however it's meant as a compliment. In fact if Paul Marshall were to make an entire career out of trying to pick up the pieces that Mark Hollis left scattered about he'd still be doing a million times better than most of the bands out there that seem to release a record on the internet about every fifteen minutes. So I say go for it Pauly, you're already on the cover of this record with your shirt off, go ahead and take your pants off too. Get comfortable and let it all hang out, light some incense, get a woodwind section and some tinny sounding muted trumpets. Fuck it, call you're next record The Spirit of Laughing because you know what? Mark Hollis is retired, as in like he isn't going to make anymore records. So no bother worrying amigo, the field advantage is yours. There's no shame in having influences except when you don't pay them the full respect they deserve. So quit fucking about and just make the record that, while I can't speak for everyone, I at least want to hear. 

(*Editor's note: No, this album is not available on cassette, but Kyle's column is called Kyle's Cassettes, so we're sticking with it.)

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The Descendents

Kyle's Cassettes: Kashif - Condition of the Heart

The following was inspired by Kashif's Condition of the Heart (Arista Records, 1985):

I used to work with this bald headed chick that I always mentally referred to as ‘Curly’. I realize that this, at its absolute best, might seem only slightly juvenile, however I never actually called her this to her face nor did I ever do so behind her back amongst other free-thinking, like minded colleagues. I’d like to think that my character is not comprised of an entirely blasé fabric, but I guess, if it’s not already apparent, that it is actually pretty debatable.

I should probably also make it clear that her hairless existence wasn't exactly by choice, rather it was the result of a fairly circumstantial series of events. It had something to do with a particularly aggressive set of dreadlocks she had in the late nineties.  Apparently you can wrap them too tight and if your not careful you can end up on what I like to call a, “permanent dreadlock holiday.” 

This was her story at least and I’m no barber or anything so I just took it at face value because it just didn’t seem right to question that sort of alibi. The finer tenets of African American hair care leave me feeling, how should I put it, out of my depth. Probably the less said about it the better. Continued after the jump...

Kyle's Cassettes: Skip Spence - Oar

Alexander “Skip” Spence
Oar
1969 Columbia

Usually when most folks start nearing the end of their twenties they start saying things like, “Oh, I would never take acid again. Maybe some mushrooms, but I just don’t think I could handle acid anymore.” And they’re probably right, their fragile psyches would crumble into a million shattered splinters on a healthy hit of clean window pane. It sucks that most people are a bunch of pussies, but then again what are you gonna do?

At any rate, what this kind of conversation begs to question is what exactly would happen if you did just keep on dropping tabs like it weren’t no big deal? Answer: Oar. This is the biggest, baddest, axe-murdering, double-barreled daddy of lost American classics.

A little back story: In 1968 Alexander Skip Spence disappeared into the New York City night with a black witch that filled his head up with an economy sized dose of high grade LSD. Subsequently he tried to kill one of his band mates and then got the padded cell treatment for six months in Bellvue. Upon his release from the hospital he rode his motorcycle down to Nashville in his pajamas and recorded this way-the-far-fuck-out piece of Americana. More than anything this album is about someone humping out past any sort of acceptable boundaries with no promise of return. This shit is no joke. And it sounds amazing too, all haggle toothed and grizzled, slightly panicked, but riding it out all the same.

Spence had founded the Moby Grape and had been in the Jefferson Airplane, but he never really put out anything after Oar. He died of lung cancer in 1999. At the time he was living in a trailer in Northern California all strung out on coke and heroin. Most people probably think this guy was a total loser, but I say definitely not. Most people work their nuts off so that their children will grow up to hate them and they can live in some retirement community on a golf course. Spence may not have been lunching on the back nine, but this dude did more than most fools even talk about doing. This is what paying the price sounds like. Forget about it.

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Kyle's Cassettes: The Smiths - Louder Than Bombs

 

The Smiths
Louder Than Bombs
1987 Sire

Hands down this is probably the weirdest tape that I own. I came across someone’s entire collection of Smiths tapes a while back and bought them all because, even though I own them all on LP, it was like what the fuck? It’s a no brainer right, I mean it’s like a no duh situation because it’s THE SMITHS, you just got to have it.

Whatever though. I originally intended to use these as visual artifacts more than actual audio documents. However, when my girlfriend and I moved in together there were like two weeks when my records, still packed up, were un-playable. All we had was an old AM/FM stereo with a tape player. And presto: I was all, ”Wait a minute dear, let me just dig out my entire collection of Smiths tapes to get us through these challenging first few of weeks co-habitation.”

In retrospect The Smiths may have saved what has turned out to be the greatest relationship of my life. I should write Morrissey a letter, but I probably won’t because I’m not one of those fans that brings flowers to his shows and then cry all over the place when he starts playing “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.” I’m just not going out like that. But whatever, I’m not even to the point about how weird this tape is.

By the time I got around to putting Louder Than Bombs on I was pretty deep into the zone, as in like I didn’t want to listen to anything non-Smiths related at that point. So you could imagine my surprise when side two clicked on and I was all juiced to hear “Ask,” “Golden Lights,” etc. and Herb Alpert came on. Apparently whoever had owned this tape prior to me had jammed some little bits of paper into the little divots on top of the tape, thereby making it a recordable cassette. With this industriously won freedom they chose to record Herb Alpert’s 1979 jazz/instrumental pop/disco opus Rise. It was, given my circumstantial desolation, an unnerving moment for me, but I let it ride.

Rise is a pretty tight album on its own terms, a little soft here and there, but overall a pretty smooth affair. Biggy actually sampled the title cut for “Hypnotize.” So maybe you’re feeling me now. This is all kind of beside the point though. The point is that of all of the records in the world to put together why would you choose these two? I mean is this some sort of statement or is it just the mad rambling of some musical savant? The shit is post-modern. Whatever the case, this is the sort of thing that gives me hope. Of all the things in this world that there are to know you can never know them all and there is a certain beauty in that notion. This tape is somehow the realization of that very notion made physical. Many things in this world are more rare than you might realize.

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Kyle's Cassettes: Jean Luc Ponty - Mystical Adventures

Jean-Luc Ponty
Mystical Adventures
1982 Atlantic

So, not by even a long shot is this my favorite JLP joint. This one is strictly for Pajama Jack and all his feel good friends. This is their motivational nectar right here. I mean even hippies got shit to do and it can be hard to get those sun salutations done, make it to the food co-op to pick up the live cultures for your homemade yogurt and polish the crystal collection all in time to make it for a little light Reiki sesh. I mean when you got a full day these are the types of jams that will help you get that hustle on.

I don’t want to make this tape sound all sandalwood and microbrew because it kind of has a dark side too. If Knight Rider had of been a hot air balloon instead of that Pontiac this would have been its soundtrack. This tape is for those days when one pot of Herba Maté simply won’t do the trick.

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Kyle's Cassettes: Brian Eno - Before and After Science

Brian Eno
Before and After Science
1977 EG

I found this tape in a thrift store behind a Chinese restaurant while on a road trip through New Mexico with my girlfriend. The word is that Eno wrote over 100 songs for this album and these ten jams are the ones that made the cut. Eno called this collection of songs ‘Ocean’ music and that I found the tape at the bottom of an ancient dried up ocean is suggestive at the very least. There is a saying that I heard once, “When you get to be where you are supposed to be it will be pretty obvious.” Trust that.

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Kyle's Cassettes: Robert Wyatt - Nothing Can Stop Us

Robert Wyatt

Nothing Can Stop Us

1986 Gramavision

A lot of kids think that the whole 80’s British art school scene was all about the Cure and hairspray, but if you want to really get down to some brass tacks, no non-sense business then this is probably more where it’s at. 

Check it: moping around your seaside Bristol studio trying to work out some issues regarding feminine identity in your politico-abstract-expressionist paintings while smoking a little Bali Shagg mixed with some low-grade sensi and this is jamming on the box in the back ground. That beret with the trench coat ensemble was working for you. I mean come on, you wish your mom was this cool.

All what have you aside, this is a pretty special little tape. In 1973 Wyatt fell out of a window at a party and was left in a wheelchair. He spent the rest of the seventies laid up on the outskirts of London in a flat that Julie Christie gave him marinating on everything from disco and soul to bebop and Chilean folk songs. When he resurfaced in the 80’s this is what he came through with. These jams are hella frail in a soulful- spooked-out-vibes kind of way. These songs are about struggle and sincerity and the inherent pitfalls there with in. This tape always makes me feel like everything is going to be all right.

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Kyle's Cassettes: Jean Michel Jarre - Les Concerts En Chine

 

Jean-Michel Jarre
Les Concerts En Chine
1982 Disques Dreyfus

So I’m really into juicing right now. I realize that makes me sound like some sort of new age burn out on a power cleanse that’s constantly looking for a nearby AA meeting, but what can I say? I’m way the fuck into beta-carotenes and anti-oxidants and all that other stupid shit. Anyways, I wouldn’t go breaking my neck looking for this Jean-Michel Jarre tape, but it does have a few mega-heavy synth cuts on it. The point is that this is like the perfect music for juicing, it’s got a real clean living type of vibe that will get you amped to chop and prepare all your veggies and what not. On some of the heavier tracks you can almost actually feel your body metabolizing the minerals and nutrients as you drink the juice. It’s pretty trippy.

Musically I’m pretty sure Daft Punk was into this record at some point or another because it sounds like something they wish they had made. This guy that I knew from back in high school sort of turned me onto this record. I remember running into him on Avenue A back in like 2001 or something like that and he was with this real man-ish looking German girl in a white leather jacket, who I’m sure was like Peaches older uglier sister or something and he was carrying around a VHS copy of The Last Unicorn that he was purportedly reviewing for some unnamed magazine. It was pretty rich.

Anyways, I realize that this review is maybe a little off balance in terms of making any sort of relational sense, but I guess what I’m trying to say is that this is a complex record that doesn’t offer any easy answers. What the fuck do you want from it anyways? It’s just a tape.

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Kyle's Cassettes: Felt - The Splendor of Fear/Crumbling the Antiseptic Beauty

Felt

The Splendor of Fear/Crumbling the Antiseptic Beauty

1984 Cherry Red
 

So if your anything like me your probably just about all stocked up on all these fucking goons being so overly over the top sincere about their love for The Smiths and any other piece of dog shit Morrissey narrowly avoided stepping into on a sidewalk. I mean I really couldn’t give less of a shit about how his lyrics have touched you so deeply and that’s why you’ve been a vegetarian since you were like two years old. Don’t get me wrong I love The Smiths and all; when I’m out with my old lady at some tastefully understated Brooklyn bistro and they come on I don’t complain. I just chew my food and mentally appreciate it without broadcasting 1400 tweets about it or worse, start crying all over my arugula salad.  Seriously kids the well is fucking dry. So that being the case, the question begs to be asked: What formerly over-looked, soft-ass British shit is there left to drool all over? Answer: Felt.

Not only is Felt about a hundred times cooler than the Smiths, but their front man could easily kick the shit out of Morrissey (which probably isn’t saying much, but the Mozzer is fond of ripping his shirt off about 19 times per song in the live show and I have to admit that for an older bloak he does look like he probably still works out (I wonder what he’s maxing out at on the bench?).) Anyhoos, Lawrence (yes they both go by single ambiguous monikers), to my mind at least, always had a better sense of style, taste and understatement. I’ll put it like this: Morrissey is to David Johansen as Lawrence is to Tom Verlaine. On one side you’ve got French symbolist poetry and on the other you’ve got Buster Poindexter, you do the math.

Now if you haven’t heard of Felt don’t worry you’re not alone. I scored this tape from a thrift store in Chelsea for like 50 cents and when I took it to the counter the girl was all, “this looks cool, what is it?” and I sort of mumbled something about it being a sort of obscure eighties British group and she just gave me a blank stare. Then, and this is the best part, I said that it was one of the guys from Belle & Sebastian’s favorite groups of all time and she said, “I’ve never heard of them either.” At which point my jaw probably visibly unhinged it’s self in snobbish aghast and I was like, “I can’t help you,” and just chirped out of there. Whatever though because the point is that there is still time for you to find every demo that Felt ever committed to tape and whatever shite quality videos and live performances you can mine up on youtube and basically pretend that you’ve been into them since you were nine years old and start a band called I Worship The Crystal Balls of Vasco de Gama. Or whatever the fuck it is you kids do today. Just check out the fucking band, alright? Enough already. 

"Mexican Bandits" from The Splendor of Fear:


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Kyle's Cassettes: Brotherhood of Lizards

This is the first in an occasional, possibly limited, or not, series of reviews by my pal, Kyle, from Trustzine. He only listens to & writes about cassettes. It works for him...I can dig it.

Brotherhood of Lizards
S/T
1988 BRUV 1

So like I will be the first to admit that I can get a little snobby at times. It's not like I'm cruising around in a chauffeured Rolls asking my homies if I can borrow some fucking mustard, it's just that, generally speaking, I can usually scope out a situation with relative ease and an economy of time. I'll put it like this: I've crawled down into some pretty damp holes looking for Shalamar 12"s, but I aint trying to waste my time at your Aunt Nancy's garage sale going through her Amy Grant LPs. Nothing against Amy Grant, I'm just saying.

Anyhoos, about a year ago some fools opened up a pretty accurate approximation of your Aunt Deborah's yard sale at the end of my block, the only catch is that it's indoors. They sell a bunch of used up tired shit that they've cobbled together from god fucking knows where (my guess is New Jersey). It's basically an assortment of used books, VHS tapes, DVDs, records and what apparently is their raison d'etre: Garbage Pail Kids. If you don't know what those are I won't waste your time, just look that shit up or actually don't even bother because its just some weak ass shit, end of point. But I digress. When I first came upon this 'store' I was pretty juiced to say the least because it looked like it had real dollar bin types of potential. So it was to my major chagrin when I stepped into the joint and a) the records were all priced at a flat five bucks b) the records turned out to be a mix of Babbs Striesand and Broadway show tunes and then c) I had to listen to the unwashed scrub behind the counter blather on about how women don't understand him and that's why he doesn't even bother trying to date women so his sister can go fuck herself and about the overall underestimated importance/lack of understanding/appreciation when it comes to the greatness of garbage pail kids. I mean I was all like, "could this pathetic cliché be anymore depressing?" and before I could even answer myself I thought, "I should bail before I catch the nerds from this guy." Literally this guy was harshing my mellow with such an unnerving ease that I fucking high tailed it out of there and after wards I will confess to feeling straight up shook.

In the world of record collecting these types of dudes serve the purpose of acting as a warning not to let your already super nerdy obsessions get too out of hand or else you might find yourself carrying out an ultra depressing existence. It's a fucking fine line sometimes. Anyways, long story short I put the fucking kibosh on this dude and his booger-ass store like real quick. I kept this up for about a year until one day I was walking by with my girl and I just happened to notice that they had tapes in the back of the store, like a lot of them. I swear to god I'm part fucking hound dog when it comes to this shit. Whatever though, I told my girl to go ahead and just meet me back at the store in like 30 minutes. I was still pretty wary of going back into this dork lair, but I was just like "fuck it."

So like 30 minutes rolled by and my girl came back to scoop me up and I pathetically asked her to give me just a few more minutes during which time I started blatantly making fun of the sealed Temple of the Dog tapes. My girl was laughing, but she was really kind of saying, "can we just get the fuck out of here. Please." Like she wasn't really asking a question, you know what I mean? It was at this point that I stopped making fun of the Julianna Hatfield tapes and shut the fuck up because I came across what appeared to be an original Brotherhood of Lizards tape. I seriously almost dooked my jock when I saw this tape, but it was actually way funnier than that because even though there was no one even in the store I started whispering because I was afraid that someone might see what I had found and try and snatch it away from me. Super huge chance of that happening right? And just when I thought I couldn't get any more pathetic I realized I didn't have any cash on me to actually purchase the tape at which point I had to ask my girl if I could borrow the two bucks from her.

As rare as this tape is and as good as it sounds none of it is shit compared to the super rare chance that I was given to see myself exactly as I am or at least as I was in that moment. I mean this tape did a lot more than level out my weak ass ego, it brought perspective and insight into my life. I don't think that I ever actually consciously thought that I was better than the dude who ran this store, but I was operating on more than a few assumptions. I'm not saying that that was cool or anything, but me finding this tape in these particular circumstances brought to light the fact that we are all just animals searching for any little shiny objects that might bring us joy and happiness. In short we are all pretty much the same no matter how different or special we think we are, that we are all in this thing together and that we have to find happiness wherever it might exist. This might all sound super goofy, but I was way into it. Being happy is easier than you think if you just let it happen.

Grab it here.