Khakis Swing

July 6, 2017 3:31 PM

GAP in-store playlists from 1992-2006
posted by The Whelk (23 comments total)

On a semi-related note. I remember the time in the late 90s that Gap tried to sell cologne that smelled like grass. And while I don't deny that freshly mowed grass is a non-offensive smell, I'm puzzled as to why someone would want to use that scent as a cologne.
posted by Fizz at 3:40 PM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

Previously, kamrt in-store radio
posted by rebent at 3:44 PM on July 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

But back to the topic on hand. This is very cool. I'm sure someone has turned this into a Spotify playlist.
posted by Fizz at 3:46 PM on July 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

And while I don't deny that freshly mowed grass is a non-offensive smell

It is? It's always struck me as love or hate. (count me on the side of hate)
posted by Automocar at 3:50 PM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm puzzled as to why someone would want to use that scent as a cologne.

It was a thing in the 90s. Cf. Demeter's Dirt, Grass, and Tomato, which came out in 1996.
posted by apricot at 3:58 PM on July 6, 2017 [8 favorites]

We were just talking about Those Swinging NIneties the other night! I would love to play these at Middle Aged Dinner Parties. I have a few in-store playlist cassettes from a 1993/1994 Red Lobster, but I'm sure that they are pretty square versus The Gap.

I may also still have a bunch of 1989/1990 Casey's Top 40.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 4:02 PM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

Nothing like walking into the Gap and learning your favorite band had a new single (March 1997, James' "She's a Star"). Through the vagaries of distribution I couldn't get my hands on a copy of the CD for like three months after that. I thought I must have dreamed it.
posted by fedward at 4:06 PM on July 6, 2017 [3 favorites]

We were just talking about Those Swinging NIneties the other night! I

And now I'm thinking about how the Swing Kids, fits into this particular zeitgeist.
posted by Fizz at 4:08 PM on July 6, 2017

Hey, all right, World Party in June 92!
posted by Chrysostom at 4:52 PM on July 6, 2017 [3 favorites]

On a semi-related note. I remember the time in the late 90s that Gap tried to sell cologne that smelled like grass. And while I don't deny that freshly mowed grass is a non-offensive smell, I'm puzzled as to why someone would want to use that scent as a cologne.

I had the Grass body spray. I don't know why, I think it's literally the only fragrance I've purchased in my entire life, and I was at most a tween at the time. I loved it. I saved it for so long that by the time I had used it all I remember searching on Google to see if there was any way to obtain dead stock.
posted by telegraph at 5:44 PM on July 6, 2017 [6 favorites]

I don't even think I bought the Grass perfume (although I think I bought one of the others?) and I got the most incredible sensory hit from reading Fizz' comment. I spent a lot of time in the Gap in the late 90's, I guess.
posted by kalimac at 6:39 PM on July 6, 2017

Count me in as a Grass perfume fan. I highly recommend Goest's Realism as a smell-placement.
posted by holyrood at 6:54 PM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

Speaking of 90s fragrances, Abercrombie & Fitch is selling Woods again, in a throwback bottle. My roommate called it "trees."
posted by fedward at 7:14 PM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

I was walking in woods on the 4th that smelled like Sassafras, although I didn't see any. Is that scent available anywhere?
posted by rebent at 7:21 PM on July 6, 2017

The Gap was oddly into XTC but oddly cold toward Skylarking?
posted by Beardman at 7:27 PM on July 6, 2017 [3 favorites]

Andrew Sullivan was a gap model? What?
posted by srboisvert at 7:43 PM on July 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

When my wife and I were first dating, 25 years ago, we went to a movie at a cheap theater in an largely abandoned mall. We had to walk past a group of teenagers sitting on some steps and once we were about 5 feet past them one of them said "Theeeee Gaaaaap".

That was the moment when I realized I wasn't young anymore.
posted by srboisvert at 7:52 PM on July 6, 2017 [5 favorites]

For a while in the early 00's, Gap would give you a free promotional CD with larger purchases. The one I have is surprisingly good. It's a cover album by a lot of then well-known artists covering some of their favorite songs.
posted by KGMoney at 3:59 AM on July 7, 2017

I worked at the Gap slightly before this era, maybe 89-90, so I'm sad the playlists don't go back that far. I was especially fond of the Christmas one from that era - it had some great, non-cliched holiday tunes. Whoever programmed them must have had a lot of fun. I remember being very suspicious of the psychographic efforts these playlists represented - it seemed Big Brotherish as compared to radio, but that was before the widespread dominance of ClearChannel, Starbucks' playlists, iTunes, and curated playlists of all sorts. Today we take for granted that a musical profile can be data-driven and controlled by marketing geniuses - at the time, that was new, and the Gap was at the forefront of it. Listening to the music was one of the only actually good things about working there.
posted by Miko at 6:00 AM on July 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

I had a pretty good Christmas CD that was a giveaway from Pier 1 Imports.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:59 AM on July 7, 2017

I worked at Subway for a few months in 1997, and the piped-in music was so bad that I very distinctly remember that the best song I heard the entire time I was there was "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" by The Police. I was allowed to turn the music off if I wanted to, and one time during a quiet stretch I did and learned that the only thing worse than a steady diet of The Soft Rock Hits Of Yesterday and Today was the sound of several electrical appliances humming away.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:34 AM on July 7, 2017 [2 favorites]

For a long stretch in the early/mid-2000s, "Kiss from a Rose" would be playing every. single. time. I stepped inside a CVS.

Anyway, yeah, this Gap mix seems surprisingly tolerable by comparison with most other piped Muzak selections.
posted by tobascodagama at 9:00 AM on July 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

I used to work for one of the companies that Gap Corp used for all their in-store playlists across all brands for a long time... by the time I worked there (August 2001 to spring 2003) they'd switched to a different company although we did still dispatch service calls for specific equipment at Old Navy stores. I guess some stores had CD listening booths shaped like rocket ships, because the service guidelines for Old Navy calls said something like "check these specific things if the caller reports no sound in their rocket ship", which was amusing. Anyway, while I worked there we still did the custom monthly playlists for stores like Abercrombie & Fitch, Wet Seal, Contempo Casuals, Express, Limited, Victoria's Secret... basically, almost every store in your average 90's mall, plus the restaurants like Olive Garden and Red Lobster and Romano's Macaroni Grill and on and on and on. We got a LOT of calls from store managers who'd lost the playlist insert for any given month's tape and had a shopper desperate to learn the name of a song they'd just heard... and so many calls from late November to late December BEGGING for anything other than the Christmas music that their corporate office had selected. Those are the ones that always made me feel the worst for the poor folks working retail, having to listen to the same godforsaken 4 hour tape all day, every day, for over a month. All you former retail folks, I'm SO SORRY ABOUT THE CHRISTMAS MUSIC HELL.
posted by palomar at 12:03 PM on July 7, 2017 [6 favorites]