Grab an Orange Julius, and wait for your mom by the Pennys

May 2, 2019 7:04 AM

Mall Music Muzak - Mall Of 1974 "This music was provided on LP's and was played to the general public in shopping malls, supermarkets, clothing stores and just about any other retail related environment. "
posted by Katemonkey (40 comments total)

This is awesome and reminds me strongly of those KMart Radio archives!

Unrelated: does anyone else think that Orange Vanilla Coke tastes kind of like Orange Julius?
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:06 AM on May 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm such a sucker for this music, except I keep expecting the big electronic drumbeats to start, and then they never do.
posted by mittens at 7:07 AM on May 2, 2019 [7 favorites]

I should have included that I found it on r/ObscureMedia, which is a tiny gem in a large slurry pit.
posted by Katemonkey at 7:14 AM on May 2, 2019 [9 favorites]

I'm such a sucker for this music, except I keep expecting the big electronic drumbeats to start, and then they never do.

John Kricfalusi being a piece-of-shit aside, my "contemporary" go-to for this stuff is The production music from Ren and Stimpy
posted by mikelieman at 7:16 AM on May 2, 2019 [3 favorites]

Wow, this evokes a very specific Lawrence Welk-anschauung for me.

Someday in the future when someone begins their dissertation on the Atmospheric Acoustics of Performative Whiteness in Late 20th Century America, this playlist should be on repeat.
posted by Chrischris at 7:22 AM on May 2, 2019 [7 favorites]

If you love old background music you should stop by Seeburg1000.com and fire up a stream.

Seeburg (the jukebox company) sold the background music systems *and* the records that went on them from 1959 to 1986. It's great stuff.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:23 AM on May 2, 2019 [10 favorites]

I vaguely recall malls still doing this in the early 80s. And even then only a few high end department stores.

Nowadays malls feel very ghostly and depressing. I feel for kiosk workers who must often be bored and worried about grinding out the day and hoping they earn enough to justify paying the retail space they've leased out.

Malls feel like dead spaces.
posted by Fizz at 7:27 AM on May 2, 2019 [7 favorites]

I remember when I first moved to Bangkok, I sometimes had lunch on the bottom floor of the Siam Paragon. It was, and possibly still is the swankiest mall in Thailand. It's where Emirati families might go while on holiday to quickly pick up an Hermes bag or a an extra Rolex.

Anyway, some smartass managed to get multiple instances the theme from the movie Brazil into the muzak rotation. It really added to the hallucinatory nature of the whole experience to constantly hear the theme being played over and over again for about 1 year.

(This is also when there were a few bombings in the malls in the area, so that wasn't completely lost on me either.)
posted by Telf at 7:59 AM on May 2, 2019 [8 favorites]

I am walking through Sears with my mother, where she will buy my polyester "Husky" "jeans" for the upcoming school year. Luckily, I was pre-shame.

I love the titles:

01 Mall Open - 01:59
02 Sale Of The Seventies - 02:16
03 Third Floor Spending Spree - 02:34
04 Food Court Calling - 02:24
05 Grocery Grabbing - 02:59
06 The Fountain Of Life - 03:24
07 Phonebooth Call To Home - 02:52
08 Restroom Retreat - 03:04 --- that's just "Volare"!
09 Impulse Purchase (Part 1) - 03:25
10 Cash Or Cheque - 02:58 --- "Cheque"? Is this record Canadian?
11 Checkout 2 Now Open - 01:59
12 Impulse Purchase (Part 2) - 03:01
13 Parking Lot Lost - 02:52 -- Wait a second. "At Seventeen" wasn't released until August 1975. What's this "Mall Of 1974" stuff?
14 Mall Closed - 02:20
posted by pracowity at 8:02 AM on May 2, 2019 [6 favorites]

Soundtrack of my childhood
posted by SonInLawOfSam at 8:03 AM on May 2, 2019 [3 favorites]

This sounds like some of the most nostalgic music ever and I haven't even lived in the US. Also, it has a haunting quality to it - maybe it's the relentless cheerfulness? - that makes it perfect for horror movies.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 8:12 AM on May 2, 2019 [4 favorites]

Once upon a time, someone posted this question to AskMe:

I'm a boring person and I want boring music to go with my life.

On that day, I began my descent into insanity journey into the sublime world of library music. Sys Rq and eschatfische, thank you.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 8:17 AM on May 2, 2019 [7 favorites]

I'm immediately led to think of Dan Bell, archivist of decay.
posted by sydnius at 8:25 AM on May 2, 2019 [3 favorites]

Seeburg (the jukebox company) sold the background music systems *and* the records that went on them from 1959 to 1986. It's great stuff.

Retro tech YouTuber Techmoan did a two part video on the Seeburg BMS, as well as one on 3M's competing Cantata 700 system.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:31 AM on May 2, 2019 [3 favorites]

I was just idly wondering when rock became the dominant music in so many public spaces.
posted by smelendez at 8:33 AM on May 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

This is SO making an appearance in my GURPS Psionics/Horror campaign set in the Midwest in 1981.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 8:38 AM on May 2, 2019 [11 favorites]

I started to become conscious in the late 80s, early 90s and I have no memory of this type of music except from tv reruns. By the time I started paying attention it was pop music/oldies everywhere.
posted by bleep at 8:45 AM on May 2, 2019

This was what was playing when my parents or grandparents probably thought to themselves, "uh-oh, this means I'm the target demo for this mall, and this is the music they think i wanna hear."

Actually my parents probably didn't think that at the time, but whenever I hear "Heart of Glass" in the drugstore or supermarket, which is often, I think that.

40 years from now, our kids and grandkids will think Blondie is just about like this.

That said, this will be on the hallway computer in my office today. Thanks for posting it! It brings me back to my mall-ridden childhood. (We had two malls in town, and I remember when they turned the second one from a plaza into a mall by putting a roof on it. That was about 1973, and they had an Orange Julius across from the Radio Shack, next to the Ann & Hope, and as far away from Lechmere as possible.)
posted by not_on_display at 8:53 AM on May 2, 2019 [3 favorites]

This reminds me of working at the greeting card kiosk for D. H. Holmes in Lakeside Mall in Metairie, LA in the early '80s. The kiosk was in the mall just outside of the entrance to the store. This was the awful soundtrack of the days when I got sent to greeting card hell.

The greeting card kiosk never had any business. It was so boring. Plus it was right outside of a Kresge's with a lunch counter so the food smells were always taunting me. The candy was visible just inside the door of Kresge's and that added to the torture.

The only benefits were: I could read and I would call my friends on the days when I was working the kiosk so they could visit me. The kiosk was not well-supervised by the store's roving managers because they were too lazy to venture into the mall.
posted by narancia at 9:32 AM on May 2, 2019 [2 favorites]

there were radio stations playing this kind of stuff - in my childhood, Atlanta's WPCH
posted by thelonius at 9:35 AM on May 2, 2019 [2 favorites]

I worked in the dish room of a local Denny's when I was in college - 1979 to 1983. There was a Muzak version of "Do you know the way to San Jose" that had no lyrics, just some singers going "Bah-bah-bah" to the tune. It haunts me still.
posted by Billiken at 9:37 AM on May 2, 2019 [7 favorites]

I've recently gotten back into vinyl DJ'ing, of a particularly weird/experimental/ambient sort.

I came across this recording recently on YouTube, and when I saw the faded record sleeve (complete with ring wear) , I was like "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY".

Until I realized that it was fake. So I just downloaded the FLACs instead. :)
posted by escape from the potato planet at 10:08 AM on May 2, 2019

I expected to be rocketed back in time at the first plangent chords and was not disappointed.
posted by Pastor of Muppets at 10:19 AM on May 2, 2019 [2 favorites]

Anyway, some smartass managed to get multiple instances the theme from the movie Brazil into the muzak rotation. It really added to the hallucinatory nature of the whole experience to constantly hear the theme being played over and over again for about 1 year.

I'm pretty sure this would shatter my mind if I heard this in a mall. Well done.
posted by loquacious at 10:24 AM on May 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

If you need more easy listening in your life, a search for Label: "Muzak Archive" on Spotify will bring up a number of albums, mostly from the 70's, of Muzak tracks.
posted by schoolgirl report at 10:27 AM on May 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

The first mall I remember is Collin Creek Mall in Plano, TX, which Wikipedia tells me opened in 1981. So this music doesn't really sound much like a mall to me. What it does sound like is a lot of the short films shown on Sesame Street back in the mid-to-late-70s.
posted by Janta at 10:39 AM on May 2, 2019

Made in 2018 with music recorded in 1974... I decided to remix these slightly... Most videos contain mall muzak in the background with an applied EQ and reverb.

I would have preferred just the plain original music -- it's unclear to me how much these songs deviate from the original.
posted by crazy with stars at 10:49 AM on May 2, 2019 [2 favorites]

crazy with stars: I would have preferred just the plain original music -- it's unclear to me how much these songs deviate from the original.

They seem a bit more hazy/ ambient, not quite to the level of the sound of music played in an empty mall (previously), but more of that ambient sound of distance and less of the empty mall reverb, at least compared to what I imagine the original recordings might have sounded. But then there's the dusty record noise, which sounds more crisp. It's an odd mix of ambient space distance and physical media presence.

If you want something a little newer, less loungey (mostly) from Japan, I definitely recommend Pacific Breeze: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1976-1986, a new collection from Light in the Attic Records. Rolling Stone has a good review. And no weird sound effects/ processing added ;)

Sadly, not (yet?) on Light in the Attic's Bandcamp account.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:57 AM on May 2, 2019 [4 favorites]

Light In The Attic put out a playlist on Spotify with tracks inspired by Pacific Breeze.
posted by schoolgirl report at 12:22 PM on May 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

Unrelated: does anyone else think that Orange Vanilla Coke tastes kind of like Orange Julius?

More like baby aspirin. The Zero version, anyway.
posted by petebest at 1:57 PM on May 2, 2019 [2 favorites]

>Unrelated: does anyone else think that Orange Vanilla Coke tastes kind of like Orange Julius?<>
Not nearly enough so ... sadly.
posted by twidget at 3:08 PM on May 2, 2019

Orange juice, milk, ice, sugar, blender. That's an Orange Julius. Go to town and indulge your nostalgic selves.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 3:48 PM on May 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

Is that the Watt and Shand at the Park City Mall, Lancaster, PA, on the cover of that album? Holy cow. The mall of my childhood. We’d stop there to shop after visiting my grandmother before heading home to our home thirty miles to the west, which had some ok malls but not a temple of commerce like Park City. Watt and Shand was bought out by that other hyper-local south-central PA department store, the Bon Ton, before that chain too faded away. Good grief, how do I remember these trivial facts? I guess I’ll credit my suddenly potent recall to the powerful memories that were apparently seared into my brain by that soundtrack. Thanks for the post and the weird trip down memory lane!
posted by cheapskatebay at 4:16 PM on May 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

There's an interesting thing about Muzak: They were actually one of the first companies to set up what amounted to an internet radio service. The intent, of course, was to distribute their product more cheaply than the existing satellite service. However, someone in the company thought it would be nice to give potential customers a sample of what sorts of music they could provide for their shoppers/patients/whatever.

Previously, they had been shipping out sampler CDs with excerpts from each of their channels to sales leads, which required quarterly updates to keep them current, so it was a lot of work in addition to being expensive. Wanting to eliminate that work, they decided to gin up a player on their website that would let anyone listen to any of their live streams for five minutes before timing out.

What they didn't do was protect the source in any way, shape, or form, so for many years anyone who cared to listen to Muzak could listen all they wanted by simply grabbing the URL from the preview page on their website and asking their media player to please play a stream.

I guess it's not too different from the way that many "pirate" IPTV streams today come from unprotected encoders run by the stations/networks themselves left available for anyone on the Internet to access at their pleasure, but I got a real kick out of it back then.
posted by wierdo at 4:17 PM on May 2, 2019 [2 favorites]

Orange juice, milk, ice, sugar, blender. That's an Orange Julius. Go to town and indulge your nostalgic selves.

Needs vanilla and egg whites.
posted by jeremias at 5:35 PM on May 2, 2019

WAYL was a Twin Cities radio station that played this stuff. They called it 'beautiful music'. There was an automobile turned into a blue whale that appeared in parades all over the metro region to promote WAYL. The station went hard rock and the whale-mobile ended up in a local junkyard where I was able to watch it slowly rot for a good twenty years.
posted by LindsayIrene at 9:08 PM on May 2, 2019 [3 favorites]

Apparently the Whale car was either recovered or there was another one.
posted by tavella at 9:28 PM on May 2, 2019

Also, the raw egg white was why I never had an Orange Julius, despite the mall of my youth featuring one, across and just a few doors down from the the Brentano's bookstore, my favorite part of the store. I occasionally had some food from there (maybe hot dogs?), but never quite had the stomach to try the Julius itself.
posted by tavella at 9:34 PM on May 2, 2019

The pseudo melancholy is killing me! All the flashbacks of the mall with Grandpa, or just that lovely zip-brain time period that was my age in '74. Can't decide whether to laugh, smile, cry, or groove along with the generic of the time period. Gah!
posted by Afghan Stan at 9:45 PM on May 2, 2019

I'm amazed that there are this many comments without a mention of vaporwave (← 21 previous FPPs tagged "vaporwave").
posted by msbrauer at 7:22 AM on May 4, 2019