A reminder of the relative silence of our material lives today

February 1, 2024 1:53 AM

Like most major retailers, GAP has piped music into its stores for as long as they’ve been open. Unlike the others, however, a substantial number of GAP’s painstakingly-curated, monthly-rotating in-store playlists are accessible for all of us today thanks to the singular efforts of a Texas schoolteacher named Michael Bise. A GAP employee from 1992 to 2006, Bise has spent the last 17 years trying to re-obtain his lost collection of the paper tracklist inserts that would come with each month’s in-store CDs and cassettes. from The GAP Playlists Edition [Why Is This Interesting?]

With more than 180 Spotify playlists

Instore music, previously

posted by chavenet (31 comments total)

Wow. That’s pretty damned cool. Back in the day, listening to the music was half the appeal about going into various stores at the mall.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:12 AM on February 1 [3 favorites]

Cool, but also such an indictment of capitalism:

>Alix Umen, a trend director for the brand in the 90s, was adamant about inserting genres of music she felt were on the up. “She was the one who really drove the acid jazz era, which I loved,” Bise says.

It seems like everything is conspiring against independent thought. The frigging Gap was a tastemaker for popular music? I mean it explains a lot, but also ugh.
posted by Literaryhero at 4:48 AM on February 1 [2 favorites]

Also: Attention K-Mart Shoppers! digitised tapes of in-store music from K-Mart in the 1980s and 1990s
posted by sarahdal at 4:56 AM on February 1 [2 favorites]

Images of the playlists along with the (copyright) music are also on Archive.org, while it is nice to see them on a non 'walled garden' website, I feel like they are going to get taken down sooner or later.

The original tapes will probably have a different sound to the remastered copies on the likes of Spotify.
posted by Lanark at 5:06 AM on February 1 [6 favorites]

I worked at American Eagle Outfitters for a brief stint for the holiday cash back in the mid 90s. It was there I discovered bands like Cake and Cibo Matto (well before before hearing them on the radio). Fast fashion retail as music tastemaker is kind of weird, but I am thankful for the music and the people as the rest of that gig was pretty monotonous.
posted by lyam at 5:27 AM on February 1 [4 favorites]

I would hear a song and think "I LOVE THIS! NO! i just heard it 1000s of times while working at The Limited"...
posted by armacy at 6:07 AM on February 1 [2 favorites]

I would hear a song and think "I LOVE THIS! NO! i just heard it 1000s of times while working at The Limited"...

I cannot stand Nightswimming by REM for this reason. (If you worked Apple Retail during I think holiday 2007 or so you can probably relate.)
posted by mrg at 7:22 AM on February 1 [3 favorites]

It was there I discovered bands like Cake and Cibo Matto

How did I forget about Cibo Matto?? On my way to Spotify now...
posted by trillian at 7:47 AM on February 1 [4 favorites]

The frigging Gap was a tastemaker for popular music? I mean it explains a lot, but also ugh.

Well you have to look at the whole picture - The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was signed 4 years into making these playlists - Rick Beato Discussion of the Act which consolidated all radio station ownership in the US into two companies. Radio was on the downslide already by 1996, so IMO Rick's argument is a bit over-stated, but it's generally true. MTV had also stopped playing mostly music in the early 1990s. So everything was conspiring against hearing new interesting music.

Most major radio stations had monthly playlists of only about 300 songs by then. So if you wanted to hear a song other than those 300 you had to look elsewhere. Enter the fast fashion playlist. It led the way to napster, downloading tunes, etc which created streaming.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:50 AM on February 1 [16 favorites]

GAP commercials nailed the "vibe ad" long before Apple adopted it. They were pretty heralded for their time.

And of course X-illenials grew up alongside and had their tastes co-opted. Where else was that generation gonna get their first jobs during the Starbucksification of the 90s and beyond?
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 7:54 AM on February 1 [3 favorites]

I remember the in-store CD we used at Books-A-Million. It was like the best hits of second tier bands that no one really heard of but that sounded similar to more successful popular bands.
posted by Atreides at 7:59 AM on February 1 [1 favorite]

I think I've posted this before, but the Marithé + François Girbaud mix CD had Dramarama, Judy Bats, Tori Amos, Jesus and Mary Chain, Jah Wobble w/ Sinéad, The Farm, Lush ...
posted by credulous at 8:11 AM on February 1 [6 favorites]

I worked at The Gap 1990-1992 and to this day Birdhouse In Your Soul, which was on the playlist during that time, takes me right back to that store on 86th and Broadway in NYC.
posted by The Vintner of Our Disco Tent at 8:27 AM on February 1 [7 favorites]

I worked at Abercrombie and Fitch as a teenager, and they had these weird proprietary music discs that had way more songs on them then a regular CD somehow (I might be remembering wrong, this is 20+ years ago), and it had all the coolest stuff- things that preppy kids that shopped there thought were cool, anyway. It was cool because you didn’t have the whole “not this song again” problem that you’d expect from a retail store!

The Gap had those fun, weird, minimalist commercials in the 90s that had AWESOME music sung at you by beautiful models, and I feel like those went some way toward the development of my gay self, lol.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 9:01 AM on February 1 [3 favorites]

When I worked at a record store, we weren't so scientific as to have an official playlist. We could sort of play whatever we liked, but within certain bounds:
1. We had to have an open copy of the album (vinyl). No taking the shrink wrap off a saleable record just so we could listen to it.
2. Only the managers were allowed to take the shrink wrap off a copy of something, so either they were unwrapping a big-selling record to attract customers or they were unwrapping something by one of their favorite bands. Sometimes we got an unwrapped promotional copy of a good record from a record company rep, but the managers tended to take those home for their personal collections. Because they could.
3. We couldn't play something in the store unless we had at least one copy in the store that we could sell (still in the shrink wrap) so we wouldn't have to explain to customers that, "Yeah, it's a great record. Too bad we can't sell you one."

I knew all the big records in those days. But this was back before CDs and the internet, dagnabbit. It was hard enough getting used to switching from cylinders to platters...
posted by pracowity at 9:15 AM on February 1 [3 favorites]

OMG. I worked at the Gap in 1985 and 1986. I'm really sorry I can't seem to find the playlists from that far back - but they were pretty great. Christmas 1986 especially.
posted by Miko at 9:35 AM on February 1 [2 favorites]

The frigging Gap was a tastemaker for popular music? I mean it explains a lot, but also ugh.

Scoff all you want. Back then, if you lived in podunk usa, places like the Gap exposed you to music you’d never hear anywhere else.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:46 AM on February 1 [16 favorites]

2001 garage clothing: all Jennifer Lopez and destinys child, all the time.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 9:58 AM on February 1 [2 favorites]

The Gap's playlists were really well curated and included a lot of off-the-radar music. Also, remember that for much of the early period, we were limited to terrestrial radio and personal music collections. Unless you had an alternative radio station near you (and even if you did), you didn't hear a lot of non-classic rock or Top 40 unless it came from a source like this. Starbucks picked up on this and did really well with their playlists for a while, too.
posted by Miko at 9:58 AM on February 1 [8 favorites]

weird proprietary music discs

Oh yeah, whatever that system was the Gap used it too. They were a little bigger than 45s. Not standard CDs at all.
posted by Miko at 10:02 AM on February 1 [2 favorites]

The first-ever Gap was an actual record store! Obviously this is not common knowledge. If you look at the picture of the original location at 1950 Ocean Avenue in San Francisco, it says "Levis, Records, and Tapes". The original merchandise was 100% Levis, not a khaki to be found. Within a few months they dropped the sales of music and within a few years began selling mostly GAP-branded clothes, but certainly the seed of the music was there.

There's a whole coffee-table book about the history of the GAP, I can't seem to find it online so possibly it was an internal publication. It had some other choice tidbits, like I think one of the possibilities for the store's name was "Tapes and Pants" or something along those lines. Of course, 50 years later the Fisher family is mainly known for being the real-life owners from the Major League movie and deliberately tanking the A's to force a move to sunnier climes. C'est la vie.
posted by wnissen at 10:28 AM on February 1 [10 favorites]

As a self-financed indie musician who did not have material access to the massive radio, publicity, and distribution machinery of the CD era, getting added to a GAP or Banana Republic playlist was a huge fucking deal in that day. It may all sound terribly cynical now, but it really helped us lucky small fish.
posted by mykescipark at 11:28 AM on February 1 [11 favorites]

I remember the in-store CD we used at Books-A-Million. It was like the best hits of second tier bands that no one really heard of but that sounded similar to more successful popular bands.

I mean, if Books-A-Million were a band...
posted by box at 12:20 PM on February 1 [3 favorites]

During orientation I struggled to hold my composure when I was being trained on shelving books under the system of "alpha-close enough" instead of alphabetical.

So yes.
posted by Atreides at 2:01 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]

I discovered Elliott Smith through a free mix CD the library was giving away so sometimes there's a positive. But also as a former mall worker hearing 10 seconds of something from one store followed by 10 seconds of something else from the next store as I was a walking along was less than enjoyable.
posted by downtohisturtles at 3:17 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]

Oh my god this sounds so much better than when I worked at a clothing store (small fast fashion chain) and all they did was play Top40 spotify over and over and over. Every major hit that came out that year is burned into my brain.
posted by LizBoBiz at 8:39 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]

Oh my god this sounds so much better than when I worked at a clothing store (small fast fashion chain) and all they did was play Top40 spotify over and over and over. Every major hit that came out that year is burned into my brain.

I briefly worked at a software development company that did the same. Yes, in the office, while trying to develop software. Eventually I hacked into the server and installed a script which gradually turned the volume down as the day progressed. Nobody noticed.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 12:17 AM on February 2 [4 favorites]

Eventually I hacked into the server and installed a script which gradually turned the volume down as the day progressed. Nobody noticed.

Brilliant. When I was a kid my parents would play classical music at high volume and I would turn it down a notch each time I walked by until it was gone. Did that with "The Prairie Home Companion" too, no one ever noticed.
posted by chavenet at 2:03 AM on February 2 [2 favorites]

Well the children were above average.
posted by Atreides at 8:59 AM on February 2 [3 favorites]

Well the children were above average.

the adults, however, were stone bores
posted by chavenet at 11:06 AM on February 2 [1 favorite]

Real electronic music hipsters get their albums from Digikey.
posted by autopilot at 2:09 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]