BM
Joined: Apr 18, 2006
Posts: 507
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BM
my story--believe it or not...
In 1991 I was employed by a certain notoriously religious department store chain located only in Utah in their graphics dept. designing ads. Despite the fact that the state of Utah is a strange mecca for the odd Christian cult known as Mormons, our department was a breeding ground for diversity & short-term insanity. The only sound system a tiny room of 15 designers & production artists had was an Audivox cheapo radio/turntable/8-TRACK from the 70's--the
mgmt. wouldn't pony up a CD player or ANYTHING remotely modern for us, and pay was low enough that no one wanted to buy one for collective use. Four of us who were fairly young and punky decided one day to go to the local record shop & put the crappy turntable to use-we instigated PUNISHMENT MUSIC AFTERNOON comprised of the booty from visiting the '10 for $1' vinyl section--HUGE BINS full of your mom & dads worn & torn LP's from the 50s/60s that were collecting dust among the new Duran Duran or Guns & Roses releases(remember--this WAS '91-92).
So armed with releases from Wayne Newton, Jim Nabors, Happy Pierre, bogus Hawaiian music, the OLE INDIAN(the most nuclear of the lot), Del Rubio triplets and many Martin Denny/Arthur Lyman releases, we lay WASTE to the concept of LISTENING FOR PLEASURE and created what can only be described as a Pavlovian aural scene; when one of us stepped near the turntable, certain humorless members of the area would cringe in hate in anticipation of what NEW FRESH HELL of listening dementia we would subject them to. This went on unchecked for about a year; it was FINALLY judged out of control when this major nerd stole & hid the OLE INDIAN and got his car keys taken in retaliation. Funny, though...collectively everyone always kinda enjoyed the fake Polynesian
tunes no matter how often we played them....THEN Esquire ran an article about the 'new lounge scene' and VOILA!! RECOGNITION
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