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Muzak: Easy Listening Goodness · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:14
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there, and there's
0:17
Speaker 1: Dave C. Kustin. I said it right this time that
0:24
Speaker 1: it was Couston. No, if you're in France, that's how
0:28
Speaker 1: you would say it, but here in the United States
0:31
Speaker 1: you say Coustin. Can I start this off by saying something,
0:36
Speaker 1: Oh boy, I'm worried about what you're gonna say about Okay, Well,
0:39
Speaker 1: this episode is on music, and uh. I started thinking
0:44
Speaker 1: last night. I was thinking about your love of music,
0:47
Speaker 1: which is not at all ironic, not in the least,
0:50
Speaker 1: but you can't say that kind of thing these days.
0:52
Speaker 1: People don't believe you. I know it's true everyone. I
0:55
Speaker 1: know Josh very well, and I was thinking of your
0:58
Speaker 1: and I like all kinds of music too, but you know,
1:00
Speaker 1: in my heart I'm a rock and roll guy, and
1:03
Speaker 1: I was thinking about your top musical genres that are
1:06
Speaker 1: above rock and roll in your picking order. Yeah, not
1:10
Speaker 1: in order. I counted easy listening music, disco, art rock,
1:16
Speaker 1: krowd rock, and I probably missed a couple. Crowd rock
1:21
Speaker 1: is below rock and roll. I want to like crowd rock,
1:23
Speaker 1: it just doesn't quite jibe with me. I like some
1:25
Speaker 1: but not all of it. And then stuff I think
1:28
Speaker 1: art rock because it's sort of that avant garde, like
1:31
Speaker 1: I don't you don't love Yoko, but you certainly are
1:33
Speaker 1: a bit of a Yoko apologist, Grace Jones, stuff like that.
1:38
Speaker 1: But I love Grace Jones for sure. What about Talking Heads?
1:41
Speaker 1: They go in there too, right, Oh, they'd probably be
1:44
Speaker 1: I mean they literally went to art school together. Yeah,
1:46
Speaker 1: I mean they kind of span from art rock to
1:49
Speaker 1: new wave to like world music by the time they finished. Yeah, yeah,
1:54
Speaker 1: but uh yeah, I mean I certainly love the Talking Heads,
1:58
Speaker 1: but all of those, for you are of good old
2:00
Speaker 1: fashioned rock and roll. I think, Yeah, you also left
2:03
Speaker 1: out nineties techno. I've been listening to a lot of
2:05
Speaker 1: that to like Alternating, the Prodigy and everything. But you
2:10
Speaker 1: love music, you really do. I do too. Actually, I
2:14
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know how much I like. I
2:18
Speaker 1: will listen to some of that stuff. And we're talking
2:20
Speaker 1: about we'll talk about you know, and here of course
2:22
Speaker 1: old sour Pus Brian Eno. But um, I love listening
2:28
Speaker 1: to his ambient stuff, which he sort of wrote as
2:32
Speaker 1: an antidote to music. Again. We'll talk about that more later,
2:35
Speaker 1: but I do like in certain circumstances that music thing
2:40
Speaker 1: is really great to have on in my house as
2:45
Speaker 1: background music, and it serves that same purpose. One of
2:48
Speaker 1: the big reasons why too, is because you can get
2:51
Speaker 1: stuff done with it. Like lyrics can be so distracting,
2:54
Speaker 1: they just latch onto your brain and no pay attention
2:57
Speaker 1: to me. I'm I'm talking to you now. Music does
3:02
Speaker 1: the opposite of that. It says, go be free, but
3:04
Speaker 1: also enjoy this, Like there's there's like a whole part
3:07
Speaker 1: of your brain that music can tap into that doesn't
3:11
Speaker 1: require your conscious thought, but it's still produces like good
3:15
Speaker 1: feelings and you know, like people people just smack music
3:18
Speaker 1: around like it's just it's so bland and it's so soulless,
3:22
Speaker 1: and I totally disagree with that. Like, if you actually
3:26
Speaker 1: stop and listen to music, it's really really technically proficient.
3:31
Speaker 1: It's frequently well done. It's often very clever and creative
3:35
Speaker 1: and inventive. Um, which is really saying something because you're
3:39
Speaker 1: doing this when they in the confines of covering an
3:42
Speaker 1: existing song in a way that makes it familiar and
3:45
Speaker 1: easy to recognize, but also takes away any intrusiveness that
3:49
Speaker 1: it might have. It's tough to do. And I really,
3:52
Speaker 1: I just I love music. You're absolutely right. Like I
3:54
Speaker 1: listened to music this whole time, not just when we
3:57
Speaker 1: were when we were researching music today, but also when
4:01
Speaker 1: I was researching the Havana syndrome, and I realized, like,
4:04
Speaker 1: this is my normal thing, this is the same stuff
4:06
Speaker 1: I listened to. And yeah, and uh, we can go
4:10
Speaker 1: ahead and to spell a couple of or not myths,
4:13
Speaker 1: but clear up a couple of things right off the bat. Um.
4:15
Speaker 1: First of all, music is a name brand UM. And
4:20
Speaker 1: people can kind of collectively use the term music or
4:22
Speaker 1: have collectively use that term for what's called like potted
4:27
Speaker 1: plant music or elevator music or shopping music. UM. But
4:30
Speaker 1: it is actually actually a brand name, which will get
4:33
Speaker 1: to the history of And then the second thing is
4:37
Speaker 1: it gets the name elevator music. UM. Part of the
4:41
Speaker 1: myth is that people said, well, they put it on
4:43
Speaker 1: elevators because people were afraid to death of elevators early on,
4:47
Speaker 1: and it calmed people down or it covered up the
4:49
Speaker 1: noise of the clanking elevators. I've never heard that before you. Yeah,
4:53
Speaker 1: neither one of those things are true total myth. My
4:57
Speaker 1: uh guesses that it was played on elevators, and because
5:01
Speaker 1: you're in such a closed little box that's usually quiet,
5:06
Speaker 1: it just was way more noticeable than like in a
5:08
Speaker 1: big office full of people working. So people called the
5:11
Speaker 1: elevator music. That's my guess, right, Yeah, I mean yeah,
5:14
Speaker 1: there wasn't music on elevators before, but for several decades
5:17
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century, like there, there weren't many elevators
5:20
Speaker 1: you could get on because people didn't have elevators in
5:23
Speaker 1: their house, so it was a public building you're in
5:26
Speaker 1: where they weren't playing music to two of some form
5:31
Speaker 1: very frequently music blues scene, Yeah, yeah, because they're they're
5:39
Speaker 1: going up to the the Cook County Assessor's office and
5:42
Speaker 1: they like there there's the entire Chicago Police Department is
5:46
Speaker 1: after them, but they're forced to get on this elevator
5:49
Speaker 1: and the girl from Ipanema is playing. I think my
5:53
Speaker 1: favorite part of that scene is there's just dozens and
5:56
Speaker 1: hundreds of cops and swat guys just you know, hut hut, hut,
5:59
Speaker 1: hut hut, and they're repelling and doing all this stuff.
6:01
Speaker 1: And then there's the one shot of the loan guy
6:05
Speaker 1: repelling down the side of the building and he's by himself,
6:08
Speaker 1: just going hut hut. Yeah, that's a good one, so funny.
6:14
Speaker 1: There's another scene too from around the era few years
6:17
Speaker 1: later from airplane to where um how it's like ripped torn.
6:24
Speaker 1: I believe it's ripped torn the party from the Larry
6:27
Speaker 1: Sanders Show. And I don't know the other guy he's
6:29
Speaker 1: talking to, but anyway, they're walking and talking and they
6:32
Speaker 1: have to get on an elevator and the elevator door
6:34
Speaker 1: opens and it's just blaring like like ear drums shattering
6:39
Speaker 1: decibel um MacArthur Park and they have to get on.
6:43
Speaker 1: People are coming off the elevator like with their hands
6:45
Speaker 1: and their ears like with splitting headaches from this. But
6:49
Speaker 1: it's just completely the opposite elevator music is supposed to
6:52
Speaker 1: be like. But it's a good little scene too as
6:54
Speaker 1: far as elevator music goes well. I mean that's kind
6:57
Speaker 1: of one of the points too, is music has long
6:59
Speaker 1: been a movie trope and a TV trope and then
7:02
Speaker 1: ben lampooned and scenes just like the Blues Brother scene
7:06
Speaker 1: where there's something chaotic going on and then you cut
7:08
Speaker 1: back to the sound of music playing wherever the other
7:11
Speaker 1: scene is setting. Right, very very fun stuff. But but
7:15
Speaker 1: that started, I guess it started with The Blues Brothers,
7:17
Speaker 1: which came out in nineteen eighty. But before that that
7:20
Speaker 1: was like music was not really lampoon. I mean, not
7:25
Speaker 1: everybody liked it. It really kind of started to get
7:28
Speaker 1: a little backlash in the late sixties early seventies, as
7:31
Speaker 1: we'll see, but there was a very significant chunk of
7:34
Speaker 1: the twentieth century again, from maybe nineteen fifty to nineteen eighty.
7:39
Speaker 1: Will say, where everywhere you went in public, including if
7:43
Speaker 1: you took a Greyhound bus, or if you were on
7:46
Speaker 1: a plane, or you happened to be an Air Force
7:49
Speaker 1: one um, or you were at the mall, in an
7:52
Speaker 1: elevator at your office, everywhere music was was playing. There
7:57
Speaker 1: was music playing everywhere. It was just a part of
8:00
Speaker 1: life that you was inescapable. Actually. Yeah, so let's go
8:04
Speaker 1: back in time and talk about the inventor of musaic uh,
8:09
Speaker 1: And this is sort of a fun fact of music.
8:12
Speaker 1: The man's name is George Square. It is spelled Squire,
8:17
Speaker 1: but he swears it's pronounced square. I'm really impressed. Man,
8:20
Speaker 1: I had not come up with that one, or he
8:22
Speaker 1: swore it was pronounced Square. Yeah, that's kind of one
8:24
Speaker 1: of the funny jokes, like the guy who invented musics
8:26
Speaker 1: was Square. UM. But Major General George Square was born
8:32
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty five if you believe that, and he
8:35
Speaker 1: has a just a laundry list of accomplishments as a
8:39
Speaker 1: human being. He was hearing a doctorate from JOHNS. Hopkins
8:43
Speaker 1: in electrical science. He was UH an Army engineer with
8:47
Speaker 1: a pH d. I think the first one. And he
8:52
Speaker 1: was I believe the lead Signal Corps officer for the
8:54
Speaker 1: Army as well. He was UM. He also was inducted
8:59
Speaker 1: into the National Academy of Sciences, which connects this episode
9:02
Speaker 1: to the other one today UM because he came up
9:05
Speaker 1: with something called a tree telephone. He figured out how
9:07
Speaker 1: to use any tree, but preferably one UM with UH
9:12
Speaker 1: fully leaved. I guess I don't know what you'd call that.
9:15
Speaker 1: UM as a as a receiver and transmitter for radio signals.
9:20
Speaker 1: He figured out how to use a tree, a living
9:21
Speaker 1: tree for that. He was Here's another fun fact. He
9:24
Speaker 1: was one of the first airplane passengers ever because he
9:28
Speaker 1: was way into human flight and got together with the
9:33
Speaker 1: Wright brothers in a consulted with them and they said, hey,
9:38
Speaker 1: why don't you take a ride on our new little biplane.
9:41
Speaker 1: You'll probably live right. I looked at our um, I
9:45
Speaker 1: looked at the document for our Right Brothers episode, and
9:48
Speaker 1: he did not appear. I don't think we mentioned him,
9:51
Speaker 1: but he might. He might have been the first airline
9:53
Speaker 1: passenger from what I saw. Yeah, where he really made
9:58
Speaker 1: a big name for himself pre music was this uh
10:01
Speaker 1: invention which is what we call multiplexing, which is he
10:06
Speaker 1: figured out or maybe wire wireless communications, which is something
10:10
Speaker 1: he worked on with the army. He basically figured out
10:13
Speaker 1: how to get multiple uses out of single telephone lines. UH.
10:18
Speaker 1: Telephone wires were you know, there are only so many,
10:21
Speaker 1: so you were really limited as to what you could
10:23
Speaker 1: do with them and how many people could use them.
10:26
Speaker 1: So he basically figured out a way to increase their
10:29
Speaker 1: output and efficiency by multiplexing and by sending uh superimposing
10:35
Speaker 1: high frequency radio signals over those low frequency telegraph signals,
10:39
Speaker 1: basically just allowing you to use the wire at the
10:41
Speaker 1: same time the same wire. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's
10:44
Speaker 1: like if you think of like a wave if it's
10:46
Speaker 1: low frequency, there's big wide gaps in between. You can
10:49
Speaker 1: fit a higher frequency that's tighter and squitched together in
10:53
Speaker 1: those gaps, and but you're still using the same line.
10:56
Speaker 1: And you know, this was the guy who came up
10:59
Speaker 1: with that. That's an enormous advancement in telecommunications that we're
11:04
Speaker 1: still putting use today in some applications, but definitely helped
11:08
Speaker 1: like the early Internet along UM. It was a just
11:12
Speaker 1: a huge contribution to humanity. Like forget even just music,
11:16
Speaker 1: like just that alone would would probably warrant like an
11:19
Speaker 1: episode for for George Square. Yeah, and I think he
11:23
Speaker 1: was like everyone should be able to use this, So
11:25
Speaker 1: I'm gonna open source it and everyone can use this
11:29
Speaker 1: new multiplexing technology. A T and T came along and said,
11:32
Speaker 1: we'll use it, and then you know what, you've stole
11:34
Speaker 1: it from us. Actually right, he he came up with it,
11:38
Speaker 1: but since he left it open, they decided to just
11:41
Speaker 1: take it from him and sue him for it. I
11:43
Speaker 1: think he sued them, but it didn't work, that's right,
11:46
Speaker 1: you're right, so um he but he still was able
11:50
Speaker 1: to use this wire wireless technology with multiplexing and UM
11:55
Speaker 1: at the time, people were starting to get into radio broadcasts,
11:59
Speaker 1: but radio wireless radio like that you would just have
12:02
Speaker 1: in your house. It's picking up radio waves at a
12:05
Speaker 1: station that was not widespread at the time. So George
12:08
Speaker 1: Square said, you know what, I understand people want music
12:11
Speaker 1: in their house. I'm gonna give it to them. I'm
12:13
Speaker 1: gonna use that multiplexing technology and I'm going to um
12:17
Speaker 1: run sound waves over the electrical wires that go into
12:21
Speaker 1: the house. And I'm gonna sell this. It is brilliant.
12:24
Speaker 1: I'm gonna sell this service to people's homes for a
12:26
Speaker 1: dollar fifty a month about twenty dollars today. UM. And
12:30
Speaker 1: it's just part of your utility bill because it's coming
12:33
Speaker 1: in through your electrical company. And there's actually a section
12:36
Speaker 1: of Cleveland called the Lakewood I believe Lakewood area. UM.
12:42
Speaker 1: That was the pilot for this wired wireless radio UM
12:47
Speaker 1: that that George Square invented. Uh. The problem was, by
12:51
Speaker 1: the time they deployed it, wireless radio was already a thing.
12:56
Speaker 1: And so we had this really great idea that just
12:59
Speaker 1: little longer had an application. Yeah he was. He basically
13:03
Speaker 1: invented the first music subscription service exactly. Yeah, and he
13:07
Speaker 1: had multiple channels to like when you subscribed, you got news,
13:12
Speaker 1: you got dance music. There was like I think three
13:15
Speaker 1: different channels you could choose from Howard Stern. Yea, Howard
13:20
Speaker 1: Stern was back then Baba booie. So he had that
13:24
Speaker 1: technology though, and he said, you know what, this is
13:27
Speaker 1: a good idea. Though, maybe I can think of how
13:30
Speaker 1: to use this in offices and stores. And he looked
13:35
Speaker 1: up at Kodak, very successful corporation, and said, I love
13:40
Speaker 1: that name, and I love music. Let's just call it music.
13:43
Speaker 1: And history changed and maybe we should take a break. Okay,
13:47
Speaker 1: let's do it all right, we'll be right back. So,
14:17
Speaker 1: in the parlance of today, Chuck Um, George Square and
14:21
Speaker 1: his Musaic Corporation pivoted from home consumer markets to business markets.
14:30
Speaker 1: And that just knocked it out of the park because
14:33
Speaker 1: it turned out that there were a lot of companies
14:35
Speaker 1: UM hotels, restaurants, clubs. I think the store club was
14:39
Speaker 1: an early UM customer that said, you know what, it's
14:43
Speaker 1: really going to make our place seem fancy if we've
14:45
Speaker 1: got music piping in UM all the time. So yes,
14:50
Speaker 1: we would like to sign up for your service. And
14:52
Speaker 1: that's really where music kind of started to take off. Yeah,
14:55
Speaker 1: so music, Um, I mean we have and even said
15:00
Speaker 1: what it is. Surely people know. But music are instrumental tracks.
15:06
Speaker 1: And you did mention that there were no vocals, so
15:08
Speaker 1: we kind of hinted that big one. But there are
15:10
Speaker 1: instrumental tracks that are cover songs of kind of anything
15:15
Speaker 1: you can think of. I mean that I've heard some
15:17
Speaker 1: some music of some heavy rock. Um. It can be
15:21
Speaker 1: classical music, it can be old standards. But the point
15:24
Speaker 1: is they are instrumental versions that are re recorded. They
15:26
Speaker 1: don't just take the vocals out. It's not karaoke style. UM.
15:31
Speaker 1: It is rerecord arranged and recorded by professional, really good
15:36
Speaker 1: musicians orchestras sometimes and it is, uh, that's what it is,
15:41
Speaker 1: and it's great the end, and very very frequently, um,
15:45
Speaker 1: it's it's made into a much more mellow version of itself.
15:49
Speaker 1: Like any rough edges are taken off the Since they
15:53
Speaker 1: take the vocals out, it's not like there's not there,
15:55
Speaker 1: that vocal melody is non existent any longer. They just
15:58
Speaker 1: replace it with something else. So if they're trying to
16:01
Speaker 1: go for something like a little more upbeat or up tempo,
16:04
Speaker 1: they'll replace the vocals, would say, like a saxophone if
16:08
Speaker 1: they're trying to do something a little more mellow, they'll
16:10
Speaker 1: replace the vocals with a string section or harp perhaps. Yeah,
16:14
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that that music is very
16:17
Speaker 1: famous for, is, like matt what's called masses of strings,
16:20
Speaker 1: just strings upon strings. In fact, one of the early
16:24
Speaker 1: um I guess big name groups that produced music was
16:29
Speaker 1: called A hundred and one strings. They probably were absolutely
16:33
Speaker 1: accurate in that, like, there's just a lot tons of
16:36
Speaker 1: strings everywhere. Um violence Cello's viola is every every string
16:41
Speaker 1: instrument you can throw at it. They just layer upon
16:44
Speaker 1: layer in these songs. It's one of the hallmarks of music. Yeah.
16:49
Speaker 1: The and there are there are many versions of Antonio
16:52
Speaker 1: Carlos Showbim's Girl from Ipanema, but the music version and
16:56
Speaker 1: one of the most popular, and that one one strings
16:59
Speaker 1: version is the most ubiquitous from that lot. Um I
17:04
Speaker 1: do encourage people to go watch the YouTube though, of
17:06
Speaker 1: Frank Sinatra and Joe Beam singing that song live on TV,
17:11
Speaker 1: because it's great in every way. They're just sitting next
17:14
Speaker 1: to each other and the shot isn't wide at first,
17:17
Speaker 1: and they're just sort of singing back and forth to
17:18
Speaker 1: each other, and Frank Stone is saying, and then it
17:20
Speaker 1: cuts to the wide and Frank is like totally kicked
17:24
Speaker 1: back with his legs crossed with a cigarette in his hand,
17:28
Speaker 1: exactly like you would hope. But he looks like, I mean,
17:30
Speaker 1: he looks like he just not rolled out of bed
17:32
Speaker 1: because he's put together, but he looks like he rolled
17:35
Speaker 1: from his wicker bag to his wicker chair for this performance.
17:39
Speaker 1: Can I get some cocaine in here? Baby? It's Joe
17:44
Speaker 1: Piscopo is Frank Sinatra? Um? Do you ever listen to
17:47
Speaker 1: Joe Beam's stuff? Oh? Yeah, I love that old lounge stuff.
17:51
Speaker 1: It's really great Brazilian stuff. Yeah, his record Stone Flower
17:54
Speaker 1: is just a masterpiece from beginning to end. But that's
17:58
Speaker 1: a good party music. That's another thing though too. It's
18:01
Speaker 1: like it's so mellow, um that to take that kind
18:06
Speaker 1: of music and then make it into music is like
18:10
Speaker 1: it's almost like it takes a certain amount of audacity,
18:14
Speaker 1: you know, Like I was listening to I found so
18:17
Speaker 1: there's I want to I want to point people to
18:19
Speaker 1: two different music um records that are on YouTube. UM.
18:23
Speaker 1: One is called More Than Music Period and Environment. It's
18:27
Speaker 1: a music record and it has a version of sailing
18:32
Speaker 1: Christopher Crosses sailing exactly. They figured out how to basically
18:40
Speaker 1: make you lose control of your bladder listening to this. Yeah, um,
18:46
Speaker 1: that's a good one. And then the other one is
18:48
Speaker 1: called the Blue Album. Uh, and it is from nineteen
18:53
Speaker 1: seventy four, I believe. And it's just both of them
18:56
Speaker 1: are really great. That's good, good introductions to music if
19:00
Speaker 1: you're not into it already. All right, So music is
19:03
Speaker 1: trucking along in the thirties. Uh, they get to the
19:06
Speaker 1: forties and they think, you know what, we need a
19:09
Speaker 1: better way to sell this stuff and to pitch this
19:12
Speaker 1: two businesses and corporations. So why don't we hire some
19:18
Speaker 1: people to research music and to figure out what kinds
19:22
Speaker 1: of music keep people happy and working? And because people,
19:26
Speaker 1: you know, they work hard in the morning and then
19:28
Speaker 1: they sort of lag a bit before lunch, and then
19:30
Speaker 1: they really lag sort of a couple of hours after lunch.
19:34
Speaker 1: So why don't we do this? So why don't we
19:35
Speaker 1: study it? Let's call it stimulus progression. It's a bit pseudoscience.
19:41
Speaker 1: It makes sense it is in that it's not been proven.
19:45
Speaker 1: It makes sense to everyone who I feel like knows
19:49
Speaker 1: about it. Like sure, music can pick you up and
19:52
Speaker 1: make you work harder. But it's pseudoscience in that it's
19:56
Speaker 1: I don't think it's ever been scientifically proven, okay, because
20:00
Speaker 1: I keep seeing it just like dismissed as pseudoscience. But
20:03
Speaker 1: then there were plenty of early studies that were done
20:05
Speaker 1: by legitimate industrial psychologists and other like efficiency experts that
20:09
Speaker 1: kind of thing that showed that there there really was
20:12
Speaker 1: a significant um like improvement and productivity or less sick days,
20:19
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff in places that have musaic compared
20:22
Speaker 1: to places that didn't have music pumped into the office. Yeah,
20:25
Speaker 1: I think maybe they're specific claims about a work day, Okay,
20:29
Speaker 1: might have been a little and I mean everywhere I
20:32
Speaker 1: read said it was basically not a marketing scam but
20:36
Speaker 1: a marketing tool that they kind of invented. I got you.
20:40
Speaker 1: But but so one thing to say about this we're
20:42
Speaker 1: going to talk about it in a second stimulus progression,
20:45
Speaker 1: is that they did kind of plow money that they
20:49
Speaker 1: were making. They were making a lot of money starting
20:52
Speaker 1: in the late forties early fifties, Um, they plowed it
20:56
Speaker 1: back into research to basically come up with scientific it
21:00
Speaker 1: ince to back up their claims, which you can really
21:03
Speaker 1: kind of see the ghost of George Square still looming
21:06
Speaker 1: over the company. You know, this this decade or so
21:09
Speaker 1: after he died. UM that it's always been this kind
21:13
Speaker 1: of uh, science interested, if not science based company. UM
21:20
Speaker 1: that's also been an early adopter of technology, as we'll see. Yeah,
21:24
Speaker 1: I mean that is certainly fair. It was never just like, hey,
21:26
Speaker 1: we're just gonna play a bunch of what people might
21:29
Speaker 1: consider droll background music, like they really did. I think
21:33
Speaker 1: I don't think it was a scam. I think they
21:35
Speaker 1: really did try to study UM working environments, and what
21:40
Speaker 1: they did with his stimulus progression was they divided the
21:43
Speaker 1: work day into fifteen minute increments and basically set a
21:48
Speaker 1: DJ playlist every fifteen minutes two and they assigned a
21:53
Speaker 1: stimulus value from one to six, one being really really mellow,
21:56
Speaker 1: six being you know, super up. And they basically went
21:59
Speaker 1: through and almost like a Pandora sort of curated playlist
22:04
Speaker 1: type of thing to get people to work hard and
22:08
Speaker 1: efficiently throughout a day, and companies bought in, including the U. S. Army. Yeah.
22:14
Speaker 1: I think World War two is basically cited as the
22:18
Speaker 1: moment when music kind of proved itself enough at least
22:21
Speaker 1: to start being adopted by very large companies, and then
22:25
Speaker 1: within a few years after the war, by like the
22:27
Speaker 1: very early fifties, they started to spread more and more
22:29
Speaker 1: to even smaller and smaller companies. Uh. And it was
22:33
Speaker 1: this idea that if you played music and music you know,
22:37
Speaker 1: patented stimulus progression model, um, you know you're going to
22:42
Speaker 1: avoid that mid morning slump that like every worker goes through,
22:48
Speaker 1: you know, in productivity, and then the mid afternoon slump.
22:51
Speaker 1: You could avoid that too, And think about how many
22:53
Speaker 1: more widgets you could make if your employees don't you know,
22:56
Speaker 1: slack off productivity wise at ten thirty, from ten thirty
23:00
Speaker 1: to lunch, and then from like to thirty until they
23:03
Speaker 1: go home. Like imagine if this this very pleasant music
23:06
Speaker 1: is just kind of keeping them humming along what what
23:09
Speaker 1: people call a forward us just unconscious sense of forward momentum.
23:15
Speaker 1: The tempo in your environment is moving subtly faster and
23:21
Speaker 1: faster and so um to keep people from going insane.
23:25
Speaker 1: Part of the stimulus progression was that the songs in
23:28
Speaker 1: a fifteen minute increment would kind of go up in tempo,
23:31
Speaker 1: and then you'd have a fifteen minute break of silence
23:34
Speaker 1: and then the music would come back on again. But
23:37
Speaker 1: then this fifteen minutes there their first song, the tempo
23:41
Speaker 1: of their first song would probably start a little faster
23:44
Speaker 1: than the tempo of the first song of the last
23:46
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes, And so all of a sudden, next thing
23:49
Speaker 1: you know you're making which it's like a maniac because
23:53
Speaker 1: you're being manipulated by this stimulus progression model, at least
23:57
Speaker 1: again according to music. I I get what you're saying, Like,
24:01
Speaker 1: it's not like, you know, Harvard came along and said, yes,
24:04
Speaker 1: we've studied this thoroughly, and this is exactly what happens.
24:07
Speaker 1: This is you know, company claims. But it is intuitively
24:11
Speaker 1: sensible at least. Well, yeah, I mean you need only
24:15
Speaker 1: to host house party and play and play music yourself
24:20
Speaker 1: to determine how music can affect the mood of a
24:23
Speaker 1: group of people. Put on group group is in the heart,
24:26
Speaker 1: and you know what's gonna happen. Yeah, everybody's gonna shake
24:29
Speaker 1: their group thing. Everyone's gonna shape their group things, shake
24:31
Speaker 1: their group thing. If you put in uh old sour
24:35
Speaker 1: plus Brian ENO's music for Airports not a good party thing,
24:40
Speaker 1: No it's not. And since you brought him up for
24:42
Speaker 1: the second time. I say, um, we discussed Brian, you know,
24:46
Speaker 1: momentarily sure. I mean I love that record, and I
24:50
Speaker 1: love a lot of his stuff, including his ambient music
24:54
Speaker 1: Experimental Um records. I think it's really really good stuff
24:59
Speaker 1: to have on if it's a nice gray day outside
25:02
Speaker 1: and you're getting work done. I really enjoyed his background music,
25:06
Speaker 1: but it's definitely not up in any way. You know,
25:10
Speaker 1: what I found is a really good one for for
25:12
Speaker 1: what you just described. Do you ever listen to Future
25:14
Speaker 1: Sound of London. No. They have an album, like a
25:18
Speaker 1: double album called life Forms, and it's it's about as
25:22
Speaker 1: amazing as ambient gets. So you should check that one out.
25:25
Speaker 1: Emily Embily, Emily got me into ambient. I call her
25:28
Speaker 1: Embully when she's listening to that stuff. She really got me.
25:31
Speaker 1: She called an ambient groove. She really got me into
25:33
Speaker 1: that stuff. Over the years. Is that like um, like
25:38
Speaker 1: zero seven and uh, you know stuff that's she calls
25:42
Speaker 1: it ambient groovy, just sort of sort of mellow and
25:45
Speaker 1: groovy and like zero seven and more Chiba. And it
25:49
Speaker 1: was a certain era I think where that stuff peaked
25:51
Speaker 1: Massive Attack a little bit. Oh yeah, it's good stuff. Yeah,
25:55
Speaker 1: I think you'd like life forms. Then the future sound
25:57
Speaker 1: of London stuff is normally a lot a little more.
26:00
Speaker 1: You know, it's super cerebral and intelligent, but it's also
26:03
Speaker 1: fairly dancy life forms his way, it's probably their most
26:06
Speaker 1: ambient stuff around. So you know, though, let's get back
26:09
Speaker 1: to him. He kind of came up with this as
26:11
Speaker 1: an as an antidote to music, right, Yes, if you
26:15
Speaker 1: like ambient music, you better thank your lucky stars for muzak.
26:18
Speaker 1: Because we're not from Musach. You might not have ambient
26:22
Speaker 1: music at least not now. Maybe it becoming fifty years
26:25
Speaker 1: from now, who knows. Yeah, he said, um I loved it.
26:29
Speaker 1: In this article says, as reported by Red Bull Music,
26:34
Speaker 1: uh Ena said this, and this was I think for
26:35
Speaker 1: the liner notes actually the airport or music for airports.
26:38
Speaker 1: Whereas can music's intention is to brighten the environment by
26:41
Speaker 1: adding stimulus to it, ambient music is intended to induce
26:44
Speaker 1: calm and space and a space to think. Uh Ambient
26:48
Speaker 1: music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening
26:51
Speaker 1: attention without enforcing one. In particular, it must be as
26:54
Speaker 1: ignorable as it is interesting. So so he hits on
27:00
Speaker 1: something though that people would come to really resent about.
27:03
Speaker 1: Um music is not even just necessarily the syrup nous
27:07
Speaker 1: of the music itself, but the intent behind the music.
27:11
Speaker 1: That it was always uh intended to basically manipulate your
27:16
Speaker 1: mood into making you a better worker, a more docile consumer.
27:21
Speaker 1: Um that that it was poking at your brain to
27:25
Speaker 1: get to get you to do things that you may
27:27
Speaker 1: or may not want to do. Maybe your your will
27:30
Speaker 1: be less likely to punch some guy on the bus
27:33
Speaker 1: because there's music playing, which is a good thing. We
27:35
Speaker 1: should not be punching other people on the bus. But
27:38
Speaker 1: the point is that you're being mind controlled in a
27:41
Speaker 1: certain way, and eventually people got kind of resentful of that. Yeah,
27:49
Speaker 1: we're not there yet. Though we're not there yet. There
27:52
Speaker 1: was actually a point in time, though, Chuck, where music
27:55
Speaker 1: and popular music were basically one and the same. Yeah,
27:59
Speaker 1: that was sort of um, I mean one of the
28:02
Speaker 1: heydays of music certainly was in that. When you know,
28:06
Speaker 1: when Glenn the Glenn Miller Orchestra was pop music on
28:09
Speaker 1: the radio. Music wasn't a far stretch from some of
28:13
Speaker 1: that stuff, so it was sort of all one and
28:15
Speaker 1: the same. I think it was as that as styles
28:18
Speaker 1: changed and the sixties and seventies start rolling along, that
28:22
Speaker 1: music became really sort of a bad word to a
28:25
Speaker 1: lot of people, right. And one of the reasons I
28:28
Speaker 1: saw that really explained it to me, because you know,
28:31
Speaker 1: things change. The society just changed between the nineteen fifties
28:34
Speaker 1: and the nineteen sixties. Um, it just abruptly changed. But
28:40
Speaker 1: to the that doesn't fully explain why music just was
28:43
Speaker 1: suddenly looked down upon. A good explanation I saw is
28:48
Speaker 1: that lyrics became really really important in the league sixties.
28:52
Speaker 1: People had something to say, and music does not include lyrics.
28:57
Speaker 1: It completely undermines the point of music if you put
29:01
Speaker 1: lyrics in or don't you know, don't rearrange the lyrics
29:03
Speaker 1: with strings. Um So music kind of couldn't. I couldn't
29:08
Speaker 1: keep up with that. It's not like it went away,
29:11
Speaker 1: it doubled down. It kept doing what it was doing.
29:13
Speaker 1: And in fact, it would take some of those pop
29:15
Speaker 1: hits that had really, um monumentally important lyrics and just
29:19
Speaker 1: take the lyrics out and replace it with a saxophone
29:21
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, they didn't think you do that.
29:23
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting. They could have had a really
29:25
Speaker 1: mellow singer at a certain point come in and they
29:29
Speaker 1: really respect the fact that they were like, nope, the
29:31
Speaker 1: singer as a violin and I don't want to hear
29:34
Speaker 1: it anymore. Right. But a lot of these songwriters, in particular,
29:38
Speaker 1: like I think Joan Bayez, Um, Bruce Springsteen, Boz Scags,
29:46
Speaker 1: all of them refused to let their their music um
29:49
Speaker 1: be covered by music or any of its competitors. UM.
29:53
Speaker 1: But Paul Simon I saw, said he always knew he
29:55
Speaker 1: had a hit when he heard a music version of it,
29:58
Speaker 1: like at the Mall or something like that, which is
30:01
Speaker 1: kind of like Weird Al covering Nirvana. Like Cobain said
30:05
Speaker 1: that he knew that Nirvana had made it when Weird
30:07
Speaker 1: Al covered smells like teen Spirit. I think that's basically
30:10
Speaker 1: the same thing. Oh. I think most musicians, unless you're
30:15
Speaker 1: a Ted Nugent, who uh And we'll get to that.
30:19
Speaker 1: But very famously sort of offered to buy music when
30:22
Speaker 1: they fell upon a hard time so he could basically
30:24
Speaker 1: burn it to the ground. I think most musicians deep
30:28
Speaker 1: down think it's kind of an honor when one of
30:30
Speaker 1: their songs is music ified. It's got Yeah, you'd have
30:33
Speaker 1: to play. I just want to find out what somebody's
30:36
Speaker 1: going to do with it, because, like I was saying
30:37
Speaker 1: at the beginning, like it really takes some creativity to
30:40
Speaker 1: come up with, Okay, what can I replace this with
30:43
Speaker 1: that's not just completely predictable or boring, but also isn't
30:47
Speaker 1: gonna grab everybody's attention because it's again not the point
30:50
Speaker 1: of music. It's it's um one of the the the
30:54
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was a slogan of the
30:56
Speaker 1: music corporation or not, but they basically said that they
31:00
Speaker 1: fill in the awkward pauses in life to where yeah,
31:05
Speaker 1: you don't like it's like you were saying at the party,
31:07
Speaker 1: you if you're at a party that doesn't have any
31:09
Speaker 1: music on, you just probably just get smashed out of
31:13
Speaker 1: your skull because you're just trying to lubricate the social
31:16
Speaker 1: situation so much. Whereas if you put on music, it's
31:19
Speaker 1: like it takes a lot of the edge off. That
31:21
Speaker 1: was one of the points too with music. And then
31:23
Speaker 1: also to kind of get you to to linger a
31:26
Speaker 1: little longer when you were shopping in a store. Um,
31:29
Speaker 1: that was that was part of it as well. Yeah,
31:31
Speaker 1: I mean music, We almost always have music on in
31:35
Speaker 1: our house, unless you know it's night and we're watching,
31:39
Speaker 1: you know, a movie or watching something on TV. But
31:42
Speaker 1: at almost all waking hours we have music playing in
31:45
Speaker 1: our home, and it just feels weird and quiet and
31:49
Speaker 1: not full of life when it's when there's no music happening, right,
31:53
Speaker 1: it's strange. It can be strange, for sure. Should we
31:57
Speaker 1: take a break? Yeah, we're we're we have re basically
32:00
Speaker 1: the early seventies, which is music's first crisis point, and
32:05
Speaker 1: we'll come back to that after this. All right, So
32:36
Speaker 1: I'm born in and uh and music starts to die
32:43
Speaker 1: a little bit. A little real rock and roller came
32:47
Speaker 1: into the world, that's right, born with a Jane jacket
32:50
Speaker 1: with the Van Halen logo on marker in the back.
32:54
Speaker 1: It did not go away completely though. It was just
32:56
Speaker 1: sort of, um, I guess the beginning of the end.
33:01
Speaker 1: But that didn't mean there wasn't still a business model
33:03
Speaker 1: for music, because music was never about its popularity, no,
33:07
Speaker 1: but there was a time where it was popular. Like
33:09
Speaker 1: JFK had it on Air Force one, Eisenhower had it
33:13
Speaker 1: piped into the White House, UM, it was playing on
33:16
Speaker 1: board Apollo eleven, UM like it was like it was everywhere,
33:21
Speaker 1: Like it's really hard to get across, um how ubiquitous
33:26
Speaker 1: it was. But I found a quote from a guy
33:27
Speaker 1: named Professor Gary Gumpert of Queen's College in New York.
33:32
Speaker 1: He said that that at the time, music was just
33:36
Speaker 1: kind of amniotic fluid that surrounds us. It never startles us.
33:41
Speaker 1: It is never too loud, it's never too silent. It's
33:43
Speaker 1: always there. And that was what it was like. You're
33:46
Speaker 1: just kind of moving from one placid bucolic field to
33:49
Speaker 1: the next, going from mall, the mall, store to store,
33:52
Speaker 1: elevator to elevator, bus ride to bus ride. Um, it
33:56
Speaker 1: was just absolutely everywhere. So compared to that, the idea
33:59
Speaker 1: that it's absolutely everywhere unquestioned. Um. Yeah. It really kind
34:04
Speaker 1: of started to take a bit of a downturn in
34:05
Speaker 1: the seventies, but it just didn't go anywhere yet. It
34:08
Speaker 1: took decades for it to really take a hit. Yeah.
34:10
Speaker 1: I mean even in the eighties that was syndicated nineteen countries.
34:13
Speaker 1: There were eighty million people listening, whether or not they
34:17
Speaker 1: wanted to or not, listening to music every day. And
34:20
Speaker 1: the company ended up being bought and sold a couple
34:22
Speaker 1: of times over the years. I think in eighty one,
34:27
Speaker 1: or in seventy two, a company called Teleprompter owned it.
34:30
Speaker 1: In eighty one, Westinghouse bought it. And I don't know
34:34
Speaker 1: if I believe this. The story goes that Westinghouse learned
34:38
Speaker 1: later on when they were buying Teleprompter that they owned music,
34:42
Speaker 1: and apparently they didn't know that. That's what funding Universe
34:45
Speaker 1: dot Com says. I don't know. I mean, who doesn't.
34:48
Speaker 1: Maybe back then they didn't do research into purchasing entire corporations,
34:52
Speaker 1: but they were on a lot of scotch at the time. Man,
34:54
Speaker 1: Although we've had companies that bought websites, and then they
34:58
Speaker 1: learned that there was a podcast bro attached. So yeah,
35:01
Speaker 1: I think I've heard of that Things you Should Do
35:03
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, that was actually that that
35:06
Speaker 1: could happen now that I think about it, that's right. Yeah.
35:09
Speaker 1: I kind of actually felt a deeper affinity from music
35:12
Speaker 1: when I learned how many times they've been passed around
35:14
Speaker 1: corporation by corporation. Uh. And then I think in the um,
35:18
Speaker 1: I think it was was when did Yesco come along?
35:20
Speaker 1: Without the nineties? So Yesco was around from the sixties
35:25
Speaker 1: well when they finally came together though, right, Yeah, but
35:28
Speaker 1: they were early competitor, I guess that kind of a
35:31
Speaker 1: mid midlife competitor to um uh to Musaic. But by
35:38
Speaker 1: the eighties, Yesco had established a name for itself by
35:41
Speaker 1: doing basically the opposite of what music did. Rather than
35:46
Speaker 1: making you know, uh covers of canned music without lyrics,
35:51
Speaker 1: they would just go get the licenses of like the
35:53
Speaker 1: hot new song of the of the moment and play
35:57
Speaker 1: those and so rather than background music, which is what
36:00
Speaker 1: music whole jam was, these guys were pioneering foreground music.
36:05
Speaker 1: And they were just a small little outfit from Seattle
36:08
Speaker 1: that you know. It was kind of like the little
36:11
Speaker 1: engine that could. And they changed the entire landscape, the
36:15
Speaker 1: audio landscape of the United States. Um just by being persistent,
36:20
Speaker 1: by getting that that that word out that hey, now
36:23
Speaker 1: foregrounds the way to go, not background that's old stuff. Yeah,
36:27
Speaker 1: And I think that's why today when you go into
36:30
Speaker 1: Public's to do your grocery shopping, you'll hear Christopher Cross
36:33
Speaker 1: singing sailing instead of the music version of sailing. Yeah.
36:37
Speaker 1: Can't we just get both though? Or do we have
36:40
Speaker 1: to choose? I mean, I'm I'm a big Christopher Cross fan.
36:44
Speaker 1: You're not gonna find a bigger fan than me, for real?
36:47
Speaker 1: You you like him that much? He's great, Uh to
36:51
Speaker 1: his two big albums I still have on my shelf.
36:53
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Well he's sitting in the other room in
36:56
Speaker 1: my house right now. I guess you're the bigger fan. Yeah,
37:00
Speaker 1: you're like, no, no, no, he's just tied up. Well
37:02
Speaker 1: I was gonna say he's not here on on his
37:04
Speaker 1: will and his own will. In fact, you could make
37:08
Speaker 1: a pretty strong case he's here against as will. But
37:11
Speaker 1: so in those when Yesco got Um officially involved with music,
37:18
Speaker 1: I think music was did they actually file for bankruptcy
37:22
Speaker 1: or were they just at that sort of mount precipice
37:24
Speaker 1: Not yet, they were teetering right there on the edge,
37:27
Speaker 1: And it was actually they were bought by the Fields Company,
37:29
Speaker 1: the company that owns Marshall Fields. So Chicago makes another
37:32
Speaker 1: appearance um and the Fields Company said we like where
37:36
Speaker 1: this Yesco group is going. We're gonna merge with them.
37:40
Speaker 1: So Musaic actually merged with Yesco Um, the smaller company,
37:44
Speaker 1: but then ended up moving to Seattle right before the
37:48
Speaker 1: grunge movement hit. So Seattle's big musical contribution before grunge
37:53
Speaker 1: was music I remember seeing the I remember seeing that logo.
37:58
Speaker 1: I mean you'd probably seen the vans around before and
38:02
Speaker 1: really not known it's that M with the circle around it.
38:05
Speaker 1: I remember when I first saw that, it was like,
38:07
Speaker 1: wait a minute, is that the music? That's yeah, And
38:10
Speaker 1: that was a big update. They apparently went with some
38:12
Speaker 1: design group I can't remember the name of it that
38:14
Speaker 1: just completely reinvented the brand because they went from being
38:19
Speaker 1: in the background to manipulating your mood using stimulus progression
38:24
Speaker 1: to this other thing, this new sound made up sounding
38:28
Speaker 1: thing called um. What's it called quantum physics mechanics? Keep
38:37
Speaker 1: guessing what else? Realm leap? No, those are all the quantums.
38:43
Speaker 1: I know. There's got to be another one, chuck, because
38:47
Speaker 1: I'm still looking. Is that thing called it's called it's
38:51
Speaker 1: quantum leap. What was this called quantum leap? Sure? So
38:56
Speaker 1: um with this quantum leap thing that they had going on,
38:59
Speaker 1: the bacular effect, quantum modulation, quantum modulation. Okay, although I
39:05
Speaker 1: like bacular effect, that's a great one. Um with quantum modulation,
39:11
Speaker 1: it was um, we are evoking an emotion that is
39:17
Speaker 1: now tied forever to this the brand that you're shopping.
39:21
Speaker 1: Who store, your shopping and yeah, so like this, um
39:25
Speaker 1: this one. So they hire people who make playlists, who
39:28
Speaker 1: curate these playlists that are start to finish. Um, they
39:33
Speaker 1: all share this one theme. They all kind of have
39:36
Speaker 1: this one like cool, um not scary, uh, super hip, beachy,
39:43
Speaker 1: you know spring Break two thousand and eight whatever. So
39:49
Speaker 1: um that like a company will will say this is
39:52
Speaker 1: this is what our brand is all about. Give us
39:54
Speaker 1: playlists that fit this. And so now you're you're kind
39:57
Speaker 1: of like you feel cool because of the music of
40:00
Speaker 1: where you're shopping, and so that makes you want to
40:03
Speaker 1: shop and associate yourself with that place even more. That's
40:06
Speaker 1: what music, That's what the what's called neo music is
40:11
Speaker 1: all about. That's that's the current state of affairs in
40:14
Speaker 1: the industry. Yeah, like take if you want to use
40:18
Speaker 1: Armani Exchange as an example. What they'll do is they
40:22
Speaker 1: will literally try and make like a DJ mix with
40:25
Speaker 1: that has beat matches and it doesn't break the momentums
40:28
Speaker 1: and it's all cross faded. Whereas if Ann Taylor calls
40:31
Speaker 1: them up, they don't want to cross fade. They want
40:34
Speaker 1: Selene Dion songs and then a little bit of a
40:36
Speaker 1: small break and then a sting song coming on, and
40:39
Speaker 1: these gentle fades in and fades out, and you know,
40:43
Speaker 1: it's the same sort of stuff, is just curated foreground music. Um.
40:47
Speaker 1: What I love about music is in the end, when
40:51
Speaker 1: they were finally acquired, they had at one point five
40:54
Speaker 1: million commercially recorded songs in their catalog and they call
40:59
Speaker 1: that the Well. Right, that's amazing, almost eight hundred Beatles
41:03
Speaker 1: songs it is. I think that's why they never fully
41:06
Speaker 1: went under, is that catalog kept them commercially viable for sale. Yeah,
41:12
Speaker 1: So they were bought and I think two thousand nine
41:15
Speaker 1: maybe by a group called Mood Music Atin two eleven,
41:20
Speaker 1: and then two years later they retired the music name
41:23
Speaker 1: forever just couldn't do anything with it. So now it's
41:26
Speaker 1: Mood Music is the company that that owns the Well.
41:30
Speaker 1: But they're doing that whole four okay, they're doing that
41:33
Speaker 1: whole foreground music quantum modulation type thing where you know,
41:38
Speaker 1: you just associate a brand with a certain kind of music,
41:41
Speaker 1: Like you would walk into that armand the exchange and here,
41:45
Speaker 1: you know, Simon yea Christopher Cross, You'd be like, something's
41:49
Speaker 1: off here, the mood mood what is that mood media.
41:54
Speaker 1: Their their job is to make sure that there's nothing
41:56
Speaker 1: off while you're in that store, that it all just
41:58
Speaker 1: kind of fits together and you feel good about where
42:01
Speaker 1: you're shopping. I don't know that, man. You want to
42:03
Speaker 1: you want to move some Armandi gear put on, you
42:06
Speaker 1: can call me out, just blash it, fly off and
42:09
Speaker 1: those kids would freak out there they're frosted. Tips would
42:14
Speaker 1: stand up on end then and then they're like, what
42:17
Speaker 1: is this? This is amazing. I've never felt more alive.
42:20
Speaker 1: Why is Chevy Jason here? Oh man. A really cool thing, though,
42:25
Speaker 1: is what you were talking about with music being on
42:27
Speaker 1: the tech forefront. Uh, it's really cool that over the
42:31
Speaker 1: years they were always early adopters of tech, and it's
42:36
Speaker 1: funny to think about them that way, but they were
42:37
Speaker 1: always on the on the leading edge and the forefront
42:40
Speaker 1: of what technology was doing. Yeah, so they I don't
42:44
Speaker 1: know if they invented them, but they certainly were early adopters,
42:47
Speaker 1: if not pioneers. In vinyl records. People were not using
42:51
Speaker 1: vinyl at the time. Then they eventually ditched the vinyl
42:54
Speaker 1: records in favor of an electronic brain called mater m.
43:00
Speaker 1: The number eight and the letter are Um, which basically
43:04
Speaker 1: was a big deck of real the real tapes that
43:08
Speaker 1: had a bunch of different songs on it, but they
43:10
Speaker 1: had different inaudible pulses that would trigger a different one
43:14
Speaker 1: to come on next, so you could curate lists on
43:16
Speaker 1: these huge reel to reels. It was just amazing. They
43:19
Speaker 1: were using this thing starting in the fifties, so the
43:22
Speaker 1: whole thing became kind of automated. They launched their own
43:25
Speaker 1: satellite in the seventies, They had a computer database in
43:28
Speaker 1: the seventies. Like they were very much uh, pioneers and
43:32
Speaker 1: early adopters of a lot of different technology that we
43:34
Speaker 1: take for granted today. Yeah, I mean that you could
43:37
Speaker 1: make an argument that they were doing the Pandora Spotify
43:39
Speaker 1: think decades before they were doing it absolutely um yeah,
43:44
Speaker 1: And I mean the whole point of it too, was
43:46
Speaker 1: was virtually unchanged. I mean, it's not necessarily to make
43:50
Speaker 1: you a docile shopper anymore, but it's two like they're
43:54
Speaker 1: trying to make you feel like that brand is part
43:57
Speaker 1: of your identity by evoking memories and you using songs
44:02
Speaker 1: to unlock them. Totally pretty interesting stuff. Man, I'm gonna
44:08
Speaker 1: go work with those two records again, I want to
44:09
Speaker 1: write this down. Okay. One is more than music, period
44:14
Speaker 1: and environment. Music record that has not just sailing on.
44:19
Speaker 1: It has Olivia Newton, John's Magic, has um uh take
44:25
Speaker 1: your Time do It Right, which I don't care if
44:28
Speaker 1: the lyrics are there or not. If you're sitting next
44:30
Speaker 1: to your mom in a doctor's office and baby, you
44:32
Speaker 1: can do it. Take your Time, do It Right comes on.
44:35
Speaker 1: You both know what what that song is about. You
44:37
Speaker 1: know it may even be more uncomfortable in that situation.
44:41
Speaker 1: And then it ends with Funky Town. It's a good one.
44:45
Speaker 1: The other one is called the Blue Album. It's a
44:47
Speaker 1: complete stimulus progression album and it has a bunch of
44:51
Speaker 1: good songs on it, including um Orleans Dance with Me,
44:54
Speaker 1: which is if you ask me, the music covers way
44:57
Speaker 1: better than the original, so not to be can used
45:00
Speaker 1: with Wheezers Blue Album. No, that's a little different. And
45:05
Speaker 1: then if you're like, oh, it's music is floating my boat,
45:08
Speaker 1: go start looking up Ronnie Aldrich, Frank checks Field, Montevanni,
45:14
Speaker 1: um and just start there. Yeah. And if eventually you're like,
45:17
Speaker 1: I'm feeling really goosey, how about some actual vocalists going on?
45:23
Speaker 1: And then you'll just go right into Josh's other favorite,
45:25
Speaker 1: which is yat Rock easy listening. I like yat Rock
45:28
Speaker 1: a lot too. I'm super right now into West Coast
45:32
Speaker 1: cool jazz, um Stan Getz, Chet Baker, um Oh, I
45:38
Speaker 1: can't remember. I can't remember his name, but I just
45:40
Speaker 1: got into him. He's a great jazz pianist from that era.
45:44
Speaker 1: Bill Evans, the Bill Evans Trio, love Bill Evans. You're
45:48
Speaker 1: just getting into Bill Evans. Yeah, I just just started
45:51
Speaker 1: getting into I. I started with Chet Baker and just
45:53
Speaker 1: started working my way out. Vince Garaldi is another great one.
45:56
Speaker 1: And I know he's known for the Charlie Brown stuff,
45:58
Speaker 1: but all of vince Garaldi is great. You can tell
46:01
Speaker 1: just by the Charlie Brown album that he's an amazing
46:03
Speaker 1: jazz good stuff. So, Chuck, I have one more thing.
46:07
Speaker 1: There's a you know, people hate music a lot, so
46:10
Speaker 1: there's some artists who have like tried to a lot
46:13
Speaker 1: of artists have tried to make hay out of the
46:15
Speaker 1: whole thing. But one guy, David Schaefer, had something from
46:19
Speaker 1: back in two thousand or two thousand too. Something. Um.
46:22
Speaker 1: He had X ten R dot one and X ten
46:26
Speaker 1: R dot two. These two CDs that he released that
46:29
Speaker 1: were basically his weird, unnerving remixes of music that just
46:37
Speaker 1: turns the whole thing on its head so much so
46:39
Speaker 1: that like you may laugh out loud when you first
46:41
Speaker 1: hear them. And I believe they're on his website. But
46:45
Speaker 1: it's like a it's like music, but what you would
46:48
Speaker 1: hear in your nightmares. It's really good. Uh. And I
46:52
Speaker 1: believe he's got it on his website to go listen to.
46:54
Speaker 1: And I think you can buy the CDs too, So
46:56
Speaker 1: check that out and we'll check it out. Okay, Well,
46:58
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about music to start
47:01
Speaker 1: listening and loving, just just don't pre judge. How about that?
47:05
Speaker 1: And since I said don't prejudge everybody, that means it's
47:08
Speaker 1: time for a listener mail. You know. Before we do
47:13
Speaker 1: listener mail, we want to issue a formal apology to
47:18
Speaker 1: people that suffer from mesophonia. In the Titanic Part two
47:22
Speaker 1: episode listener Mail, someone wrote in about our ad that
47:26
Speaker 1: we had where someone was whispering, and I it was
47:29
Speaker 1: my fault. Frankly, I started off by sort of teasing
47:32
Speaker 1: and whispering. I joined in, you joined in, but I
47:35
Speaker 1: think I led you down the Primrose Path. You did,
47:39
Speaker 1: but you know, if Chuck jumped off a bridge, when
47:41
Speaker 1: I jump off a bridge. Apparently the answers yes, but
47:44
Speaker 1: I'm still responsible for that. Well, we heard from plenty
47:46
Speaker 1: of people. Um, I had a really nice back and
47:48
Speaker 1: forth over email with the original email er. I misinterpreted,
47:52
Speaker 1: uh there, um sort of joking tone of the email,
47:56
Speaker 1: and she said, yeah, I was trying to be lighthearted
47:58
Speaker 1: about it, so I get where you're coming from. Um,
48:00
Speaker 1: she was fine, she's going to get tickets to a
48:03
Speaker 1: future stuff you should know show, which she is very
48:05
Speaker 1: excited about her But um, we worked it out and
48:08
Speaker 1: she's good, and we just I didn't know it was
48:10
Speaker 1: a real I had heard of misoponia. I didn't know
48:13
Speaker 1: it could be such a debilitating condition. Yea. We never
48:15
Speaker 1: would have made fun of it, certainly. Um. I just
48:19
Speaker 1: sort of thought it was people that are like I
48:21
Speaker 1: just don't like people when they eat food and listening
48:24
Speaker 1: to that. So now we know, Yes, now we know.
48:27
Speaker 1: So thanks to everybody who wrote in, and uh, sorry
48:30
Speaker 1: for being jerks about that. Yeah, and um, I think
48:33
Speaker 1: we should probably do an episode on mesoponia too, probably, Yes,
48:37
Speaker 1: for for sure. I've started to do it before Chuck,
48:39
Speaker 1: and there's not that much info out there, so it's
48:42
Speaker 1: gonna we will, for sure, I agree with you, but
48:44
Speaker 1: it might take a little longer. All right, so all
48:46
Speaker 1: apologies everyone, and uh, I hope, I hope this helps
48:49
Speaker 1: make it right. Yeah, and now on the listener mail, right,
48:53
Speaker 1: all right, I'm gonna call this from Lauren. Hey, guys,
48:57
Speaker 1: a man walks down the street and says, why am
48:59
Speaker 1: I oft in the middle? The rest of my life
49:02
Speaker 1: is so hard? Oh wait a minute, Sorry, what a
49:04
Speaker 1: perfect email for this one. I was reading my forearm
49:07
Speaker 1: tattooed by accident. Hey, guys, been listening to stuff you
49:12
Speaker 1: should know for a few years. Off and turn up
49:13
Speaker 1: the volume and play an episode while I cooked dinner.
49:16
Speaker 1: My seven year old daughter Lila used to complain, oh,
49:18
Speaker 1: you're listening to this again. But I recently called her
49:21
Speaker 1: singing the be to the intro music, and she'll casually
49:24
Speaker 1: mention things she's heard from time to time. I suspect
49:27
Speaker 1: she's fond of the animal episodes. Anyway, you'll jokingly sometimes say, Jerry, well,
49:33
Speaker 1: you have to edit that. You're gonna have to edit
49:34
Speaker 1: that part out. And it has me curious how often
49:37
Speaker 1: things are cut from an episode and why bad jokes
49:40
Speaker 1: too long? Have you ever had to completely redo one?
49:44
Speaker 1: I think it'd be really interesting to know, and about
49:46
Speaker 1: Lila would find it encouraging since she likes to make
49:48
Speaker 1: videos of herself singing and dancing for the record, y'all
49:51
Speaker 1: make it effortless and uh seem effort lessen, it's always
49:54
Speaker 1: a joy to listen to. That is Lauren from monta Vallo, Alabama,
49:59
Speaker 1: and she yes, Montevallo, Yeah, you're probably right. You put
50:04
Speaker 1: a little too much mustard on there. She says, ps.
50:06
Speaker 1: How cool of a mom would I be if my
50:08
Speaker 1: daughter heard her names on the podcast? Yeah, So there
50:11
Speaker 1: you go, Lauren and Lilah. The answer is very little
50:16
Speaker 1: gets edited out, just the singing and dancing like that
50:19
Speaker 1: siren in the background. We'll probably just leave that into No,
50:24
Speaker 1: we don't edit a lot out occasionally, Like we found
50:27
Speaker 1: out when we said this before. Early on, we left
50:30
Speaker 1: in the words stumbles and the ums and uhs, and
50:32
Speaker 1: just because it's a conversation and we didn't want to
50:34
Speaker 1: make it seemed too scripted because it's not, or canned
50:38
Speaker 1: because it's not, and so we just left that stuff
50:41
Speaker 1: in there. And the only time, like, like I think
50:45
Speaker 1: today you had to look something up real quick. But
50:47
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen much. Yeah, I had to poke my
50:49
Speaker 1: head out of the studio and look at my record
50:51
Speaker 1: collection and come up with name. So I mean that's
50:55
Speaker 1: gone now. But very little is edited out. It's especially
50:58
Speaker 1: after this many years. It's we're not one take wonders,
51:01
Speaker 1: but it's Jerry doesn't have the hardest job in the world.
51:03
Speaker 1: You know, we've taken it easy on her for years. Yeah. Yeah,
51:09
Speaker 1: that that's about it, Chuck. I can't think of anything
51:11
Speaker 1: else we really added out. But that's not to say
51:14
Speaker 1: that shows that are heavily edited and various kind of
51:18
Speaker 1: scripty and slick, like, there's a room for those two.
51:21
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we're not the only way to do it now.
51:24
Speaker 1: We're like the music of podcasts. There's other people who
51:26
Speaker 1: are all like the Ted NuGen of podcasts, and there's
51:29
Speaker 1: room for both. Yea, like Roman Mars the Ted Nugenta podcasting.
51:32
Speaker 1: That's right, man, that guy's always wearing like a studded
51:36
Speaker 1: leather wrist fan and stuff. I keep waiting on Roman
51:38
Speaker 1: to text me and being like, you guys are consistently
51:41
Speaker 1: talking smack about me. He doesn't, he doesn't listen, and
51:44
Speaker 1: no one he knows. That's impossible. Um so who is that?
51:49
Speaker 1: Lila and Lauren correct nice. Well, thank you very much
51:54
Speaker 1: for writing in hope. We answered your question. Uh and
51:57
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with this, like
51:59
Speaker 1: Lila and Lauren did, you can send us an email.
52:02
Speaker 1: Send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
52:09
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
52:12
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