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Selects: Muzak: Easy Listening Goodness · Stuff You Should Know

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