by EvanAnderson
1 subcomments
- Oh, fun! These came up on HN a few years ago[0]. Recycling some of comment from then:
The "Tower Sound and Communications" (TSC) company that recorded many of these was located a few miles up the road from my home town. The booming male voice on the recordings also sounded familiar to me, too. I'm fairly certain I heard him on the local radio station that my father played over the PA system in our family grocery store when I was growing up.
Turns out that Cecil "Lee" Rutherford, the voice on the recordings, did VO work for local radio stations near my home town, too. He died in November, 2020.
He was involved in some ventures that persist today. His company EchoSat[1] (which I'd heard of because I had some involvement in the convenience store / retail petroleum industry) merged with an IT security firm to become "ControlScan", doing PCI testing stuff because gas stations and credit cards.
Quoting the obituary[2]:
He started Tower Sound and Communications while in Greenville to pursue a venture that would eventually spearhead "in store" broadcasting for companies such as Kmart (he became the voice of Kmart) and Jamesway which evolved into another corporation in KY called EchoSat that would use satellite technology in helping with multiple stores for POS processing and security.
There's an interview with Lee Rutherford in 2011.[3] He absolutely still has that "radio voice".
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25271464
[1] https://www.dandb.com/businessdirectory/towercommunicationsg...
[2] https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/dailyadvocate/obituary.asp...
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQqoQL3pkyI
by catapart
16 subcomments
- Wild to actually hear the prices. Shoes for less than $3 USD![0] It's a fun time warp!
[0]https://archive.org/details/KmartJuly1992Generic?start=447
- Anyone else hiding inside of clothing racks away from siblings (or the world) listening to this???
by halfmatthalfcat
2 subcomments
- Favorite vaporwave rendition of this: https://adamneelymusic.bandcamp.com/track/k-m-a-r-t
- On a slightly related note, Internet Archive archivist and notable speaker Jason Scott (@textfiles) shared to his Twitter followers Juicy the Emissary's "Attention K-Mart Choppers" - an enjoyable remix from this collection. He linked to the Medium article here: https://medium.com/micro-chop/traveling-back-in-time-with-ju...
- If you like this kind of thing (as background ambience or whatever), the 'WJSV broadcast day' recording from 1939 is worth checking out too: https://archive.org/details/001WakeUpMusic
It was apparently the first recording of its type, clocking in at 19 hours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WJSV_broadcast_day
I chopped up bits of it for the 'Old American radio' option on an ambient sound mixer I made called Ambiphone: https://ambiph.one/?m=1-Ambient+old+radio-bf37bi80
- I wonder if anyone remembers the K-Mart diners and cafes. This image search[0] shows various styles. Some or all of them were branded as K-Café.
The one that I and my older brother remember from our local K-Mart is the sit-down experience with the brown chairs and tables, the server greeting you with the brown coffee canister. (Brown dominated the palette.) It was removed from the store before my younger siblings could register memories of it. They thought we were trolling when we brought it up.
[0]: https://www.google.com/search?q=k-mart+diner&udm=2
- They even have images of the tapes with the legal notice to not duplicate them on there ;)
by jimkleiber
0 subcomment
- K-Mart headquarters were in my hometown and I drove by them yesterday and they finally tore them down. Happy to see some K-Mart nostalgia here.
by vishnugupta
0 subcomment
- I don't know why but I absolutely love to go through things like this. They are a window into a past in a way no history article/book can bring out. Just raw, unfiltered content.
by Mountain_Skies
1 subcomments
- Little did I know as a child that those security alert announcements weren't real. I'd often go around the store looking for the police arresting someone they chased down for shoplifting but always ended up disappointed. Probably watched too many cop shows in my youth.
- The 30th anniversary one is amazing:
https://archive.org/details/Kmart30thAnniversaryProgram
All the facts about 1962 from a perspective 30 years later, but 30+ years in the past to us!
For example the fact that when K-Mart opened no one could have predicted that it would be one of the biggest real outlets in the country. :)
by smoothbenny
0 subcomment
- It's giving CVS Bangers[0]
[0]https://www.mixcloud.com/TOLKIENBLACK/cvs-bangers/
by whalesalad
1 subcomments
- Listening to October 1989 right now. Loving it! I'm going to download every single .ogg file and create a radio station that I can just tune into while working. Surprisingly effective for the flow state - even with the random product announcements.
- Wow... I spent a lot time in the Naperville, IL Ogden Mall Kmart in the early/mid 1980s, so I probably heard these exact tapes.
- It's a collection of K-Mart PA tapes. Enjoy.
by digitalsushi
0 subcomment
- I grabbed this about 5 years ago and stashed it on the media server.
Two years ago I got into a docker compose project to use mpd and rern/rAudio to stream music 24/7 over multiple channels on a bunch of pis with dac hats, including my wood shop out in the woods.
So I'm out there at midnight a year or two ago and I had it pinned on these kmart rips.
It's creepy out there.
All of a sudden this booming voice yells "SECURITY TURN CAMERAS TO AISLE 13" or some such thing.
So be careful if you are likely to get into the same predicament.
- Listening to some of these, and it just floods back the horrendousness that was cassette tapes. They were horrible, yet they were amazing. They were great in every way except for their main purpose of listening to the recorded content. The sound was atrocious. From the muddled sound from losing all the fidelity of the highs because they were usually lost to any attempt at lowering the infamous tape hiss. The slow draggy sound from a tape that was stretched or the player having loose belts on the driving mechanism. Or worse, when the recorder did and no other player has the exact same issue so every player sounds like the batteries are dying.
For those too young to have to suffer through your youth of listening to such inferior sounds, just be grateful. For those trying to be hip and bring back old formats, stick to vinyl. Cassettes are worth losing to history.
- I need one of those "Blue Light Special" lights attached to my laptop.
Probably will need to develop an SDK for it..
- Great to see this here. I was reading to my 8yo yesterday and there was a reference in the book to a "blue light special" so I took a diversion to explain to her what that referred to. Now I can show her the real deal! (btw, it blew her mind to think that stores did this, and imagined it was like a mass of people all running to one place to grab a deal... and sometimes it was!)
by cf100clunk
1 subcomments
- SomaFM NEEDS to put up a stream of those recordings atop ambient electronica, please!
by RicoElectrico
2 subcomments
- Quite a bit of wow and volume instability on these tapes. Wonder if this is due to the cassette player quality or the tape being worn.
- This just transported me to the past, shopping with my mom... The difference in tone is sharp vs. e.g. modern Wal-mart
- Brings back a lot of memories. I worked at K-Mart when I was in high school. I recall in 1983 when the TI-99/4A was discontinued, and the Sunday morning when we were selling them for (I think) $50 with a $100 mail-in rebate. When the doors opened people sprinted down the midway aisle to the TV/electronics department at the rear of the store where the computers were. I was an Atari snob at the time and had no interest in one for myself. I think we had less than a dozen in stock.
- So I'm watching one of the really old sales training videos [^0] and am wondering: for anyone here who shopped for stuff in the 60s/70s, were retail employees friendlier and more assistive than retail employees today? Do you think the brick-and-mortal retail experience is any better or worse than then?
[^0]: https://archive.org/details/S.S.KresgeTraining-TheABCsOfFrie.... It's also really trippy that the tips being given here STILL apply today at a basic level, even in complex technical sales!
- The old Kmart tapes had a frequency that kept teens from loitering and summoned exact change. Scientists don’t talk about it because they’re scared. I played one backwards once and the parking lot stripes repainted themselves. That’s how you know it’s good audio.
- The Egghead Software store I worked at always played the same CD on loop in a lock box. It was a passionless rendition of The Four Seasons by Vivaldi.
by suddenlybananas
5 subcomments
- If only vapourwave was still popular.
- They have overdrive and inconstant playback speed! Wonderful.
by muppetman
1 subcomments
- I can't figure out which is the special tape with the 30 years of history. The one I thought it would be 03.01.1992 just seems to be a normal tape?
by iancmceachern
1 subcomments
- This is what the internet was made for, this is great
- I listen to the Christmas tapes from this collection each December. It's become my defacto Christmas soundtrack.
- My kid and I use these tapes sometimes as lyrics for songs because we don't have a singer (he plays drums and I play guitar)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPoSe_qMRr4
- Are Americans unusual that they'll do anything for money? Weird for an artist to sell out and make advertising jingles?
by soupfordummies
0 subcomment
- This is awesome! Thanks for posting.
Reminds me of this, similar vein:
https://twcclassics.com/
- This is amazing, but I wish they were in FLAC
- Some of these tracks are absolute bangers
- so many emotions. thanks for sharing.
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