Not even to observe the wildlife in an unusual habitat, I proudly make the claim that I’ve never set foot in a Walmart, so I’m personally ignorant of the type of music (if any) that they have blaring over the assumed loud speakers, subliminally coaxing customers to simultaneously buy things and relinquish their souls. The unaffiliated Kmart, of course, arguably preceded Walmart in popularity, and around the time of the former’s heyday in the late 1980s, what do you think the musical options were as far as looped soundtracks to consumerism go? The internet wasn’t around. Satellites and their cardboard construction were poor transmitters of playlists. The only option was… cassettes devised by the brass over at Kmart HQ, which were sent to individual stores at regular intervals throughout the year!
Former Kmart worker-at-the-Service-Desk Mark Davis has just done the lord’s work by digitizing and then uploading 56 of these cassettes, which were actually supposed to be trashed at the end of their monthly or weekly rotation. The tapes themselves are from the late 1980s and early 1990s, and they contain instrumentals of classics (songs that would be swiftly forgotten were it not for Davis) and ads… lots of ads about things in Kmart. Apparently, Martha Stewart was a consultant or something. From Mark Davis:
The older tapes contain canned elevator music with instrumental renditions of songs. Then, the songs became completely mainstream around 1991. All of them have advertisements every few songs.
The monthly tapes are very, very, worn and rippled. That’s becuase they ran for 14 hours a day, 7 days a week on auto-reverse. If you do the math assuming that each tape is 30 minutes per side, that’s over 800 passes over a tape head each month.
They’re a swell trip down memory lane if you’re in your mid 20s or older. You might also go insane if you listen to more than one in succession. Take it upon yourself to test that theory, though, and go here for the rest of ‘em, if you’re so inclined.
• Kmart: http://www.kmart.com
