Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/04/29/muzak-for-airplanes-1960s.html
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Heh. The spouse just stumbled onto this via Reddit and is playing it for everyone. Fun stuff.
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If you like that sort of stuff, there’s a lot out there.
Muzak is harder to find than other brands, because it was typically transmitted via phone lines rather than on disc or tape. These tapes are the exception.
I have a machine that plays Seeburg background records from the 60s and 70s, and recorded a dozen of them to crappy MP3 files.
http://www.nixiebunny.com/seeburg/
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Brilliant! The hiss, clicks, and pops only add to the charm!
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Most excellent. Easy Listening not dead!
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The wow and flutter from the antiquated mechanism also add to the realism. These machines were workhorses, stuffed in a closet somewhere and neglected for months until new records arrived (assuming that the business owner kept paying the servicing company).
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Some of the arrangements seem very similar to the work of Mantovani and others of that genre. Do you know if that group of arrangers contributed to Seeburg’s collections?
I have not found any information whatsoever on the Seeburg Library artists or recording studios or anything. It’s as if it was a top secret project, or the entire crew were so ashamed of their work that they made a pact never to speak of it again.
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Wow, that’s really cool! I love that you have the machine.
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Re Muzak, that thought has also crossed my mind. (“Of that gotta-pay-the-bills stock music recording session… we shall not speak.”
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I’m listening to the Muzak and the Eno playing at the same time right now!
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I dl’d these from you years ago, they’re great!
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Mantovani and co were busy making a lot of money from their own records and too expensive for muzak makers to afford (would be my guess).
I tried it - sadly, sparse and plangent Brian Eno gets drowned out by the chirpy upbeat and more densely arranged muzak. There’s a moral in there somewhere.
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Me as a teenager, passing through a strip mall: I swear that musak is a Sex Pistols tune!
my punk friends: You’re crazy.
A couple decades later, listening to Mark Mothersbaugh talk about doing mall music: “Every once in a while I’d throw in a Sex Pistols tune of something to keep from going crazy. Nobody ever noticed.”
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I wonder if listening to their rendition of “Aquarela do Brasil” on Muzak (last track in this promotional video by founder U.V. Muscio) in a dreary office environment (“on an ascending scale of stimulus value”) inspired the writers to make that the title soundtrack of their dystopian movie.
Also, this makes me want copyright limited to 50 years again. This recording ought to be public domain without question now. Depending on when this was produced, it would be public domain in certain countries.
Plangent! I’m an inveterate music-settings tinkerer so that issue didn’t occur to me. Def needs a custom mix. 
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Erik Satie may have been there first, with his 1917 musique d’ameublement, which also feature continuous loops, so to speak, as you’re invited to repeat brief passages as often as you can stand it.
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