Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/06/12/look-inside-a-vintage-ice-crea.html
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One of my first jobs was driving an ice cream truck. I had an old boombox I’d kept in the van to drown out that incessant music - usually listening to the Big Boys or Naked Raygun… I only lasted three days at the job. You only make 30% of what you sell and you have to cover your own gas. The van got horrible gas mileage and I gave away a lot of ice cream.
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It’s neat that there’s a tempo setting. I guess it helps kids keep pace for blocks as they chase after the ice cream truck.
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My friend’s dad told her the van only played music when it had run out of ice cream…
Obviously, this is what she has now told her daughter.
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Huh, I never thought about how the music was generated - I suppose I always just assumed it was purely electronic - but it explains why it was such a short snippet, repeating in an unchanging manner, the same day after day, month after month, year after year (until you went completely insane).
Only in the last couple years, in my neighborhood, have I heard ice cream trucks that varied the songs they played. (Thank the gods of sanity.) Presumably now they’re 100% digital, but it’s weird that it’s taken so long for that to happen. I guess there’s not a lot of money to upgrade things in the ice cream truck business (in my area, anyways - if nothing else, they’ve got stiff competition from push-cart paleta vendors).
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And the programming drum isn’t even (easily) swapable! There should be labor laws preventing such torture.
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The newer, digital ones are nasty, featuring not only a chiptune, but sound effects such as cheap drum machine claps, horse-neighs, duck-quacks, etc.
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One goes by here and has a kids voice going… “HELLO” “HELLO” as a sound effect.
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Creepy ice cream man that comes by my house sometimes - I work from home - was nice enough to make several rounds of the neighborhood yesterday playing a loop of Xmas songs… Thanks, dude.
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Those I haven’t heard - I’ve only heard traditional-sounding ice cream trucks with what I assume are digital music players only because they change the song every few minutes. Unlike the old ones that continuously played Pop Goes the fucking Weasel - or, sometimes, La Cucaracha.
Oh Dyspeptic Baby Jesus, that could quickly become worse than Pop Goes the Weasel.
Only several rounds? Could have been worse. I used to have a guy who drove an ice cream van nearby, obviously a neighbor, as he would only work the immediate area - staying within earshot the entire time - starting not long after daybreak and ending around dark. (Possibly there was more than one, playing the same tune, but the effect was the same.) Not just during the summer, either - in the dead of winter, I’d hear the twinkling of “Pop goes the Weasel” from nearby, continuously.
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We had a friend who would tell her kids that the music truck was driving down the block, before they caught on that it also sold ice cream.
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The older kids down the street used a tape recorder to record the song Joe the ice cream man’s truck played so they could ride around on their bikes playing it and fucking with kids anxious to get ice cream.
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You’re a welcome:
LOL
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Sounds like a screwed up version of “music box dancer”. I can’t imagine how… it seems to be changing pitch and skipping notes. Here is a midi one of that song that is working:
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Just from the title, I thought they’d find a dead compacted clown in there.
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there’s a happy little thought
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I always thought it would be cool to get a Honda Element and make a bunch of stickers of my hot friends in club gear eating popsicles on the side, then have the boomin system (maybe a small loudspeaker) to play beats like these:
I’d have a cooler full of popsicles plugged into the cigarette lighter and if someone actually approached, I’d just give them one.
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