Muzak: Easy Listening Goodness

Muzak got a bad reputation as bland garbage music. We aim to set the record straight.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there, and there's
Dave C. Kustin. I said it right this time that

(00:24):
it was Couston. No, if you're in France, that's how
you would say it, but here in the United States
you say Coustin. Can I start this off by saying something,
Oh boy, I'm worried about what you're gonna say about Okay, Well,
this episode is on music, and uh. I started thinking
last night. I was thinking about your love of music,

(00:47):
which is not at all ironic, not in the least,
but you can't say that kind of thing these days.
People don't believe you. I know it's true everyone. I
know Josh very well, and I was thinking of your
and I like all kinds of music too, but you know,
in my heart I'm a rock and roll guy, and
I was thinking about your top musical genres that are
above rock and roll in your picking order. Yeah, not

(01:10):
in order. I counted easy listening music, disco, art rock,
krowd rock, and I probably missed a couple. Crowd rock
is below rock and roll. I want to like crowd rock,
it just doesn't quite jibe with me. I like some
but not all of it. And then stuff I think
art rock because it's sort of that avant garde, like

(01:31):
I don't you don't love Yoko, but you certainly are
a bit of a Yoko apologist, Grace Jones, stuff like that.
But I love Grace Jones for sure. What about Talking Heads?
They go in there too, right, Oh, they'd probably be
I mean they literally went to art school together. Yeah,
I mean they kind of span from art rock to
new wave to like world music by the time they finished. Yeah, yeah,

(01:54):
but uh yeah, I mean I certainly love the Talking Heads,
but all of those, for you are of good old
fashioned rock and roll. I think, Yeah, you also left
out nineties techno. I've been listening to a lot of
that to like Alternating, the Prodigy and everything. But you
love music, you really do. I do too. Actually, I
don't know, I don't know how much I like. I

(02:18):
will listen to some of that stuff. And we're talking
about we'll talk about you know, and here of course
old sour Pus Brian Eno. But um, I love listening
to his ambient stuff, which he sort of wrote as
an antidote to music. Again. We'll talk about that more later,
but I do like in certain circumstances that music thing

(02:40):
is really great to have on in my house as
background music, and it serves that same purpose. One of
the big reasons why too, is because you can get
stuff done with it. Like lyrics can be so distracting,
they just latch onto your brain and no pay attention
to me. I'm I'm talking to you now. Music does

(03:02):
the opposite of that. It says, go be free, but
also enjoy this, Like there's there's like a whole part
of your brain that music can tap into that doesn't
require your conscious thought, but it's still produces like good
feelings and you know, like people people just smack music
around like it's just it's so bland and it's so soulless,

(03:22):
and I totally disagree with that. Like, if you actually
stop and listen to music, it's really really technically proficient.
It's frequently well done. It's often very clever and creative
and inventive. Um, which is really saying something because you're
doing this when they in the confines of covering an

(03:42):
existing song in a way that makes it familiar and
easy to recognize, but also takes away any intrusiveness that
it might have. It's tough to do. And I really,
I just I love music. You're absolutely right. Like I
listened to music this whole time, not just when we
were when we were researching music today, but also when
I was researching the Havana syndrome, and I realized, like,

(04:04):
this is my normal thing, this is the same stuff
I listened to. And yeah, and uh, we can go
ahead and to spell a couple of or not myths,
but clear up a couple of things right off the bat. Um.
First of all, music is a name brand UM. And
people can kind of collectively use the term music or
have collectively use that term for what's called like potted

(04:27):
plant music or elevator music or shopping music. UM. But
it is actually actually a brand name, which will get
to the history of And then the second thing is
it gets the name elevator music. UM. Part of the
myth is that people said, well, they put it on
elevators because people were afraid to death of elevators early on,

(04:47):
and it calmed people down or it covered up the
noise of the clanking elevators. I've never heard that before you. Yeah,
neither one of those things are true total myth. My
uh guesses that it was played on elevators, and because
you're in such a closed little box that's usually quiet,
it just was way more noticeable than like in a

(05:08):
big office full of people working. So people called the
elevator music. That's my guess, right, Yeah, I mean yeah,
there wasn't music on elevators before, but for several decades
in the twentieth century, like there, there weren't many elevators
you could get on because people didn't have elevators in
their house, so it was a public building you're in
where they weren't playing music to two of some form

(05:31):
very frequently music blues scene, Yeah, yeah, because they're they're
going up to the the Cook County Assessor's office and
they like there there's the entire Chicago Police Department is
after them, but they're forced to get on this elevator
and the girl from Ipanema is playing. I think my

(05:53):
favorite part of that scene is there's just dozens and
hundreds of cops and swat guys just you know, hut hut, hut,
hut hut, and they're repelling and doing all this stuff.
And then there's the one shot of the loan guy
repelling down the side of the building and he's by himself,
just going hut hut. Yeah, that's a good one, so funny.

(06:14):
There's another scene too from around the era few years
later from airplane to where um how it's like ripped torn.
I believe it's ripped torn the party from the Larry
Sanders Show. And I don't know the other guy he's
talking to, but anyway, they're walking and talking and they
have to get on an elevator and the elevator door

(06:34):
opens and it's just blaring like like ear drums shattering
decibel um MacArthur Park and they have to get on.
People are coming off the elevator like with their hands
and their ears like with splitting headaches from this. But
it's just completely the opposite elevator music is supposed to
be like. But it's a good little scene too as
far as elevator music goes well. I mean that's kind

(06:57):
of one of the points too, is music has long
been a movie trope and a TV trope and then
ben lampooned and scenes just like the Blues Brother scene
where there's something chaotic going on and then you cut
back to the sound of music playing wherever the other
scene is setting. Right, very very fun stuff. But but
that started, I guess it started with The Blues Brothers,

(07:17):
which came out in nineteen eighty. But before that that
was like music was not really lampoon. I mean, not
everybody liked it. It really kind of started to get
a little backlash in the late sixties early seventies, as
we'll see, but there was a very significant chunk of
the twentieth century again, from maybe nineteen fifty to nineteen eighty.

(07:39):
Will say, where everywhere you went in public, including if
you took a Greyhound bus, or if you were on
a plane, or you happened to be an Air Force
one um, or you were at the mall, in an
elevator at your office, everywhere music was was playing. There
was music playing everywhere. It was just a part of

(08:00):
life that you was inescapable. Actually. Yeah, so let's go
back in time and talk about the inventor of musaic uh,
And this is sort of a fun fact of music.
The man's name is George Square. It is spelled Squire,
but he swears it's pronounced square. I'm really impressed. Man,

(08:20):
I had not come up with that one, or he
swore it was pronounced Square. Yeah, that's kind of one
of the funny jokes, like the guy who invented musics
was Square. UM. But Major General George Square was born
in eighteen sixty five if you believe that, and he
has a just a laundry list of accomplishments as a
human being. He was hearing a doctorate from JOHNS. Hopkins

(08:43):
in electrical science. He was UH an Army engineer with
a pH d. I think the first one. And he
was I believe the lead Signal Corps officer for the
Army as well. He was UM. He also was inducted
into the National Academy of Sciences, which connects this episode
to the other one today UM because he came up

(09:05):
with something called a tree telephone. He figured out how
to use any tree, but preferably one UM with UH
fully leaved. I guess I don't know what you'd call that.
UM as a as a receiver and transmitter for radio signals.
He figured out how to use a tree, a living
tree for that. He was Here's another fun fact. He
was one of the first airplane passengers ever because he

(09:28):
was way into human flight and got together with the
Wright brothers in a consulted with them and they said, hey,
why don't you take a ride on our new little biplane.
You'll probably live right. I looked at our um, I
looked at the document for our Right Brothers episode, and

(09:48):
he did not appear. I don't think we mentioned him,
but he might. He might have been the first airline
passenger from what I saw. Yeah, where he really made
a big name for himself pre music was this uh
invention which is what we call multiplexing, which is he
figured out or maybe wire wireless communications, which is something

(10:10):
he worked on with the army. He basically figured out
how to get multiple uses out of single telephone lines. UH.
Telephone wires were you know, there are only so many,
so you were really limited as to what you could
do with them and how many people could use them.
So he basically figured out a way to increase their
output and efficiency by multiplexing and by sending uh superimposing

(10:35):
high frequency radio signals over those low frequency telegraph signals,
basically just allowing you to use the wire at the
same time the same wire. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's
like if you think of like a wave if it's
low frequency, there's big wide gaps in between. You can
fit a higher frequency that's tighter and squitched together in
those gaps, and but you're still using the same line.

(10:56):
And you know, this was the guy who came up
with that. That's an enormous advancement in telecommunications that we're
still putting use today in some applications, but definitely helped
like the early Internet along UM. It was a just
a huge contribution to humanity. Like forget even just music,
like just that alone would would probably warrant like an

(11:19):
episode for for George Square. Yeah, and I think he
was like everyone should be able to use this, So
I'm gonna open source it and everyone can use this
new multiplexing technology. A T and T came along and said,
we'll use it, and then you know what, you've stole
it from us. Actually right, he he came up with it,
but since he left it open, they decided to just

(11:41):
take it from him and sue him for it. I
think he sued them, but it didn't work, that's right,
you're right, so um he but he still was able
to use this wire wireless technology with multiplexing and UM
at the time, people were starting to get into radio broadcasts,
but radio wireless radio like that you would just have

(12:02):
in your house. It's picking up radio waves at a
station that was not widespread at the time. So George
Square said, you know what, I understand people want music
in their house. I'm gonna give it to them. I'm
gonna use that multiplexing technology and I'm going to um
run sound waves over the electrical wires that go into
the house. And I'm gonna sell this. It is brilliant.

(12:24):
I'm gonna sell this service to people's homes for a
dollar fifty a month about twenty dollars today. UM. And
it's just part of your utility bill because it's coming
in through your electrical company. And there's actually a section
of Cleveland called the Lakewood I believe Lakewood area. UM.
That was the pilot for this wired wireless radio UM

(12:47):
that that George Square invented. Uh. The problem was, by
the time they deployed it, wireless radio was already a thing.
And so we had this really great idea that just
little longer had an application. Yeah he was. He basically
invented the first music subscription service exactly. Yeah, and he
had multiple channels to like when you subscribed, you got news,

(13:12):
you got dance music. There was like I think three
different channels you could choose from Howard Stern. Yea, Howard
Stern was back then Baba booie. So he had that
technology though, and he said, you know what, this is
a good idea. Though, maybe I can think of how
to use this in offices and stores. And he looked

(13:35):
up at Kodak, very successful corporation, and said, I love
that name, and I love music. Let's just call it music.
And history changed and maybe we should take a break. Okay,
let's do it all right, we'll be right back. So,

(14:17):
in the parlance of today, Chuck Um, George Square and
his Musaic Corporation pivoted from home consumer markets to business markets.
And that just knocked it out of the park because
it turned out that there were a lot of companies
UM hotels, restaurants, clubs. I think the store club was

(14:39):
an early UM customer that said, you know what, it's
really going to make our place seem fancy if we've
got music piping in UM all the time. So yes,
we would like to sign up for your service. And
that's really where music kind of started to take off. Yeah,
so music, Um, I mean we have and even said

(15:00):
what it is. Surely people know. But music are instrumental tracks.
And you did mention that there were no vocals, so
we kind of hinted that big one. But there are
instrumental tracks that are cover songs of kind of anything
you can think of. I mean that I've heard some
some music of some heavy rock. Um. It can be

(15:21):
classical music, it can be old standards. But the point
is they are instrumental versions that are re recorded. They
don't just take the vocals out. It's not karaoke style. UM.
It is rerecord arranged and recorded by professional, really good
musicians orchestras sometimes and it is, uh, that's what it is,

(15:41):
and it's great the end, and very very frequently, um,
it's it's made into a much more mellow version of itself.
Like any rough edges are taken off the Since they
take the vocals out, it's not like there's not there,
that vocal melody is non existent any longer. They just
replace it with something else. So if they're trying to
go for something like a little more upbeat or up tempo,

(16:04):
they'll replace the vocals, would say, like a saxophone if
they're trying to do something a little more mellow, they'll
replace the vocals with a string section or harp perhaps. Yeah,
that's one of the things that that music is very
famous for, is, like matt what's called masses of strings,
just strings upon strings. In fact, one of the early
um I guess big name groups that produced music was

(16:29):
called A hundred and one strings. They probably were absolutely
accurate in that, like, there's just a lot tons of
strings everywhere. Um violence Cello's viola is every every string
instrument you can throw at it. They just layer upon
layer in these songs. It's one of the hallmarks of music. Yeah.
The and there are there are many versions of Antonio

(16:52):
Carlos Showbim's Girl from Ipanema, but the music version and
one of the most popular, and that one one strings
version is the most ubiquitous from that lot. Um I
do encourage people to go watch the YouTube though, of
Frank Sinatra and Joe Beam singing that song live on TV,
because it's great in every way. They're just sitting next

(17:14):
to each other and the shot isn't wide at first,
and they're just sort of singing back and forth to
each other, and Frank Stone is saying, and then it
cuts to the wide and Frank is like totally kicked
back with his legs crossed with a cigarette in his hand,
exactly like you would hope. But he looks like, I mean,
he looks like he just not rolled out of bed
because he's put together, but he looks like he rolled

(17:35):
from his wicker bag to his wicker chair for this performance.
Can I get some cocaine in here? Baby? It's Joe
Piscopo is Frank Sinatra? Um? Do you ever listen to
Joe Beam's stuff? Oh? Yeah, I love that old lounge stuff.
It's really great Brazilian stuff. Yeah, his record Stone Flower
is just a masterpiece from beginning to end. But that's

(17:58):
a good party music. That's another thing though too. It's
like it's so mellow, um that to take that kind
of music and then make it into music is like
it's almost like it takes a certain amount of audacity,
you know, Like I was listening to I found so
there's I want to I want to point people to

(18:19):
two different music um records that are on YouTube. UM.
One is called More Than Music Period and Environment. It's
a music record and it has a version of sailing
Christopher Crosses sailing exactly. They figured out how to basically

(18:40):
make you lose control of your bladder listening to this. Yeah, um,
that's a good one. And then the other one is
called the Blue Album. Uh, and it is from nineteen
seventy four, I believe. And it's just both of them
are really great. That's good, good introductions to music if

(19:00):
you're not into it already. All right, So music is
trucking along in the thirties. Uh, they get to the
forties and they think, you know what, we need a
better way to sell this stuff and to pitch this
two businesses and corporations. So why don't we hire some
people to research music and to figure out what kinds

(19:22):
of music keep people happy and working? And because people,
you know, they work hard in the morning and then
they sort of lag a bit before lunch, and then
they really lag sort of a couple of hours after lunch.
So why don't we do this? So why don't we
study it? Let's call it stimulus progression. It's a bit pseudoscience.
It makes sense it is in that it's not been proven.

(19:45):
It makes sense to everyone who I feel like knows
about it. Like sure, music can pick you up and
make you work harder. But it's pseudoscience in that it's
I don't think it's ever been scientifically proven, okay, because
I keep seeing it just like dismissed as pseudoscience. But
then there were plenty of early studies that were done
by legitimate industrial psychologists and other like efficiency experts that

(20:09):
kind of thing that showed that there there really was
a significant um like improvement and productivity or less sick days,
that kind of stuff in places that have musaic compared
to places that didn't have music pumped into the office. Yeah,
I think maybe they're specific claims about a work day, Okay,

(20:29):
might have been a little and I mean everywhere I
read said it was basically not a marketing scam but
a marketing tool that they kind of invented. I got you.
But but so one thing to say about this we're
going to talk about it in a second stimulus progression,
is that they did kind of plow money that they
were making. They were making a lot of money starting

(20:52):
in the late forties early fifties, Um, they plowed it
back into research to basically come up with scientific it
ince to back up their claims, which you can really
kind of see the ghost of George Square still looming
over the company. You know, this this decade or so
after he died. UM that it's always been this kind

(21:13):
of uh, science interested, if not science based company. UM
that's also been an early adopter of technology, as we'll see. Yeah,
I mean that is certainly fair. It was never just like, hey,
we're just gonna play a bunch of what people might
consider droll background music, like they really did. I think

(21:33):
I don't think it was a scam. I think they
really did try to study UM working environments, and what
they did with his stimulus progression was they divided the
work day into fifteen minute increments and basically set a
DJ playlist every fifteen minutes two and they assigned a
stimulus value from one to six, one being really really mellow,

(21:56):
six being you know, super up. And they basically went
through and almost like a Pandora sort of curated playlist
type of thing to get people to work hard and
efficiently throughout a day, and companies bought in, including the U. S. Army. Yeah.
I think World War two is basically cited as the

(22:18):
moment when music kind of proved itself enough at least
to start being adopted by very large companies, and then
within a few years after the war, by like the
very early fifties, they started to spread more and more
to even smaller and smaller companies. Uh. And it was
this idea that if you played music and music you know,
patented stimulus progression model, um, you know you're going to

(22:42):
avoid that mid morning slump that like every worker goes through,
you know, in productivity, and then the mid afternoon slump.
You could avoid that too, And think about how many
more widgets you could make if your employees don't you know,
slack off productivity wise at ten thirty, from ten thirty
to lunch, and then from like to thirty until they

(23:03):
go home. Like imagine if this this very pleasant music
is just kind of keeping them humming along what what
people call a forward us just unconscious sense of forward momentum.
The tempo in your environment is moving subtly faster and
faster and so um to keep people from going insane.

(23:25):
Part of the stimulus progression was that the songs in
a fifteen minute increment would kind of go up in tempo,
and then you'd have a fifteen minute break of silence
and then the music would come back on again. But
then this fifteen minutes there their first song, the tempo
of their first song would probably start a little faster
than the tempo of the first song of the last

(23:46):
fifteen minutes, And so all of a sudden, next thing
you know you're making which it's like a maniac because
you're being manipulated by this stimulus progression model, at least
again according to music. I I get what you're saying, Like,
it's not like, you know, Harvard came along and said, yes,
we've studied this thoroughly, and this is exactly what happens.

(24:07):
This is you know, company claims. But it is intuitively
sensible at least. Well, yeah, I mean you need only
to host house party and play and play music yourself
to determine how music can affect the mood of a
group of people. Put on group group is in the heart,
and you know what's gonna happen. Yeah, everybody's gonna shake

(24:29):
their group thing. Everyone's gonna shape their group things, shake
their group thing. If you put in uh old sour
plus Brian ENO's music for Airports not a good party thing,
No it's not. And since you brought him up for
the second time. I say, um, we discussed Brian, you know,
momentarily sure. I mean I love that record, and I

(24:50):
love a lot of his stuff, including his ambient music
Experimental Um records. I think it's really really good stuff
to have on if it's a nice gray day outside
and you're getting work done. I really enjoyed his background music,
but it's definitely not up in any way. You know,
what I found is a really good one for for

(25:12):
what you just described. Do you ever listen to Future
Sound of London. No. They have an album, like a
double album called life Forms, and it's it's about as
amazing as ambient gets. So you should check that one out.
Emily Embily, Emily got me into ambient. I call her
Embully when she's listening to that stuff. She really got me.
She called an ambient groove. She really got me into

(25:33):
that stuff. Over the years. Is that like um, like
zero seven and uh, you know stuff that's she calls
it ambient groovy, just sort of sort of mellow and
groovy and like zero seven and more Chiba. And it
was a certain era I think where that stuff peaked
Massive Attack a little bit. Oh yeah, it's good stuff. Yeah,

(25:55):
I think you'd like life forms. Then the future sound
of London stuff is normally a lot a little more.
You know, it's super cerebral and intelligent, but it's also
fairly dancy life forms his way, it's probably their most
ambient stuff around. So you know, though, let's get back
to him. He kind of came up with this as
an as an antidote to music, right, Yes, if you
like ambient music, you better thank your lucky stars for muzak.

(26:18):
Because we're not from Musach. You might not have ambient
music at least not now. Maybe it becoming fifty years
from now, who knows. Yeah, he said, um I loved it.
In this article says, as reported by Red Bull Music,
uh Ena said this, and this was I think for
the liner notes actually the airport or music for airports.
Whereas can music's intention is to brighten the environment by

(26:41):
adding stimulus to it, ambient music is intended to induce
calm and space and a space to think. Uh Ambient
music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening
attention without enforcing one. In particular, it must be as
ignorable as it is interesting. So so he hits on
something though that people would come to really resent about.

(27:03):
Um music is not even just necessarily the syrup nous
of the music itself, but the intent behind the music.
That it was always uh intended to basically manipulate your
mood into making you a better worker, a more docile consumer.
Um that that it was poking at your brain to

(27:25):
get to get you to do things that you may
or may not want to do. Maybe your your will
be less likely to punch some guy on the bus
because there's music playing, which is a good thing. We
should not be punching other people on the bus. But
the point is that you're being mind controlled in a
certain way, and eventually people got kind of resentful of that. Yeah,

(27:49):
we're not there yet. Though we're not there yet. There
was actually a point in time, though, Chuck, where music
and popular music were basically one and the same. Yeah,
that was sort of um, I mean one of the
heydays of music certainly was in that. When you know,
when Glenn the Glenn Miller Orchestra was pop music on

(28:09):
the radio. Music wasn't a far stretch from some of
that stuff, so it was sort of all one and
the same. I think it was as that as styles
changed and the sixties and seventies start rolling along, that
music became really sort of a bad word to a
lot of people, right. And one of the reasons I
saw that really explained it to me, because you know,

(28:31):
things change. The society just changed between the nineteen fifties
and the nineteen sixties. Um, it just abruptly changed. But
to the that doesn't fully explain why music just was
suddenly looked down upon. A good explanation I saw is
that lyrics became really really important in the league sixties.

(28:52):
People had something to say, and music does not include lyrics.
It completely undermines the point of music if you put
lyrics in or don't you know, don't rearrange the lyrics
with strings. Um So music kind of couldn't. I couldn't
keep up with that. It's not like it went away,
it doubled down. It kept doing what it was doing.

(29:13):
And in fact, it would take some of those pop
hits that had really, um monumentally important lyrics and just
take the lyrics out and replace it with a saxophone
or something like that. Yeah, they didn't think you do that.
I think it's interesting. They could have had a really
mellow singer at a certain point come in and they
really respect the fact that they were like, nope, the
singer as a violin and I don't want to hear

(29:34):
it anymore. Right. But a lot of these songwriters, in particular,
like I think Joan Bayez, Um, Bruce Springsteen, Boz Scags,
all of them refused to let their their music um
be covered by music or any of its competitors. UM.
But Paul Simon I saw, said he always knew he

(29:55):
had a hit when he heard a music version of it,
like at the Mall or something like that, which is
kind of like Weird Al covering Nirvana. Like Cobain said
that he knew that Nirvana had made it when Weird
Al covered smells like teen Spirit. I think that's basically
the same thing. Oh. I think most musicians, unless you're
a Ted Nugent, who uh And we'll get to that.

(30:19):
But very famously sort of offered to buy music when
they fell upon a hard time so he could basically
burn it to the ground. I think most musicians deep
down think it's kind of an honor when one of
their songs is music ified. It's got Yeah, you'd have
to play. I just want to find out what somebody's
going to do with it, because, like I was saying
at the beginning, like it really takes some creativity to

(30:40):
come up with, Okay, what can I replace this with
that's not just completely predictable or boring, but also isn't
gonna grab everybody's attention because it's again not the point
of music. It's it's um one of the the the
I don't know if it was a slogan of the
music corporation or not, but they basically said that they
fill in the awkward pauses in life to where yeah,

(31:05):
you don't like it's like you were saying at the party,
you if you're at a party that doesn't have any
music on, you just probably just get smashed out of
your skull because you're just trying to lubricate the social
situation so much. Whereas if you put on music, it's
like it takes a lot of the edge off. That
was one of the points too with music. And then
also to kind of get you to to linger a

(31:26):
little longer when you were shopping in a store. Um,
that was that was part of it as well. Yeah,
I mean music, We almost always have music on in
our house, unless you know it's night and we're watching,
you know, a movie or watching something on TV. But
at almost all waking hours we have music playing in
our home, and it just feels weird and quiet and

(31:49):
not full of life when it's when there's no music happening, right,
it's strange. It can be strange, for sure. Should we
take a break? Yeah, we're we're we have re basically
the early seventies, which is music's first crisis point, and
we'll come back to that after this. All right, So

(32:36):
I'm born in and uh and music starts to die
a little bit. A little real rock and roller came
into the world, that's right, born with a Jane jacket
with the Van Halen logo on marker in the back.
It did not go away completely though. It was just

(32:56):
sort of, um, I guess the beginning of the end.
But that didn't mean there wasn't still a business model
for music, because music was never about its popularity, no,
but there was a time where it was popular. Like
JFK had it on Air Force one, Eisenhower had it
piped into the White House, UM, it was playing on

(33:16):
board Apollo eleven, UM like it was like it was everywhere,
Like it's really hard to get across, um how ubiquitous
it was. But I found a quote from a guy
named Professor Gary Gumpert of Queen's College in New York.
He said that that at the time, music was just
kind of amniotic fluid that surrounds us. It never startles us.

(33:41):
It is never too loud, it's never too silent. It's
always there. And that was what it was like. You're
just kind of moving from one placid bucolic field to
the next, going from mall, the mall, store to store,
elevator to elevator, bus ride to bus ride. Um, it
was just absolutely everywhere. So compared to that, the idea
that it's absolutely everywhere unquestioned. Um. Yeah. It really kind

(34:04):
of started to take a bit of a downturn in
the seventies, but it just didn't go anywhere yet. It
took decades for it to really take a hit. Yeah.
I mean even in the eighties that was syndicated nineteen countries.
There were eighty million people listening, whether or not they
wanted to or not, listening to music every day. And
the company ended up being bought and sold a couple
of times over the years. I think in eighty one,

(34:27):
or in seventy two, a company called Teleprompter owned it.
In eighty one, Westinghouse bought it. And I don't know
if I believe this. The story goes that Westinghouse learned
later on when they were buying Teleprompter that they owned music,
and apparently they didn't know that. That's what funding Universe
dot Com says. I don't know. I mean, who doesn't.

(34:48):
Maybe back then they didn't do research into purchasing entire corporations,
but they were on a lot of scotch at the time. Man,
Although we've had companies that bought websites, and then they
learned that there was a podcast bro attached. So yeah,
I think I've heard of that Things you Should Do
or something like that. Yeah, that was actually that that
could happen now that I think about it, that's right. Yeah.

(35:09):
I kind of actually felt a deeper affinity from music
when I learned how many times they've been passed around
corporation by corporation. Uh. And then I think in the um,
I think it was was when did Yesco come along?
Without the nineties? So Yesco was around from the sixties
well when they finally came together though, right, Yeah, but
they were early competitor, I guess that kind of a

(35:31):
mid midlife competitor to um uh to Musaic. But by
the eighties, Yesco had established a name for itself by
doing basically the opposite of what music did. Rather than
making you know, uh covers of canned music without lyrics,
they would just go get the licenses of like the

(35:53):
hot new song of the of the moment and play
those and so rather than background music, which is what
music whole jam was, these guys were pioneering foreground music.
And they were just a small little outfit from Seattle
that you know. It was kind of like the little
engine that could. And they changed the entire landscape, the

(36:15):
audio landscape of the United States. Um just by being persistent,
by getting that that that word out that hey, now
foregrounds the way to go, not background that's old stuff. Yeah,
And I think that's why today when you go into
Public's to do your grocery shopping, you'll hear Christopher Cross
singing sailing instead of the music version of sailing. Yeah.

(36:37):
Can't we just get both though? Or do we have
to choose? I mean, I'm I'm a big Christopher Cross fan.
You're not gonna find a bigger fan than me, for real?
You you like him that much? He's great, Uh to
his two big albums I still have on my shelf.
Oh yeah, Well he's sitting in the other room in
my house right now. I guess you're the bigger fan. Yeah,

(37:00):
you're like, no, no, no, he's just tied up. Well
I was gonna say he's not here on on his
will and his own will. In fact, you could make
a pretty strong case he's here against as will. But
so in those when Yesco got Um officially involved with music,
I think music was did they actually file for bankruptcy

(37:22):
or were they just at that sort of mount precipice
Not yet, they were teetering right there on the edge,
And it was actually they were bought by the Fields Company,
the company that owns Marshall Fields. So Chicago makes another
appearance um and the Fields Company said we like where
this Yesco group is going. We're gonna merge with them.
So Musaic actually merged with Yesco Um, the smaller company,

(37:44):
but then ended up moving to Seattle right before the
grunge movement hit. So Seattle's big musical contribution before grunge
was music I remember seeing the I remember seeing that logo.
I mean you'd probably seen the vans around before and
really not known it's that M with the circle around it.

(38:05):
I remember when I first saw that, it was like,
wait a minute, is that the music? That's yeah, And
that was a big update. They apparently went with some
design group I can't remember the name of it that
just completely reinvented the brand because they went from being
in the background to manipulating your mood using stimulus progression
to this other thing, this new sound made up sounding

(38:28):
thing called um. What's it called quantum physics mechanics? Keep
guessing what else? Realm leap? No, those are all the quantums.
I know. There's got to be another one, chuck, because
I'm still looking. Is that thing called it's called it's

(38:51):
quantum leap. What was this called quantum leap? Sure? So
um with this quantum leap thing that they had going on,
the bacular effect, quantum modulation, quantum modulation. Okay, although I
like bacular effect, that's a great one. Um with quantum modulation,
it was um, we are evoking an emotion that is

(39:17):
now tied forever to this the brand that you're shopping.
Who store, your shopping and yeah, so like this, um
this one. So they hire people who make playlists, who
curate these playlists that are start to finish. Um, they
all share this one theme. They all kind of have
this one like cool, um not scary, uh, super hip, beachy,

(39:43):
you know spring Break two thousand and eight whatever. So
um that like a company will will say this is
this is what our brand is all about. Give us
playlists that fit this. And so now you're you're kind
of like you feel cool because of the music of
where you're shopping, and so that makes you want to
shop and associate yourself with that place even more. That's

(40:06):
what music, That's what the what's called neo music is
all about. That's that's the current state of affairs in
the industry. Yeah, like take if you want to use
Armani Exchange as an example. What they'll do is they
will literally try and make like a DJ mix with
that has beat matches and it doesn't break the momentums

(40:28):
and it's all cross faded. Whereas if Ann Taylor calls
them up, they don't want to cross fade. They want
Selene Dion songs and then a little bit of a
small break and then a sting song coming on, and
these gentle fades in and fades out, and you know,
it's the same sort of stuff, is just curated foreground music. Um.
What I love about music is in the end, when

(40:51):
they were finally acquired, they had at one point five
million commercially recorded songs in their catalog and they call
that the Well. Right, that's amazing, almost eight hundred Beatles
songs it is. I think that's why they never fully
went under, is that catalog kept them commercially viable for sale. Yeah,

(41:12):
So they were bought and I think two thousand nine
maybe by a group called Mood Music Atin two eleven,
and then two years later they retired the music name
forever just couldn't do anything with it. So now it's
Mood Music is the company that that owns the Well.
But they're doing that whole four okay, they're doing that

(41:33):
whole foreground music quantum modulation type thing where you know,
you just associate a brand with a certain kind of music,
Like you would walk into that armand the exchange and here,
you know, Simon yea Christopher Cross, You'd be like, something's
off here, the mood mood what is that mood media.

(41:54):
Their their job is to make sure that there's nothing
off while you're in that store, that it all just
kind of fits together and you feel good about where
you're shopping. I don't know that, man. You want to
you want to move some Armandi gear put on, you
can call me out, just blash it, fly off and
those kids would freak out there they're frosted. Tips would
stand up on end then and then they're like, what

(42:17):
is this? This is amazing. I've never felt more alive.
Why is Chevy Jason here? Oh man. A really cool thing, though,
is what you were talking about with music being on
the tech forefront. Uh, it's really cool that over the
years they were always early adopters of tech, and it's
funny to think about them that way, but they were

(42:37):
always on the on the leading edge and the forefront
of what technology was doing. Yeah, so they I don't
know if they invented them, but they certainly were early adopters,
if not pioneers. In vinyl records. People were not using
vinyl at the time. Then they eventually ditched the vinyl
records in favor of an electronic brain called mater m.

(43:00):
The number eight and the letter are Um, which basically
was a big deck of real the real tapes that
had a bunch of different songs on it, but they
had different inaudible pulses that would trigger a different one
to come on next, so you could curate lists on
these huge reel to reels. It was just amazing. They
were using this thing starting in the fifties, so the

(43:22):
whole thing became kind of automated. They launched their own
satellite in the seventies, They had a computer database in
the seventies. Like they were very much uh, pioneers and
early adopters of a lot of different technology that we
take for granted today. Yeah, I mean that you could
make an argument that they were doing the Pandora Spotify
think decades before they were doing it absolutely um yeah,

(43:44):
And I mean the whole point of it too, was
was virtually unchanged. I mean, it's not necessarily to make
you a docile shopper anymore, but it's two like they're
trying to make you feel like that brand is part
of your identity by evoking memories and you using songs
to unlock them. Totally pretty interesting stuff. Man, I'm gonna

(44:08):
go work with those two records again, I want to
write this down. Okay. One is more than music, period
and environment. Music record that has not just sailing on.
It has Olivia Newton, John's Magic, has um uh take
your Time do It Right, which I don't care if

(44:28):
the lyrics are there or not. If you're sitting next
to your mom in a doctor's office and baby, you
can do it. Take your Time, do It Right comes on.
You both know what what that song is about. You
know it may even be more uncomfortable in that situation.
And then it ends with Funky Town. It's a good one.
The other one is called the Blue Album. It's a
complete stimulus progression album and it has a bunch of

(44:51):
good songs on it, including um Orleans Dance with Me,
which is if you ask me, the music covers way
better than the original, so not to be can used
with Wheezers Blue Album. No, that's a little different. And
then if you're like, oh, it's music is floating my boat,
go start looking up Ronnie Aldrich, Frank checks Field, Montevanni,

(45:14):
um and just start there. Yeah. And if eventually you're like,
I'm feeling really goosey, how about some actual vocalists going on?
And then you'll just go right into Josh's other favorite,
which is yat Rock easy listening. I like yat Rock
a lot too. I'm super right now into West Coast
cool jazz, um Stan Getz, Chet Baker, um Oh, I

(45:38):
can't remember. I can't remember his name, but I just
got into him. He's a great jazz pianist from that era.
Bill Evans, the Bill Evans Trio, love Bill Evans. You're
just getting into Bill Evans. Yeah, I just just started
getting into I. I started with Chet Baker and just
started working my way out. Vince Garaldi is another great one.
And I know he's known for the Charlie Brown stuff,
but all of vince Garaldi is great. You can tell

(46:01):
just by the Charlie Brown album that he's an amazing
jazz good stuff. So, Chuck, I have one more thing.
There's a you know, people hate music a lot, so
there's some artists who have like tried to a lot
of artists have tried to make hay out of the
whole thing. But one guy, David Schaefer, had something from
back in two thousand or two thousand too. Something. Um.

(46:22):
He had X ten R dot one and X ten
R dot two. These two CDs that he released that
were basically his weird, unnerving remixes of music that just
turns the whole thing on its head so much so
that like you may laugh out loud when you first
hear them. And I believe they're on his website. But

(46:45):
it's like a it's like music, but what you would
hear in your nightmares. It's really good. Uh. And I
believe he's got it on his website to go listen to.
And I think you can buy the CDs too, So
check that out and we'll check it out. Okay, Well,
if you want to know more about music to start
listening and loving, just just don't pre judge. How about that?

(47:05):
And since I said don't prejudge everybody, that means it's
time for a listener mail. You know. Before we do
listener mail, we want to issue a formal apology to
people that suffer from mesophonia. In the Titanic Part two
episode listener Mail, someone wrote in about our ad that

(47:26):
we had where someone was whispering, and I it was
my fault. Frankly, I started off by sort of teasing
and whispering. I joined in, you joined in, but I
think I led you down the Primrose Path. You did,
but you know, if Chuck jumped off a bridge, when
I jump off a bridge. Apparently the answers yes, but
I'm still responsible for that. Well, we heard from plenty

(47:46):
of people. Um, I had a really nice back and
forth over email with the original email er. I misinterpreted,
uh there, um sort of joking tone of the email,
and she said, yeah, I was trying to be lighthearted
about it, so I get where you're coming from. Um,
she was fine, she's going to get tickets to a
future stuff you should know show, which she is very
excited about her But um, we worked it out and

(48:08):
she's good, and we just I didn't know it was
a real I had heard of misoponia. I didn't know
it could be such a debilitating condition. Yea. We never
would have made fun of it, certainly. Um. I just
sort of thought it was people that are like I
just don't like people when they eat food and listening
to that. So now we know, Yes, now we know.
So thanks to everybody who wrote in, and uh, sorry

(48:30):
for being jerks about that. Yeah, and um, I think
we should probably do an episode on mesoponia too, probably, Yes,
for for sure. I've started to do it before Chuck,
and there's not that much info out there, so it's
gonna we will, for sure, I agree with you, but
it might take a little longer. All right, so all
apologies everyone, and uh, I hope, I hope this helps
make it right. Yeah, and now on the listener mail, right,

(48:53):
all right, I'm gonna call this from Lauren. Hey, guys,
a man walks down the street and says, why am
I oft in the middle? The rest of my life
is so hard? Oh wait a minute, Sorry, what a
perfect email for this one. I was reading my forearm
tattooed by accident. Hey, guys, been listening to stuff you
should know for a few years. Off and turn up
the volume and play an episode while I cooked dinner.

(49:16):
My seven year old daughter Lila used to complain, oh,
you're listening to this again. But I recently called her
singing the be to the intro music, and she'll casually
mention things she's heard from time to time. I suspect
she's fond of the animal episodes. Anyway, you'll jokingly sometimes say, Jerry, well,
you have to edit that. You're gonna have to edit
that part out. And it has me curious how often

(49:37):
things are cut from an episode and why bad jokes
too long? Have you ever had to completely redo one?
I think it'd be really interesting to know, and about
Lila would find it encouraging since she likes to make
videos of herself singing and dancing for the record, y'all
make it effortless and uh seem effort lessen, it's always
a joy to listen to. That is Lauren from monta Vallo, Alabama,

(49:59):
and she yes, Montevallo, Yeah, you're probably right. You put
a little too much mustard on there. She says, ps.
How cool of a mom would I be if my
daughter heard her names on the podcast? Yeah, So there
you go, Lauren and Lilah. The answer is very little
gets edited out, just the singing and dancing like that
siren in the background. We'll probably just leave that into No,

(50:24):
we don't edit a lot out occasionally, Like we found
out when we said this before. Early on, we left
in the words stumbles and the ums and uhs, and
just because it's a conversation and we didn't want to
make it seemed too scripted because it's not, or canned
because it's not, and so we just left that stuff
in there. And the only time, like, like I think

(50:45):
today you had to look something up real quick. But
that doesn't happen much. Yeah, I had to poke my
head out of the studio and look at my record
collection and come up with name. So I mean that's
gone now. But very little is edited out. It's especially
after this many years. It's we're not one take wonders,
but it's Jerry doesn't have the hardest job in the world.
You know, we've taken it easy on her for years. Yeah. Yeah,

(51:09):
that that's about it, Chuck. I can't think of anything
else we really added out. But that's not to say
that shows that are heavily edited and various kind of
scripty and slick, like, there's a room for those two.
Oh yeah, we're not the only way to do it now.
We're like the music of podcasts. There's other people who
are all like the Ted NuGen of podcasts, and there's
room for both. Yea, like Roman Mars the Ted Nugenta podcasting.

(51:32):
That's right, man, that guy's always wearing like a studded
leather wrist fan and stuff. I keep waiting on Roman
to text me and being like, you guys are consistently
talking smack about me. He doesn't, he doesn't listen, and
no one he knows. That's impossible. Um so who is that?
Lila and Lauren correct nice. Well, thank you very much

(51:54):
for writing in hope. We answered your question. Uh and
if you want to get in touch with this, like
Lila and Lauren did, you can send us an email.
Send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,

(52:15):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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