History's Dumpster = GLORIOUS trash! Kitsch, music, fashion, food, history, ephemera, and other memorable and forgotten, famous and infamous pop culture junk and oddities of yesterday and today. Saved from the landfill of time...
Whilst on a visit to my friend's house, he had something in his yard he (and no one else) could identify. Only that it looked like a "typewriter with no keyboard" But what was it?
It was an Ediphone (or what remained of it.)
The Ediphone was an early dictation machine like the Dictaphone that used wax cylinders (cylinder records were considered obsolete by 1912. But Edison made commercial music cylinder records up until 1929.) But beyond that into the '30s and even as far as the early '50s. The wax cylinder was used for office dictation before it was replaced by belt machines and a few years later, tape - even The Edison Company eventually got into tape.
..........until the 2000s when digital took over.
The Ediphone was electrically powered, but strangely recorded acoustically.
When audio recording began, there was only one sound source (monaural or "mono"). The horn of a cylinder or gramophone record player. And all was well. For most people.
For others, something was missing.
You see, the epitome of a perfect recording is not just an incredibly good performance artistically, but also how lifelike it sounds.
The first is actually easier to achieve than the latter. The most lifelike sounding and the very best artistic recording rarely come together. Even today.
The very first experiments in binaural reproduction (an early form of stereo) go back as early as 1881 (no joke!) At a theater in Paris. The sound was transmitted through two telephone wires to special headsets that received the audio. This was used in hotel rooms and by special subscription service. But it didn't garner much attention, simply because the tinny headsets and 19th century telephone line quality audio was so bad.
An early two-channel playback system,
developed and sold in the early 1900s, used a two-channel
phonograph cylinder and two mechanical pickups and horns. But it really didn't sound good and the early recordings themselves have been lost to time. To make stereo sound acceptable on a commercial scale, vast improvements in monaural audio fidelity would have to be achieved.
Here's another early attempt at stereo, it's mono, but used a delay effect.
Enter radio.
There were experiments in stereo broadcasting going back to the early '20s. They utilized two radio station frequencies, two radio receivers (VERY rare in most homes of that time) and a special headset that connected into the outputs of both radios and at a time when most earliest commercial radio stations were very competitive, very hard for stations themselves to negotiate (the earliest duopolies of stations didn't happen until the late 1920s.) But again, this was early 1920's AM radio fidelity, while still an enormous leap from the telephone lines of 1881, still had it's own problems. including skywave interference from distant stations, hetrodyne squeal, harmonics from nearby stations and electrical interference.
However, recording had moved from acoustic recording horns to electrical microphones and reproducers. With the dramatic improvements in recording fidelity, the idea of stereo recording was again revisited. In the early 1930s, Bell Labs and RCA Victor made experiments in hi-fi and stereo recording, independent of each other.
Here's an early RCA Victor Mono Hi-Fi recording session with The Paul Whitman Orchestra in 1933.
Here's a VERY early experimental single groove stereo recording made by Bell Labs in 1934
Magnetic tape was also being developed. The first magnetic recordings were made in 1898 on steel wire and the first magnetic tape was invented in 1928. For the most part, they were merely experimental, first because the lengths of wire or tape needed to make reasonable quality recordings were astronomically long. Second, the tapes were made of steel or paper backed magnetic tape, making them prone to breakage. It wasn't until the mid 1930s when German scientists developed the first successful hi-fi tape recordings and it was initially used for Nazi radio broadcasts.
The very first Stereo system offered to consumers was reel to reel tape in the mid 1950s. But they found limited acceptance. Reel tape was awkward, bulky and expensive. Most records however remained monaural - except for a few made by Cook Laboratories. These records were binaural. as mentioned earlier and used headphones instead of speakers for the best reproduction.
They also used two grooves with two cartridges and pickups
Single groove full stereo records were finally perfected by 1957 and were sold by 1958. They were an instant sensation. But there were still millions of monaural record players and the heavier tone arms would ruin a stereo record. So record companies made records in both Stereo and Monaural (aka "Mono") versions until 1968.
Stereo radio was also being developed. First using a revival of the AM/AM experiment of the 1920s. When FM was established in the 1950s, AM/FM radio combos experimented with using FM for the left channel and AM for the right.
Yes, there were actually tuner components that allowed you to hear FM on the left channel and AM on the right. This crude form of stereo radio was obsolete by 1961 when multiplex FM Stereo was invented.....
Stereo sound is great. And when it's recorded with care, it can be breathtaking in it's own sense of realism. But you're still only getting what's coming from the front of you. Not the ambiance from the rear as you would in an actual live performance. In the early days of stereo recording, most of the early stereo recordings tried to emphasize the stereo ping-pong, left to right, right to left sound, which is fine if you weren't particular with the realism of sound, just the physical effect of stereo sound. Something to show off your fancy new stereo and what it can basically do to your friends.
Many early stereo studio recordings (especially those early stereo records from the late '50s and early '60s) were deliberately mixed to highlight these effects. But most pop/rock recordings were originally mixed in mono and later run through a gamut of fake stereo enhancements (echo chamber, reverb, vocals on one channel, instrumentation on the other) instead of going back to the original multitrack studio tapes - if available, and creating a true stereo mix. If it couldn't be done, and in most cases regardless in my opinion, it should have been left alone. It wasn't until the mid '60s when true stereo mixes of pop/rock albums became the norm. The technology and science of stereo recording was improving
And then came Quadraphonic.
Quadraphonic was first used as far back as 1953 (using 4 track tape) in Europe and introduced to the American market by the Vanguard Recording Society in June 1969. Then RCA followed with a Quadraphonic 8-Track tape
In the early 1970s the very first Quadraphonic LPs came out. But there was a problem. There was no uniformly compatible system for making Quad LPs. There were three incompatible systems SQ (developed by CBS Records), CD-4 (developed by RCA, no relation to Compact Discs, which wouldn't be invented for another 10 years) and QS (developed by Sansui).
This created a lot of confusion. And the government wasn't willing to step in and saw this solely as a civil matter beyond their authority (which would be repeated for AM Stereo in the '80s. But what made AM Stereo different was it was a form of radio transmission and that usually automatically falls under government jurisdiction.)
But it was the consumer that suffered the most. Because most labels allied with one system of Quad or the other. For example, if you liked Santana and had an SQ Quad system, you were in luck. Santana was a Columbia artist then and Columbia used SQ exclusively. However, if you also liked The Doors, you were toast. Elektra used the CD-4 Quad system and while those records will play on an SQ system, you won't get Quad sound (and the basic stereo separation of a CD-4 Quad record was not very good on an SQ Quad system. Or even a basic stereo.
Click to enlarge and read
There was no true winning system in the Quad war. But it seemed like SQ had far more advantages than CD-4. SQ used creative phasing, while CD-4 Quad records required a special stylus and since the system was encoded using something very similar to how FM Stereo radio is encoded at a very high inaudible frequency. So there was a serious record wear problem. If the portion of the groove where the frequency was encoded was worn, the Quad separation of the CD-4 Quad record was gone as well.
And what about Sansui's QS system? I don't have any personal experience with QS, but I have heard it said the QS system was very similar to SQ.
And like the early stereo recordings, studio engineers of the time were eager to utilize all four channels sonically in every way possible. Including putting each instrument on it's own channel. They had to. You see, most recording studios are acoustically dead places, so there was no way to capture the ambiance of a live recording. They could add artificial reverb and echo to the rear channels (as with the early fake stereo records), but it would sound AWFUL if played on a conventional stereo. So most didn't. I say most because I have heard some REAL atrocities in Quad.
Usually the very best sounding Quad albums were the classical albums recorded specifically in Quad.. They captured the sense of depth and space far better than most pop or rock albums.
Click to enlarge and read
The Quad fad had pretty much died out by 1978. Mostly out of consumer exasperation with the competing systems. But also the extra baggage of two extra speakers. But multiple-channel sound was revived by Dolby for use in movie theaters in the late 1980s
Today, the children of Quad, the DTS and Dolby Surround systems are used in home theater setups and even as a limited edition CD/DVD series - AGAIN with competing and incompatible systems, SACD and DVD Audio. They were introduced in the early 2000s. But like the Quad LPs of the '70s, they too have largely vanished due to consumer frustration as well as indifference.
When we look for employment, even in record stores, the last thing you expect to get is a free record (that came later in your record store career ;) ....)
Until the '80s, when video tapes and later in the 2000's when DVDs became standard, many employers used records to either train employees or boost morale (in that special way only a nameless, faceless and often clueless mega-corporation can.)
When this practice started, it's hard to say. Instructive records and messages from employers to workers of some sort have been around since the 1890s (and on wax cylinders!)
It wasn't until the 1920s did the major record labels set up custom record divisions. They were initially for businesses or organizations with a large nationwide or regional subscriber/client/employee base, but later allowed their presses to be used for smaller regional music record labels.
If you were a lucky McDonald's employee in early 1979, you got this Eva-Tone soundsheet to prep you for the latest summer advertising campaign blitz for McDonald's.
I'm not sure what the message is here. Are the employees supposed to remember the lyrics of this jingle?
Sometimes, there's a part of me that still misses using a typewriter.
I just like how it looks, each letter embossed into the paper rather than just photocopied from the office program on my computer.
And it's a delicious thrill for me to have my most formal paper correspondence look like crazed manifestos or ransom letters.....
And yes, typewriters are STILL being made. And you'll never guess for whom.
Eccentric old people?
Conspiracy nuts?
Nope.
They're made for prisoners.
So you're likely getting something SUPER rugged. And they come in clear cases (never underestimate those hardcore criminal minds.) And very few solid metal parts to get "creative" with.
On 4/20 and especially at 4:20 PM, millions of people around the world smoke a much maligned, but fairly innocuous sticky green herb that relaxes people, reduces depression and boosts appetite.
I've smoked pot for nearly 30 years and compared to all other recreational substances (including alcohol), marijuana is the most benign. Today, there are synthetic and far more dangerous drugs easily available, such as bath salts and K2 that make marijuana, for all the reefer madness rhetoric about it that some STILL believe, appear as innocent as milk and cookies.
There's a growing awareness in even the most rigidly conservative states that marijuana isn't as bad as previously thought. (Even Mississippi decriminalized marijuana.) And with the onslaught of crystal meth and these new synthetic drugs and with a nation deep in debt and unable to sustain an abysmally failing war on drugs, something's got to give.
People in Washington State and Colorado have a LOT to be grateful for today. I couldn't have asked for a better night than November 6, 2012. Not only my birthday, but Washington State and Colorado did the once politically unthinkable; they legalized the recreational use of marijuana.
They had to eventually. I knew it would happen in my lifetime. But I was about 10 years off. Who could have known it would have been voted for in near landslides in two states?
But first.....
You toke the green hit buddy......
Marijuana wasn't always illegal. In fact, there were NO laws against marijuana whatsoever until the early 20th century. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew and used marijuana. Marijuana was used for treating everything from asthma to pain relief (It doesn't actually relieve pain, but it does take the edge off it.)
Doctor recommended......
Here's the ultimate playlist for your 420 holiday:
"The Great Smoke Off" Shel Silverstein (The One To Play at 4:20 PM)
"Legalize It" Peter Tosh
"Sweet Leaf" Black Sabbath
"Pass The Marijuana" Sublime
"You're A Viper" Stuff Smith and his Onyx Club Boys
"Smoke Two Joints" The Toyes/Sublime
"Gimmie A Reefer" Bessie Smith
"Hits From The Bong" Cypress Hill
"Don't Step On The Grass, Sam" Steppenwolf
“You Don't Know How It Feels” Tom Petty
"Natural Mystic" Bo Marley
"High" Feeder
"Don't Bogart Me" Fraternity Of Man/Little Feat
"Hash Pipe" Weezer
"Wildwood Weed" Jim Stafford
"Because I Got High" Afroman
"Stoned Soul Picnic" The Fifth Dimension
“Comfortably Numb” Pink Floyd
"Too Rolling Stoned" Robin Trower
"Marijuana In Your Brain" Lords Of Acid
"Four And Twenty Hours" Nana Mouskouri
"Pass The Dutchie" Musical Youth
"Texas Tea Party" Benny Goodman
"M.V. (Marijuana)" Nirvana
"Rainy Day Women 12 & 35" Bob Dylan
"Who Got The Hooch" Everything
"Champagne and Reefer" BB King
"Along Comes Mary" The Association
"Mary Jane" Rick James
"And It Stoned Me" Van Morrison
"Save The Roach For Me" Buck Washington
"My Name Is Bud" NOFX
"Muggles" Louis Armstrong
"Smokin'" Boston
"Billy Bardo" Johnny Paycheck
"The Ganja Man" Lee "Scratch" Perry
"Homegrown" Neil Young
"I Got Stoned And I Missed It" Dr. Hook
"Seeds and Stems (Again)" Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen
"Reefer Man" Cab Calloway
"One Toke Over The Line" Brewer & Shipley
"That Cat Is High" Manhattan Transfer
"Burn One Down" Ben Harper
"The Devil Went To Jamaica" Travis Meyer
"420" Kottonmouth Kings
"Panama Red" New Riders of The Purple Sage
"Cheeba Cheeba" Tone Loc
"Hash Cake '77" Hawkwind
"Roll Another Number" Neil Young
"White Punks On Dope" The Tubes
"Let's Go Get Stoned" Ray Charles
"Insane In The Brain" Cypress Hill
"The Thoughts Of Mary Jane" Nick Drake
"Marijuanaville" Tenacious D
"Puff The Magic Dragon" Peter, Paul & Mary
"And She Was" Talking Heads
"Copperhead Road" Steve Earle
"Tomorrow Never Knows" Beatles
"There She Goes" Sixpence None The Richer/The La's
"Are You Experienced" Jimi Hendrix
"Last Dance With Mary Jane" Tom Petty
"Bong Hits For Breakfast" Staind
"Heaven Is A Halfpipe" OPM
"Marijuana" Phish
"Marrakesh Express" Crosby Stills & Nash
"Smokin' In The Boys Room" Brownsville Station/Motley Crue
"What If God Smoked Cannabis" Bob Rivers
There's fewer sights sadder than an abandoned theater.
Buildings that were once the source of so much joy for so many people
only to be forgotten to time and ignorance. And depending on building condition could be restored and used
again to showcase so much new and exciting talent to new generations.
It's a shame what happens when we ignore
and take for granted a beautiful old building....
Snik Snak (1968-1977) Snik-Snak was M&M/Mars answer to the hallowed
(and much more successful) Kit Kat franchise of Nestle International
(however through some long standing arrangement, Kit Kats are made by
Hershey in the US.)
Hose Nose (1980s) This is a candy dispenser that looks like a nose that you strap to your
face. It oozes candy slime and they encourage you to stick out your
tongue and catch the drips from the nose (I'll bet you're all screaming "EWWW!!!!" right now.) Some of the slogans: “It’snot
what you think”, “candy slime filled”, “drippy”, and “catch it on your
tongue”. Yes, this candy encourages you to eat candy
snot. And unless you're 10 years old, VERY forgettable....
Archie McPhee Gummy
Maggots (1990s) Another gross candy. I’ve never heard another human
being say - not even Andrew
Zimmern. “Mmmm, these maggots are delicious!” Maybe Zimmern has said
this, but I’ve never made it more than ten minutes into his show
before violently barfing in the trash can and changing channels. (I’m more of a Guy Fieri/Adam Richman type of guy.)
Abba Zaba (1920-Present) Still made, but rarely seen east of the Rockies
Lik-M-Aid
(1965-1982) This candy came with vanilla cream flavoured compressed
sugar "dipping" sticks. Original flavours were Cherry, Grape and Orange
(later Lime.) The name was changed to "Fun Dip" and they're now a part
of Wonka's candy empire.
"No musical instruments or mechanical devices used on this recording
other than one guitar....."
- An inscription on all the 78 RPM
labels of The Mills Brothers recordings for the Brunswick and Decca
labels from the '30s and '40s.
A tall order - even for the
most dedicated folk acts today, but The Mills Brothers did it during the
60 years of their career. With style to spare.
I've always been a fan of The Mills Brothers. They INVENTED doo-wop.
Yes, some people will give lofty praise to The Robins, The Orioles, The
Clovers and The Chords (and yes, they certainly DESERVE theirs). But you just
can't hear their records and NOT know where it all REALLY came from.
And while Michael Buble might be the snazziest thing to come along since
Harry Connick Jr., you just don't know HIGH CLASS MUSIC until you get
hip to The Mills Brothers.
LONG before the days of multi-tracking studio vocals
and other studio gimmickry, these guys could put out a record that
sounded far ahead of it's time, but was as organic as can be. And do it
all in ONE TAKE. Simply because they had such an awesome talent (Michael
Buble today can sit back and check his Twitter feeds while his studio
engineers remove every trace of morning after breath from his vocal
tracks.....), The Mills Brothers could complete a whole album in less
time than it takes for most pop bands today to decide which note goes
where in the first three bars.
Their last big hit was 1968's "Cab
Driver". They were the only act in pop music who had a hit record in
the '20s to last until 1968.
.....and here they are with the Jackson Five in 1974:
Well, let me rephrase that. Cigarettes have always been gross and
deadly. But these days, a cigarette smoker is pretty much considered as
low as a crackhead in some circles. Though it's nice the smoking
awareness campaigns have brought the graphic evils of tobacco to dinner hour TV
screens, I have to admit, they're as pointless as the anti-marijuana PSAs of the '60s to the
'90s.
Besides, NOTHING can convince an innocent kid not to take up smoking more
effectively than a kiss from a chain smoking aunt.
In the old days, you used to have a dizzying variety of cigarette
choices available at your local grocery/convenience store (more than
50!). Today, there's about 10 or even fewer brands in most places. Today, most brands are available exclusively over the internet. Retail stores get their stock from a state regulated middleman. Which is why in many states (namely Washington State), there is so little variety.
But for remaining smokers, fire up a menthol and enjoy this stroll down the tobacco aisle of yesteryear....
Tareyton - My dad used to smoke these. No longer available in many
areas, but they are available on the internet through RJ Reynolds.
Kent - My mom used to smoke these.
Virginia Slims - Another disappearing brand of women's cigarette.
More - An icky tasting super long and thin "120" cigarette. I snagged a pack of these from the rack at Fred Meyer when I was a kid. They looked weird, so I though they'd taste cool (with that funky brown paper.) They were flat out GROSS.
Satin - "With a LUXURIOUS satin tip", never mind the tobacco inside was garbage. Satin was an '80s upstart brand. I knew of these by the free pack coupons they used to stuff in every Sunday newspaper.
Yves St. Laurant - A fashion designer's death by design. Another '80s brand.
Merit - Another former brand of choice. Of all the low-tars, I actually LIKED Merits. They were tolerable. But Merit was one of those "old peoples" brands that seemed to disappear rapidly.
Doral - A '70s brand.
Multifilter - Known for having two different filters, but the same result.
Vantage - A filter cigarette with a giant hole in the middle of the filter.
Sterling - An 80's brand
Benson & Hedges - Another disappearing brand and the first marketed for the "upscale" crowd.
Eve - A long thin women's cigarette
Viceroy - Never smoked this brand, but it was big in the '60s.
Lucky Strike - Motto "It's toasted" Just like your lungs after smoking a pack.
Chesterfield - A non-filtered smoke, popular from the '20s - the '60s
when even by then, it was an "old people's cigarette" Before Kool and
their jazz festivals in the '70s and '80s, it was popular with radio DJs (and immortalized as such in Donald Fagan's song "The Nightfly".) I never thought they were that spectacular
Raleigh - This was the brand your old neighbour probably smoked.
Dave's - A '90s brand still being made, Known for it's folksy
magazine ads that made you think it was made by some average person, just
like you, who wanted a better smoke than what those big corporations
offered. Fact: It was made by Phillip-Morris the whole time.
Scotch Buy - Now here was an unusual brand made by RJ Reynolds for a
corporate supermarket chain (Safeway and subsidiaries.) Safeway
discontinued Scotch Buy and distanced itself as far as possible from the
brand in the '90s when cigarette manufacturers were being sued. Smart
move. They tasted like crap anyway.
Bel/Air - One of the better menthols. Now vanished.
Carlton - The lowest tar and nicotine of any cigarette (without the
nicotine, there's no point in smoking cigarettes.) Memorable for
it's plain magazine ads that read. "If you smoke, please try Carlton" The gist
was that it was a "safer" cigarette. But they tasted HORRIBLE and the
filters were so tight, you can barely draw off of one.
True - Another weird filtered low-tar cigarette.
Misty - Another '80s women's cigarette. Still being made, but instead of women, it's gay men that buy them now.
Lark - I remembered seeing these on the shelves, but I can't remember anyone who ever smoked this brand.
The Ediphone was an early dictation machine like the Dictaphone that used wax cylinders (cylinder records were considered obsolete by 1912. But Edison made commercial music cylinder records up until 1929.) But beyond that into the '30s and even as far as the early '50s. The wax cylinder was used for office dictation before it was replaced by belt machines and a few years later, tape - even The Edison Company eventually got into tape.
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