A Very '70s Kmart Christmas

Remember that Not Found In Nature, Only At Kmart shade of turquoise blue? Well bring it home for the holidays!

"This is a digitized version of an in-store reel to reel tape that was played within a Kmart store in December 1974.  The opening Kmart jingle is interesting at the beginning of both hours, and there are theft deterrent security pages and store policy announcements between every few songs.  This must have been in attempt to discourage shoplifting.

This is a Tape-Athon product perhaps in their early days - see the attached pictures.  There also was an insert within the reel to reel box stating that the recording was made on a state of the art system -- and to possibly adjust volume levels.

The recording contains both sides, which are 1 hour long each, totaling 2 hours.  This tape is in good shape and was recorded on the 3¾ speed. This was transferred to digital using my Akai GX-4000D which is in excellent operable condition, and I cleaned the heads between plays as the tape did leave residue.

Special Thanks to Tom Schwarzrock (Zephryrhills, FL) who personally provided this very rare tape to me so that it can be added to the archive collection.  Tom preserved this from store #3405 Lake street in Minneapolis, MN as he worked there as a department manager in the 1970's." - Mark Davis

"Relaxation" The John Howard Abdnor Involvement (1969)

Listen here

Somewhere at the intersection of Dora Hall, Kit Ream and How To Blow Your Mind And Have A Freak Out Party sits this album.

Unknown artist on a record label owned by family? Check. Incoherent, possibly drug induced babbling? Check. Hippie cash in? Check.

John Howard Abdnor Jr. was a pretty lucky guy. The son of a very successful insurance salesman, John Jr. was aspiring to be a musician. John Sr. benevolently formed a production company and record label called Abnak for his son's musical enterprises.

Abnak Records (and yes, the label bears a suspicious resemblance to the classic Atlantic Records label - it's been said John Abdnor Sr. asked Atlantic Records chairman Ahmet Ertegun if he could use Atlantic's design for Abnak and Ertegun was flattered by the proposition, even though the two labels are not related) did score a national Top 10 hit with "Western Union" by The Five Americans in 1967. But every other Five Americans single reached far lower on the charts.

However, John Abdnor Jr. had made some records of his own and as a duet as Jon & Robin & The In Crowd with singer Javonne Braga as Robin. They scored some minor pop singles, including "Do It Again Just A Little Bit Slower", which made Top 20 in 1967.

Tragically, John Abdnor Jr. also suffered from bouts with mental illness and on July 27, 1980, he murdered his girlfriend, Janis Ballew, after she revealed she had an abortion. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1981, but the conviction was overturned on a technicality in 1988.

Eric Crapton?

South Korean pressing (Creato Records, 1980)

Apparently, this is a pirated copy.....

This wouldn't be Mr. Clapton's only problem album in South Korea....

White Van Speaker Scam

They lurk around shopping centers and box stores....Shady people, usually young men (but sometimes young women) in vans and SUVs.

They look at you and lick their chops as they pull over to you and make you a deal you just can't refuse; a brand new set of surround sound speakers and subwoofer for $200.

And this wasn't just any run of the mill surround sound set-up. This one is from a super boutique audiophile brand, renowned all over Europe; Olin Ross. Only the super snobs can afford this stuff. But by some strange ordering fluke, today is your lucky day and they just happened to have this Olin Ross surround sound thing that retails for $5,000 in a high-end audio shop, but if you act quick and run to the ATM and pull out $200 cash, you can get this thing off their hands and be the envy of everyone on your block...

Who is Olin Ross? you ask?

He/She then whips out a glossy brochure and even reviews in an audiophile magazine. And you begin to salivate at the superlative filled testimonials and reviews by audio experts who were left breathless by the performance of this thing.

So....You give them $200 and even an extra $20 for beer money because they were so cool. You race home and begin to set this thing up.

And it's right there you find out you've been had.

You got speakers, but really crummy and tinny sounding ones. The subwoofer is particleboard slapped together with glue. The volume control has static and overall, it's garbage. The magazine with the glowing reviews? Fake. The brochure? Fake. The company web address on the brochure? Fake too. And you wouldn't have bought this at all if you knew what it really was.

You my friend, have fallen victim to the White Van Speaker Scam, aka "The Speaker Guys"



It's not a new scam, it goes way back into the early '70s. And it isn't just speakers or even exclusively white vans the cons use. But any fishy sounding person who sells any kind of stuff from the back of a van or SUV in the parking lot of a Walmart, Home Depot or a supermarket.  I have heard many stories from people who got screwed already so when I was first approached by these cons in the '80s, I was able to fend them off (but not easily, they just don't know the meaning of give up.) But in recent years, the scam has really been on the rise.

You can find more details here.

And it's not just in America. You can find these scammers all over the world.


Protecting yourself is easy; Buy A/V equipment only from reputable dealers and not from vans.

Here's a list of some of the brands associated with this scam. Also be aware many of these brands are also being sold on eBay as well. So buyer beware:

Olin Ross

Marc Vincent

Divinci

iCinema

DOGG

Hermann

Nexis Audio

Jonsson

Eliese

Paramax

Hauffmann

ProTechnika

Maclaren

Kinetic

Charlie Hebdo

The January 14, 2015 issue of Charlie Hebdo. Headline: "All is Forgiven".

It has been nearly a week since the massacre at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical weekly newspaper. And words still fail me.

This was a direct attack not just on a little French weekly. It was an attack on all of us who cherish freedom of speech. The artists, writers, journalists, reporters and bloggers of the world, be they on paper or online. And their readers. No matter where we are in the world.

And a painful reminder that even in America, there are hateful forces right here that are willing to silence those who they do not agree with through deadly force.

The surviving staff of Charlie Hebdo in spite of enduring the most horrific tragedy imaginable, have chosen to carry on. Because you cannot give in to evil no matter what the threat may be.

The path of freedom has always been a long, painful and bloody one. But stopping is not an option.

The Max Headroom TV Pirate

It was an ordinary Sunday night in Chicago in late November of 1987. Folks were unwinding to enjoy their evening in front of the TV and all was going according to plan.

Some people had the WGN-TV 9:00pm newscast on. But during the sports segment, the WGN-TV signal was suddenly interrupted by a strange signal. Someone in a Max Headroom mask with a new sheet of corrugated steel rocking behind him, mimicking one of the video effects of the Max Headroom show had appeared on the video carrier. But the signal had no audio.


Quick thinking engineers at WGN knew exactly what the problem was. Somebody was hijacking their microwave studio-transmitter link (STL) signal, which relays a wireless signal from the TV studio to their transmitter, which sends the signal out for public broadcast on the Hancock Building in downtown Chicago. They quickly changed their STL signal frequency which eliminated the interference.

However on the viewer end, there was nothing they could do. Fussing around with the antenna or fine tuning their TVs did nothing because their reception was actually just fine. It was WGN-TV's own microwave uplink signal that was being taken over. Their reception of WGN-TV's broadcast signal itself wasn't the problem. But all reception, whether by antenna or cable was affected by it, as cable subscribers received the final stage feed - the same that was going out over the air.

Needless to say, it was a surprise to viewers. Who thought someone was messing with their TVs or someone at WGN-TV was goofing off. But not nearly as surprised as the WGN engineers. This was not supposed to happen. At all.  

First, it's very hard to get this kind of equipment. STLs aren't sold at Radio Shack or even your most sophisticated consumer electronics supplier. They are strictly for broadcasters. Only professional broadcasting engineers can get them and specifically for the TV and radio stations they work for.

Second, they produce signals at very high frequencies far out of the range of consumer level electronic goods. And the STL signal frequencies are unknown to the general public. Only professional broadcasting engineers know them. So the person doing this must either have either been an a disgruntled engineer or have had high level training in broadcast TV engineering.

It didn't end there.

Two hours later, the Max Headroom pirate was back. This time during an episode of Dr. Who on public TV station WTTW (Ch. 11). This time there was barely discernible audio.



WTTW engineers however were completely taken by surprise and the pirate transmission on WTTW lasted for 90 seconds.

However not before the Max Headroom character went on a bizarre rant, which ended with the person in the Max Headroom mask bent over and exposed his butt, which was spanked by someone in a maid outfit before the pirate signal cut out on it's own and the WTTW signal returned. WTTW also transmitted from the Sears Tower, rather than the Hancock building like WGN-TV, which only added to the confusion amongst local broadcasting engineers.

However, this isn't the first time something like this happened. A year and a half earlier in April of 1986, a disgruntled satellite dealer named John MacDougall hijacked an HBO satellite feed for the East Coast with a static message over a colour bar test pattern with no audio.

MacDougall was moonlighting at a satellite uplink facility in Ocala, Florida, giving him access to transmitting satellite dishes. He was protesting HBO's decision to scramble their C-Band satellite feeds, requiring satellite viewers to pay for expensive descrambler boxes and a monthly subscription fee, which outraged thousands of satellite TV viewers who spent several thousand dollars on their C-Band satellite dish systems to avoid paying for pay TV services.

Bear in mind this was in 1986 and we're not talking about the Dish or DirecTV type of satellite. Those cable alternative satellite dishes wouldn't appear for another decade. Second, these were C-Band satellite dishes, as pictured. Which are still used for open international broadcasting, radio stations and a few subscription channels. But Dish and DirecTV use a different band and proprietary system than C-Band for their home subscribers. Most domestic subscription as well as many basic channels now use scrambling.

However, MacDougall was caught because he made several mistakes. First, it was far easier to triangulate where the interfering signal was coming from, as there were only two places in the Eastern half of North America that could uplink a signal to HBO's satellite. Second the character generator for MacDougall's message was the only one used for his location. Since the exact time of the incident was well recorded, it was as simple as narrowing it down to the person who was on duty at the satellite uplink when it occurred.

MacDougall paid a $5,000 fine and was placed on a year of probation. He still sells satellite TV equipment.

Both stories made international headlines. And made broadcast engineers far more vigilant in protecting their uplink signals, satellite or STL (which both are digital and far more sophisticated today than anything they were in the 1980s.)

The Max Headroom hijacker however never attempted another broadcast intrusion. And to this day has never been caught.

Lotus Flower Seed Pod Scam

UGH!....

Your friend posts this on Facebook and shocked and horrified, you just click on it, just to see if there is really some nefarious thing "they won't tell you".

And I have to just smack my head. In the age of Photoshop, it's no wonder these phishing scams (that's what they are folks) get spread so easy.

Come on!

Do you honestly think if any cosmetic product company put out a product that actually caused THAT, that it would have NOT made WORLD headlines?

What happens when you click on that "video" is keystroke recording software is downloaded and installed on your computer, recording passwords and personal information

From the same cretins who brought you the "One Weird Trick" scam, what you're looking at is the Lotus Flower Seed Pod Scam.

That's right, a lotus flower seed pod (and Photoshop.)

No weird chemicals, no space parasites, no government conspiracies. Just pure, unadulterated bullshit for an easily manipulated and gullible public that still believes if they saw it on the internet, it must be true.

So next time someone you know shares something like this, call them out on it and stop the phishing scams.

"Dear Mr. Jesus" Sharon Batts & PowerSource (1986)

Listen here.

Oh no, it's another one of those damn child singer records. But on a more serious subject.

PowerSource were a Texas based Christian pop group. Like many acts in this genre, they were/are largely unknown outside these circles. And "Dear Mr. Jesus" is unquestionably a Christian themed song about child abuse, sung from the perspective of a 6 year old girl writing a letter to Jesus after seeing a TV news report of "a little girl beaten black and blue". Not only that, she confesses at the the end "Please don't tell my daddy, but my mommy hits me too."

Six year old Sharon Batts, the lead vocal on this song, wasn't the designated lead singer of the group. Just on this particular song. And thankfully, she wasn't physically abused.

This song almost became a Top 40 hit in 1987. CHR, Adult Contemporary, Country and of course, Christian radio stations were playing this in December of 1987 shortly after the track was added to the playlist of New York City's influential Z-100 and the song broke. A distribution deal was quickly secured, leading to a nationwide re-release of the song.

It was also timely, as the story of a little New York City girl named Lisa Steinberg made national headlines then after she died after being beaten by her adoptive father while he was under the influence of crack cocaine.

The song made #61 on the Billboard Hot 100 and remained on the charts for seven weeks.

The Worst 45 RPM Record In History?

Image: The World's Worst Records

"Could You Would You" The Planets (1958) WARNING: INDUCES VOMITING AND EXTREME DEPRESSION. SEE DISCLAIMER BELOW...

Upon playing this YouTube link, you agree to not hold History's Dumpster or me personally liable for any and all damage, mental and physical or to property, including brain hemorrhaging, gnawing off limbs and extreme pain and suffering which may occur when hearing this song... 

I once thought I finally heard every godawful song the human imagination could create. This time however, I have found something so bad, I actually barfed for five minutes. I couldn't even make it past the first minute. I slammed down several anti-depressant pills. Just so I can type this.

Please don't take this lightly. You're reading this from a man who once had to write a review for the entire six CD Yoko Ono box set Onobox. I can take a lot. That was hell. But the entire Onobox was actually quite refreshing compared to this two and a half minute record. This one record nearly pushed me over the edge.

This record does not belong in any collection. It belongs in a sealed EPA drum and buried forever in a lead covered concrete box at Hanford, WA.

        PLAY AT YOUR OWN RISK.  

The Kids In The Mail

In 1913 it was legal to mail children. With stamps attached to their clothing, children rode trains to their destinations, accompanied by letter carriers. One newspaper reported it cost fifty-three cents for parents to mail their daughter to her grandparents for a family visit. 

As news stories and photos popped up around the country, it didn't take long to get a law on the books making it illegal to send children through the mail.

50 Years Ago Today......

November 22, 1963 12:30 p.m. (Central Time)

Exactly as originally broadcast over the CBS TV Network.........

The Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Religion can make people do funny things. Like join them.

And in the '80s, the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was one dubious character.

For me, It wasn't so much the fact he was this strange little Indian guru who came out of nowhere. I was open to new things even back then.

It was the fact he was simply just every bit of a flaming nutjob as Pat Robertson. And the scary fact there are people attracted to people like these is one I've never been able to live comfortably with.   

The Bhagwan came to America in 1981 and shortly located to a remote area in Northeast Oregon. He bought a big 64 acre ranch and decided to convert it into a mini-village for his thousand-strong faithful called Rajneeshpuram.

Naturally, your neighbours up and down the road are going to have a problem with this if you set a thousand-strong strange people out loose wandering around in an area of less than 400 - often driving the Bhagwan around in Rolls-Royces. His teachings were a bizarre mixture of Eastern philosophy, sexuality and material obsession.

I'm automatically suspicious of any religious leader that needs to ride around in fancy new cars while everyone else has to walk.

The extra population boost from Rajneesh's followers (along with the import of several thousand homeless people) eventually was big enough to overwhelm the nearby city of Antelope, OR and by 1984, the City of Antelope became the City of Rajneesh.

City of Rajneesh, 1985

The original residents were angry at the newcomers whom they saw as invaders.

The Rajneeshees also made a series of New Age music albums under the name Basho's Pond.

This album perfectly defines New Age music if you've never heard it before. Note the "audiophile quality virgin Teldec vinyl" and DMM mastering. It was meant to be played on higher end stereo equipment. Which by the time you're finished buying the stereo amplifier, tuner, speakers, CD player, CDs, cassette deck, cassettes, turntable and records, New Age music was essentially an $8,000 wind chime.
You can hear some of it here:   http://ghostcapital.blogspot.com/2012/12/chaitanya-hari-deuter-govindas-deva.htm

 

Now things were really getting weird. And so was the Bhagwan. First he encouraged free love....Then he backtracked when AIDS became a terrifying epidemic. There was no cure for HIV/AIDS (there still isn't.) And virtually nothing was known about it amongst the general population, only that it was only a "gay" disease (it isn't.) Gay people (especially gay men) were targets of persecution across the nation due to the AIDS scare. And there was no shelter to be found in the Rajneesh community for them. Rajneesh preached the same hateful rhetoric as the fundamentalist Christians. He also favoured euthanasia for children born with birth defects.

Things came to a nasty head however when it was revealed Rajneesh's followers were involved in a bio-terrorism plot. Their plan involved contaminating salad bars with salmonella at restaurants in The Dalles, OR in an attempt to thwart the local election in their candidate's favour by reducing local voter turnout. The plan backfired - more local people voted than ever and the FBI and INS quickly began to investigate. It was revealed they had salmonella in vials and a petri dish and Rajneesh and his aides quickly attempted to flee the country. Rajneesh was arrested on immigration charges. But not on the bio-terrorism charges. On a plea bargain, he eventually returned to India, where he changed his name to Osho. He died in 1990.

His ashram in India is still active..

Plaque in Antelope, OR which memorializes the Rajneesh "invasion".......

Controversial Magazine Covers

With the controversy this week over the latest Rolling Stone cover featuring Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, I thought I'd take a look at shocking magazine covers. While this photo, a self pic taken by Tsarnaev on his cell phone had long been circulating on the internet and even made the front page of the New York Times in May....

....the same, untouched photo on the Rolling Stone cover caused outrage in the media. Prompting many in the media to accuse Rolling Stone of making Tsarnaev appear like a rock star, in spite of the New York Times and other outlets use of this same photo.

Let's take a look at a few other controversial magazine covers.

 

2012's Time cover of a mom breast feeding her 5 year old son disgusted everyone.

A famous TV star coming out on the cover of Time magazine wouldn't raise an eyebrow today, but 16 years ago in 1997, Ellen DeGeneres was dealt a backlash by several media outlets, many of them dropping her program. But to the horror of social conservatives, there was actually far more public praise for DeGeneres than criticism. Society's attitudes towards the LGBT community were already changing not towards mere tolerance. but full blown acceptance. Rapidly. And there was no turning back.  

 National Lampoon has always been known for it's edgy, often politically incorrect humour. But this 1973 cover crossed the line from edgy to cruel with many people. But since any publicity is good publicity for a humour magazine, they reprised this cover photo on the picture disc version of their 1977 LP That's Not Funny, That's Sick

 In the '60s, there was a book written titled The Death of God by Gabriel Vahanian that explored the objectification of God as a symbolic or cultural artifact. The book was never intended to be a direct death certificate to God, but that's how many people took it. Time explored this and the movement surrounding it and the cover alone caused such a massive uproar amongst religious conservatives, Time's mail room was inundated with angry letters to the editor and the magazine lost thousands of subscribers.

As late as the early '70s, it was still very rare to see African-Americans on the covers of major national magazines (and virtually never in a flattering light.) But Playboy declared black is beautiful with it's October 1971 issue featuring Darine Stern by herself on the cover. Angry white readers in the South were outraged, but Playboy made no apologies.

Stern's cover pose was reprised in 2009, but featuring Marge Simpson.

 
The murder of former Beatle John Lennon stunned the world in December of 1980. Not since the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 had the world lost such a universally beloved icon and into January 1981, people were still recovering from the shock. Rolling Stone published this as the cover photo for their first issue of 1981. It was shot merely hours before Lennon's assassination. It wasn't intended to be offensive and would have made the cover regardless as Lennon had just released his Double Fantasy album. But a nude photo of any sort for a magazine sold on publicly accessible magazine racks at that time was too much - especially for a man that just died. And many stores banned this issue.

Need A Typewriter?

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.

And apparently, they are sold to the public as well.

http://www.swintec.com/clear-typewriters/10-2410cc.html

Remember......

Happy Easter!

I Don't Like Mondays

"I Don't Like Mondays" The Boomtown Rats is a seminal New Wave classic from 1979. What many pop music fans had forgotten (or never knew) that the song has it's origins in a tragedy that became a sort of precursor to the school shootings that occurred during the late '90s that led to the shootings at Columbine High School in 1999 to the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings of late last year.

On January 29, 1979 (34 years ago today), Brenda Ann Spencer, a troubled 16 year old girl opened fire from the window of her house in San Diego to the playground of Cleveland Elementary School, which was across the street, killing the principal and a custodian and injuring eight students and a police officer. When asked why she opened fire, she flippantly remarked, among other things, "I don't like Mondays", which in spite of the context in which it was used became a sort of catch-phrase in the early '80s, appearing on buttons and t-shirts.

Her cold blooded lack of remorse for her crime at the time was enough to have her tried as an adult and sentenced 25 years to life for the killings. She had been denied parole four times. Her last parole hearing was in August of 2009 and she will not be eligible for parole again until 2019.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Ann_Spencer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Don%27t_Like_Mondays

Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock-N-Roll

Back in the '60s and early '70s, in a tiny kingdom in Southeast Asia very few Americans had ever known of and rarely even heard the name of up to then, a rock 'n roll revolution was happening.

Cambodia was a pretty Westernized nation at the time and it's capitol, Phnom Penh was surprisingly modern and trendsetting compared to most of Asia during those years. Many rock and roll bands were formed during the Vietnam war, taking rock and roll music that was brought to Cambodia by American soldiers stationed there and blending it with traditional Cambodian music to create probably one of the most unique sub-genres of '60s rock ever heard, one that could have easily held it's own along with the American and British rock that influenced it, even in if it was sung mostly in Cambodian.

But the kingdom became destabilized with the Vietnam war raging at it's border. The Khmer Rouge and it's leader Pol Pot had taken over Cambodia in 1975 and began the most bloody genocide and torture the world had ever seen since Hitler's Germany. Over two million Cambodians, one third of it's ENTIRE population were slaughtered in what became infamously known as The Killing Fields.

Virtually all musicians, artists and intellectuals were sent to work in forced labor camps, many were worked, starved or in the case of many women, also beaten and raped to death. Many people merely in possession of these Cambodian artist's records or tapes were killed or sent to camps to suffer the same fates and the records/tapes were destroyed. Very few original studio master tapes survived. However, a handful of songs have survived on 2nd or 3rd generation cassette tapes and vinyl discs that were smuggled out of Cambodia or hidden, from which came a few compilations released in the '90s, one which I found in 1998 and my own interest in this lost music began.

There is a forthcoming movie that chronicles this lost era just before the Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia called Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock & Roll.

Here is the trailer for it:

 
Here's one of the biggest Cambodian rock hits.  "I'm 16" Ros Sereysothea

The movie has been in production for nearly seven years, but it is due in 2013. Check it out....It's an eye opener into rock n' roll's most tragic mystery....

Website: http://www.dtifcambodia.com

UPDATE: 1/11/14  - Don't Think I've Forgotten premiered in Phnom Penh. It's US release is still unknown. But here's a recent article about the film and some of the artists:

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/7days/long-awaited-film-tells-tale-cambodia%E2%80%99s-musical-%E2%80%98golden-age%E2%80%99 

UPDATE: 3/8/15 - The movie is currently being screened at selected film festivals across America. It's unclear if there will ever be a Netflix showing or Blu-Ray or DVD release of the film.