Mall Of 1974 by Mall Music Muzak

Remember real shopping music? Before the music over shopping mall PA systems became a mishmash of Adult Contemporary recurrents and tired, overplayed '80s oldies?

The music was always more welcoming because it was agnostic. It wasn't someone's favorite music. Or anyone's. It was that stuff that you heard just slightly below the general din of a typical day inside a shopping mall.

You don't know headaches until you've just heard Bon Jovi music playing in the echo chamber of an empty shopping mall. You just don't.

Because the malls acoustically are/were the worst places for contemporary pop/rock music of ANY kind. I soon realized this after the malls started changing their background music from easy listening to pop music from 1987 to 1990. And I soon had a renewed appreciation for orchestras with pianos and lots of big brassy instruments. 

Photo: Long Island '70s Kid

Because shopping malls have/had hard surfaces. The glass storefronts, marble floors and walls, fountains, the weird metal abstract art sculptures and high vaulted courtyard ceilings all reflect sound. Acoustically, they were just better tempered for low volume Percy Faith than mid-volume Paula Abdul. Pop/rock booms in malls with a cathedral-like echo that's sometimes disorienting. Some people can't process that and the person next to them talking through the echo as well as the older easy listening and I'm one of them. Now get off my lawn.

But now you can relive that golden sound as you browse through the Amazon app on your smartphone! Mall Of 1974 is essentially a nifty compilation of classic mall PA music. But also with added echo and reverb to simulate the sound of a shopping mall, circa 1970s/early '80s.

Enjoy!

The WGY Food Stores

Photo: Hoxie!

If there's one thing that pairs up with a great cup of coffee, it's great radio. And for a few glorious decades from the 1930s to the 1950s, people in the Capital Region of New York got both from the legendary WGY Radio.

WGY is one of the pioneering radio stations in America. Broadcasting continuously since 1922, it was home to many firsts in broadcasting, including the first remote broadcasts, the first radio dramas, the first high powered broadcasts, the first experimental TV station and one of the very first FM radio stations, among them. It's local reputation as a media powerhouse also lent itself to some unusual diversifications.

With the blessing of WGY's ownership (General Electric), WGY Food Stores was launched in the 1920s.

How WGY entered the grocery business isn't like how you would expect. WGY Radio itself never directly handled the grocery business. Instead, they licensed their "brand" (i.e. their call letters) to a local distributor and chain operator for a cut of the profits or a set fee.

This arrangement, plus the chain's whopping 130 stores in the full blast of it's signal (a full 75 miles around Schenectady!), gave both operators an advantage. The grocer had an instantly identifiable brand and the radio station had instant free advertising and a great promotional asset.

Because radio was a marvel for people in the 1920s and it's tie-in with anything sold well.

Photo: Hoxie!

Though best known for it's coffee (as evidenced by the many WGY coffee tins that circulate in the antique underground) WGY Food Stores also offered other branded products, such as canned evaporated milk (as mentioned in the ad above), fruits and vegetables, spices and tea. There were likely other WGY branded products as well.

WGY was still operating in the grocery business as late as 1958. But with the 1960s came the first waves of distributor consolidation and grocery stores became supermarkets. But the WGY stores seemed to be smaller stores, which were fading away to the supermarkets.

WGY Coffee jar, 1940-50s

But WGY could be considered the Amazon of it's day. It's one of the earliest examples of how one could get both their staples and entertainment from the same source (in name.)

Today, WGY has been long out of the grocery business. But still broadcasting to to the Capital Region.