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...
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Florence Foster Jenkins
Florence Foster Jenkins has been called many things, but "talented diva" wasn't one of them. She's regarded as the worst opera singer in history. And that's actually putting it nicely.
Who was Florence Foster Jenkins? Well, let's just say she wasn't exactly Maria Callas.
Born in 1868 to a wealthy family, she studied music and wanted to take formal opera training in Europe. Perhaps sensing something, her father refused to pay for it. After he died, she used her inheritance for formal singing lessons (I'm sure somebody tried to get this tone-deaf woman on key.) And she started public recitals in 1912.
And at this point, I'll just let you hear for yourself....
Her screeching voice had all the grace and subtlety of a vacuum cleaner. And to boot, she often dressed in angel costumes, complete with fake wings.
She often ignored the laughter from audiences, regarding it as jealousy. And she did have probably the best comeback ever to her critics. "People may say I can't sing," she said, "but no one can ever say I didn't sing."
She held yearly recitals at the Ritz-Carlton in New York to her loyal core of fans (yes, she did have fans.) But they were a select few. Just before she died, she did hold a public recital at Carnegie Hall in 1944. And tickets were sold out weeks in advance. She died a month later at 76.
Her recording career luckily has only been preserved on a few 78 RPM sides, which have been collected and issued posthumously on RCA in 1962. And covered only one side of the LP.
More.....
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Microcassettes
Remember Microcassettes? They were a dictation medium (but so was the original compact cassette) Invented in 1969 by Olympus as the standard cassette started gaining traction as a popular music medium.
For a spell in the early '80s, Sony actually tried to make them as close to a serious audio medium as they could (as they did with the standard cassette.) Including stereo sound and Metal tape formulation microcassettes.
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| The Microcassette Walkman even included a very rare microcassette version of the FM Tuner cassettes made for standard cassette personal stereos. |
In modern digital, It's like the sound of a 32 kbps MP3 to a 320 kbps MP3.
And secondly, people kept LOSING the handful of prerecorded albums on these tapes that were made for the Japanese market.
The Microcassette never went further into general use beyond dictation and in telephone answering machines. They have since been replaced by digital recorders.
Competing with the Microcassette (yes, it did have competing formats), was the Minicassette (developed in 1967 by Phillips) and the even tinier Picocassette (1985 by Dictaphone.)
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| Minicassette |
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| Picocassette |
Monday, January 20, 2014
The Exciting Sounds Project & Retrophile Daily
Hey, I have some KILLER new blog links for ya you're sure to love if you enjoy the stuff you read here on History's Dumpster (and you're here, aren't you?)
The Exciting Sounds Project
Retrophile Daily
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