Speaker 1: Hey, there, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's
Speaker 1: SYSK Selects, I've chosen our twenty twenty one episode on Musak.
Speaker 1: And you might ask, who could possibly like the noisome,
Speaker 1: omnipresent annoyance that was Musak? Well me, I like Muzak.
Speaker 1: So there. But if you're not over forty, you might
Speaker 1: not even know that there was a time you couldn't
Speaker 1: step out in public from department stores. Those are in
Speaker 1: something we call malls to elevators without smalltzy string arrangements
Speaker 1: of pop music pummeling you with their saccharine sound, and
Speaker 1: you know what, you're the worst offtware not having experienced it. Instead,
Speaker 1: you can experience this episode, and I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
Speaker 1: there's Charles w You, Chuck Bryan over there, and there's Dave.
Speaker 1: See Coustin. I said it right this time.
Speaker 2: I thought it was Coustain.
Speaker 1: No, if you're in France, that's how you would say it.
Speaker 1: But here in the United States, you say Coustin.
Speaker 2: Can I start this off by saying something, Oh.
Speaker 1: Boy, I'm worried about what you're going to say about.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, this episode is on muzak, and I started
Speaker 2: thinking last night. I was thinking about your love of musak,
Speaker 2: which is not at all ironic.
Speaker 1: Not in the least, but you can't say that kind
Speaker 1: of thing these days. People don't believe you.
Speaker 2: I know it's true everyone. I know Josh very well,
Speaker 2: and I was thinking of your and I like all
Speaker 2: kinds of music too, but you know, at my heart,
Speaker 2: I'm a rock and roll guy. Sure, And I was
Speaker 2: thinking about your top musical genres that are above rock
Speaker 2: and roll, and you're picking order, not in order. I
Speaker 2: counted easy listening, musak, disco, art rock, crowd rock, and
Speaker 2: I probably missed a couple.
Speaker 1: Crowd rock is below rock and roll. I want to
Speaker 1: like crowdrock, it just doesn't quite jibe with me. I
Speaker 1: like some, but not all of it.
Speaker 2: And then stuff I think art rock because it's just
Speaker 2: sort of that avant garde, like I don't you don't
Speaker 2: love Yoko, but you certainly are a bit of a
Speaker 2: Yoko apologist. Sure, Grace Jones stuff like that, But I.
Speaker 1: Love Grace Jones for sure. What about talking heads? They
Speaker 1: go in there too, right, they'd probably be. I mean
Speaker 1: they literally went to art school together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they kind of span from art rock
Speaker 2: to new wave to like world music by the time
Speaker 2: they finished.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I know, but uh yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I certainly love the Talking Heads, but all
Speaker 2: of those, for you are above good old fashioned rock
Speaker 2: and roll.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, you also left out nineties tech noo.
Speaker 1: I've been listening to a lot of that accutely too,
Speaker 1: like Alternate and the Prodigy and everything.
Speaker 2: But you love music, you really do.
Speaker 1: I do too.
Speaker 2: Actually, I don't know, so I don't know how much
Speaker 2: I like. I will listen to some of that stuff
Speaker 2: and we'll talking about we'll talk about emo in here,
Speaker 2: of course, old sourpust Brian Eno, but I love listening
Speaker 2: to his ambient stuff, which he sort of wrote as
Speaker 2: an antidote to music. Again. We'll talk about that more later.
Speaker 2: But I do like in certain circumstances that music thing
Speaker 2: is really great to have on in my house as
Speaker 2: background music, and it's sorts that same purpose.
Speaker 1: One of the big reasons why too, is because you
Speaker 1: can get stuff done with it. Like lyrics can be
Speaker 1: so distracting, they just latch onto your brain and say no, no,
Speaker 1: pay attention to me. I'm I'm talking to you now.
Speaker 1: Music does the opposite of that. It says, go be free,
Speaker 1: but also enjoy this, Like there's there's like a whole
Speaker 1: part of your brain that music can tap into that
Speaker 1: doesn't require your conscious thought, but it still produces like
Speaker 1: good feeling. And you know, like Peo, people just smack
Speaker 1: music around like it's just it's so bland and it's
Speaker 1: so soulless, and I totally disagree with that. Like if
Speaker 1: you actually stop and listen to music, it's really really
Speaker 1: technically proficient. It's frequently well done. It's often very clever
Speaker 1: and creative and inventive, which is really saying something. Because
Speaker 1: you're doing this when they in the confines of covering
Speaker 1: an existing song in a way that makes it familiar
Speaker 1: and easy to recognize but also takes away any intrusiveness
Speaker 1: that it might have. It's tough to do. And I really,
Speaker 1: I just I love music. You're absolutely right, Like I
Speaker 1: listened to music this whole time. Yeah, not just when
Speaker 1: we were when we were researching music today, but also
Speaker 1: when I was researching the Havana syndrome, and I realized,
Speaker 1: like this is my normal thing. This is the same
Speaker 1: stuff I listen to when I'm researching anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we can go ahead and dispell a couple
Speaker 2: of or not myths, but clear up a couple of
Speaker 2: things right off the bat. First of all, Musak is
Speaker 2: a name brand, and people can kind of collectively use
Speaker 2: the term music or have collectively use that term for
Speaker 2: what's called like potted plant music or elevator music or
Speaker 2: shopping music. But it is actual actually a brand name,
Speaker 2: which we'll get to the history of. And then the
Speaker 2: second thing is it gets the name elevator music. Part
Speaker 2: of the myth is that people said, well, they put
Speaker 2: it on elevators because people were afraid to death of
Speaker 2: elevators early on, and it calmed people down, or it
Speaker 2: covered up the noise of the clanking elevators.
Speaker 1: I'd never heard that before. You.
Speaker 2: Yeah, neither one of those things are true. Total myth.
Speaker 2: My guess is that it was played on elevators, and
Speaker 2: because you're in such a closed little box that's usually quiet,
Speaker 2: it just was way more noticeable than like in a
Speaker 2: big office full of people working. So people call the
Speaker 2: elevator music.
Speaker 1: That's my guess, right, Yeah, I mean, yeah, there wasn't
Speaker 1: music gone elevators before? Before several decades in the twentieth century, Like,
Speaker 1: there weren't many elevators you could get on because people
Speaker 1: didn't have elevators in their house. It was a public
Speaker 1: building you were in where they weren't playing music of
Speaker 1: some form very frequently music.
Speaker 2: That Great Blues Brothers scene, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Because they're they're going up to what the Cook County
Speaker 1: Assessor's office and the like. There there's the entire Chicago
Speaker 1: Police Department is after them, but they're forced to get
Speaker 1: on this elevator and the girl from Ipanema is playing.
Speaker 2: I think my favorite part of that scene is there's
Speaker 2: just dozens and hundreds of cops and swat guys just
Speaker 2: you know, hut when they're repelling and doing all this stuff.
Speaker 2: And then there's the one shot of the lone guy
Speaker 2: repelling down the side of the building and he's by
Speaker 2: himself just going hut.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's a good one, so funny.
Speaker 1: There's another scene from around the era a few years
Speaker 1: later from Airplane two where it's like ripped Torn. I
Speaker 1: believe it's Ripped Torn. The party from the Larry Sanders Show. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't know the other guy he's talking to.
Speaker 1: But anyway, they're walking and talking and they have to
Speaker 1: get on an elevator and the elevator door opens and
Speaker 1: it's just blaring, like ear drum shattering decibel MacArthur Park
Speaker 1: and they have to get on. People are coming off
Speaker 1: the elevator like with their hands and their ears like
Speaker 1: with splitting headaches from this. But it's just completely the
Speaker 1: opposite way elevator music's supposed to be like. But it's
Speaker 1: a good little scene too, as far as elevator music
Speaker 1: goes well.
Speaker 2: I mean that's kind of one of the points too,
Speaker 2: is Musak has long been a movie trope and a
Speaker 2: TV trope and then been lampooned and scenes just like
Speaker 2: the Blues brother scene where there's something chaotic going on
Speaker 2: and then you cut back to the sound of Musaic
Speaker 2: playing wherever the other scene is setting. Right, Yeah, very
Speaker 2: very fun stuff.
Speaker 1: But that's started, a guess it started with The Blues Brothers,
Speaker 1: which came out in nineteen eighty, But before that that
Speaker 1: was like Musak was not really lampoon I mean, not
Speaker 1: everybody liked it. It really kind of started to get
Speaker 1: a little backlash in the late sixties early seventies, as
Speaker 1: we'll see, but there was a very significant chunk of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century again from maybe nineteen fifty to nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: We'll say where everywhere you went in public, including if
Speaker 1: you took a Greyhound bus, or if you were on
Speaker 1: a plane, or you happened to be an Air Force one,
Speaker 1: or you were at the mall, in an elevator at
Speaker 1: your office, everywhere muzak was playing. There was musach playing everywhere.
Speaker 1: It was just a part of life that you was inescapable.
Speaker 2: Actually. Yeah, so let's go back in time and talk
Speaker 2: about the inventor of muzak. And this is sort of
Speaker 2: a fun fact of muzak. The man's name is George Square.
Speaker 2: It is spelled Squire, but he swears it's pronounced square.
Speaker 1: I'm really impressed, man, I had not come up with.
Speaker 2: That one or he swore it was pronounced square. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is kind of one of the funny jokes, like
Speaker 2: the guy who invented mus x was Square. But Major
Speaker 2: General George Square was born in eighteen sixty five, if
Speaker 2: you believe that, And he is just a laundry list
Speaker 2: of accomplishments as a human being. He was he earned
Speaker 2: a doctorate from Johns Hopkins in electrical science. He was
Speaker 2: an Army engineer with a PhD. I think the first one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and he was I believe the lead Signal Corps officer
Speaker 2: for the Army as well.
Speaker 1: He was. He also was inducted into the National Academy
Speaker 1: of Sciences, which connects this episode to the other one today.
Speaker 1: That's right, because he came up with something called a
Speaker 1: tree telephone. He figured out how to use any tree,
Speaker 1: but preferably one with fully leaved I guess, I don't
Speaker 1: know what you'd call that as a as a receiver
Speaker 1: and transmitter for radio signals. He figured out how to
Speaker 1: use a tree, a living tree for that.
Speaker 2: He was. Here's another fun fact. He was one of
Speaker 2: the first airplane passengers ever because he was way into
Speaker 2: human flight and got together with the Wright brothers and
Speaker 2: a nineteen oh six, consulted with them, and they said, hey,
Speaker 2: why don't you take a ride in our new little biplane.
Speaker 2: You'll probably live right.
Speaker 1: I looked at our I looked at the document for
Speaker 1: our Wright Brothers episode, and he did not appear. I
Speaker 1: don't think we mentioned him, but he might. He might
Speaker 1: have been the first airline passenger from what I saw.
Speaker 2: Yeah, where he really made a big name for himself
Speaker 2: pre Musaic was this invention, which is what we call multiplexing,
Speaker 2: which is he figured out or maybe wire wireless communications,
Speaker 2: which is something he worked on with the Army. He
Speaker 2: basically figured out how to get multiple uses out of
Speaker 2: single telephone lines. Telephone wires were you know, there are
Speaker 2: only so many, so you were really limited as to
Speaker 2: what you could do with them and how many people
Speaker 2: could use them. So he basically figured out a way
Speaker 2: to increase their output and efficiency by multiplexing and by
Speaker 2: sending super imposing high frequency radio signals over those low
Speaker 2: frequency telegraph signals, basically just allowing you to use the
Speaker 2: wire at the same time, the same wire.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's like, if you think of
Speaker 1: like a wave, if it's low frequency, there's big, wide
Speaker 1: gaps in between. You can fit a higher frequency that's
Speaker 1: tighter and squished together in those gaps, and but you're
Speaker 1: still using the same line. And you know, this was
Speaker 1: the guy who came up with that. That's an enormous
Speaker 1: advancement in telecommunications that were still put in use today
Speaker 1: in some applications, but definitely helped like the early Internet along.
Speaker 1: It was just a huge contribution to humanity, like forget
Speaker 1: even just music, like just that alone would would probably
Speaker 1: warrant like an episode for George Square.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think he was like, everyone should be
Speaker 2: able to use this, So I'm going to open source
Speaker 2: it and everyone can use this new multiplexing technology. AT
Speaker 2: and T came along and said, we'll use it, and
Speaker 2: then you know what, you've stole it from us.
Speaker 1: Actually right, he came up with it, but since he
Speaker 1: left it open, they decided to just take it from
Speaker 1: him and sue him for it.
Speaker 2: I think he sued them, but it didn't work.
Speaker 1: That's right, you're right, so he but he still was
Speaker 1: able to use this wire wireless technology with multiplexing. And
Speaker 1: at the time people were starting to get into radio broadcasts.
Speaker 1: But radio wireless radio like that you would just have
Speaker 1: in your house. It's picking up radio waves at a
Speaker 1: station that was not widespread at the time. So George
Speaker 1: Square said, you know what, I understand people want music
Speaker 1: in their house. I'm going to give it to them.
Speaker 1: I'm going to use that multiplexing technology and I'm going
Speaker 1: to run sound waves over the electrical wires that go
Speaker 1: into the house, and I'm going to sell this it
Speaker 1: is brilliant. I'm going to sell this service to people's
Speaker 1: homes for a dollar fifty a month, about twenty dollars today,
Speaker 1: and it's just part of your utility bill because it's
Speaker 1: coming in through your electrical company. And there's actually a
Speaker 1: section of Cleveland called the Lakewood I believe Lakewood area
Speaker 1: that was the pilot for this wired wireless radio that
Speaker 1: George Square invented. The problem was is, by the time
Speaker 1: they deployed it, wireless radio was already a thing, and
Speaker 1: so we had this really great idea that just no
Speaker 1: longer had an application.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was. He basically invented the first music subscription
Speaker 2: service exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And he had multiple channels too, Like when you subscribed,
Speaker 1: you got news, you got dance music. There was like
Speaker 1: I think three different channels you could choose.
Speaker 2: From Howard Stern.
Speaker 1: Yep, Howard Stern was on back.
Speaker 2: Then Baba Boobie. So he had that technology though, and
Speaker 2: he said, you know what, this is a good idea,
Speaker 2: though maybe I can think of how to use this
Speaker 2: in offices and stores. And in nineteen thirty four he
Speaker 2: looked up at Kodak, very successful corporation and said, I
Speaker 2: love that name, and I love music. Let's just call
Speaker 2: it music and history changed and maybe we should take
Speaker 2: a break.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's do it all right, We'll be right back. So,
Speaker 1: in the parlance of today, Chuck George Square and his
Speaker 1: Musak Corporation pivoted from home consumer markets to business markets.
Speaker 1: And that just knocked it out of the park because
Speaker 1: it turned out that there were a lot of companies, hotels, restaurants, clubs.
Speaker 1: I think the Stork Club was an early customer that said,
Speaker 1: you know what, it's really going to make our place
Speaker 1: seem fancy if we've got music piping in all the time.
Speaker 1: So yes, we would like to sign up for your service.
Speaker 1: And that's really where music kind of started to take off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Musak, I mean we haven't even said what
Speaker 2: it is, surely people know, but muzak are instrumental tracks.
Speaker 2: And you did mention that there were no vocals, so
Speaker 2: we kind of hinted the big one. Yeah, but there
Speaker 2: are instrumental tracks that are cover songs of kind of
Speaker 2: anything you can think of. I mean that have hearts,
Speaker 2: some music of some heavy rock. It can be classical music,
Speaker 2: it can be old standards. But the point is they
Speaker 2: are instrumental versions that are re recorded. They don't just
Speaker 2: take the vocals out. It's not carry oukay style, right,
Speaker 2: It is re record arranged and recorded by professional, really
Speaker 2: good musicians orchestras. Sometimes, Yeah, and it is, that's what
Speaker 2: it is, and it's great the end.
Speaker 1: And very very frequently it's it's made into a much
Speaker 1: more mellow version of itself, Like any rough edges are
Speaker 1: taken off. Since they take the vocals out, it's not
Speaker 1: like there's no there that vocal melody is non existing
Speaker 1: any longer. They just replace it with something else. So
Speaker 1: if they're trying to go for something like a little
Speaker 1: more upbeat or up tempo, they'll replace the vocals with,
Speaker 1: say like a saxophone. If they're trying to do something
Speaker 1: a little more mellow, they'll replace the vocals with a
Speaker 1: string section.
Speaker 2: Or harp perhaps.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's one of the things that that musaic is
Speaker 1: very famous for, is like what's called masses of strings,
Speaker 1: just strings upon strings. In fact, one of the early
Speaker 1: I guess big name groups that produced musak was called
Speaker 1: one hundred and one Strings. They probably were absolutely accurate
Speaker 1: in that, like there's just a lot tons of strings everywhere, violins,
Speaker 1: cello's violas, every string instrument you can throw at it.
Speaker 1: They just layer upon layer in these songs. It's one
Speaker 1: of the hallmarks of musak.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there are many versions of Antonio Carlos Shobiam's
Speaker 2: Go from Epanima, but the music version is one of
Speaker 2: the most popular, and that one hundred and one strings
Speaker 2: version is the most ubiquitous from that lot. I do
Speaker 2: encourage people to go watch the YouTube though, of Frank
Speaker 2: Sinatra and Joe Beim singing that song live on TV,
Speaker 2: because it's great and every way they're just sitting next
Speaker 2: to each other, and the shot isn't wide at first,
Speaker 2: and they're just sort of singing back and forth to
Speaker 2: each other and Frank Stone is saying, then it cuts
Speaker 2: to the wide and Frank is like totally kicked back
Speaker 2: with his legs crossed with a cigarette in his hand,
Speaker 2: exactly like you would hope. But he looks like, I mean,
Speaker 2: it looks like he just not rolled out of bed
Speaker 2: because he's put together, but he looks like he rolled
Speaker 2: from his wicker bag to his wicker chair right for
Speaker 2: this performance.
Speaker 1: Can I get some cocaine in here? Baby?
Speaker 2: So it's Joe Piscopos, Frank Sinatra.
Speaker 1: Do you ever listen to Joe beam stuff?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, dude, I love that old lounge stuff. It's
Speaker 2: really great Brazilian stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. His record Stone Flower is just a masterpiece from
Speaker 1: beginning to end.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But that's a good party music.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's another thing though too. It's like it's so
Speaker 1: mellow that to take that kind of music and then
Speaker 1: make it into musak is like it's almost like it
Speaker 1: takes a certain amount of audacity, Like I was listening
Speaker 1: to I found so there's want to I want to
Speaker 1: point people the two different music records that are on YouTube.
Speaker 1: One is called More Than Music, Period and Environment. It's
Speaker 1: a nineteen eighty one musak record and it has a
Speaker 1: version of Sailing Christopher Crosses Sailing.
Speaker 2: One of the most area music sleep.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. They figured out how to basically make you
Speaker 1: lose control of your bladder listening to this exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good one. And then the other one is
Speaker 1: called the Blue Album, uh, and it is from nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, I believe, And it's just both of them
Speaker 1: are really great. That's good good introductions to musaic if
Speaker 1: you're not into it already, all right.
Speaker 2: So music is trucking along in the thirties. They get
Speaker 2: to the forties and they think, you know what, we
Speaker 2: need a better way to sell this stuff and to
Speaker 2: pitch this to businesses and corporations. So why don't we
Speaker 2: hire some people to research music and to figure out
Speaker 2: what kinds of music keep people happy and working? And
Speaker 2: because people, you know, they work hard in the morning,
Speaker 2: and then they sort of lag a bit before lunch,
Speaker 2: and then they really lag sort of a couple of
Speaker 2: hours after lunch. So why don't we do this? So
Speaker 2: why don't we study it? Let's call it stimulus progression.
Speaker 2: It's a bit pseudoscience. It makes sense it is in
Speaker 2: that it's not been proven. It makes sense to everyone
Speaker 2: who I feel like knows about it, Like sure, music
Speaker 2: can pick you up and make you work harder, But
Speaker 2: it's pseudoscience in that it's I don't think it's ever
Speaker 2: been scientifically proven.
Speaker 1: I gotcha, okay, yeah, because I keep seeing it just
Speaker 1: like dismissed as pseudoscience. But then there were plenty of
Speaker 1: early studies that were done by legitimate industrial psychologists and
Speaker 1: other like efficiency experts, that kind of thing that showed
Speaker 1: that there really was a significant like improvement and productivity
Speaker 1: or less sick days, that kind of stuff in places
Speaker 1: that have musaic compared to places that didn't have music
Speaker 1: pumped into the office.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think maybe they're specific claims about a work day. Okay,
Speaker 2: might have been a little I mean everywhere I read
Speaker 2: said it was basically not a marketing scam, but a
Speaker 2: marketing tool that they kind of invented.
Speaker 1: I gotcha. But so one thing to say about this
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about it in a second stimulus progression,
Speaker 1: is that they did kind of plow money that they
Speaker 1: were making. We're making a lot of money starting in
Speaker 1: the late forties early fifties, they plowed it back into
Speaker 1: research to basically come up with scientific evidence to back
Speaker 1: up their claims, which you can really kind of see
Speaker 1: the ghost of George Square still looming over the company,
Speaker 1: you know, this decade or so after he died. That
Speaker 1: it's always been this kind of science interested, if not
Speaker 1: science based company that's also been an early adopter of technology,
Speaker 1: as we'll see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that is certainly fair. It was never
Speaker 2: just like, hey, we're just going to play a bunch
Speaker 2: of what people might consider droll background music, like they
Speaker 2: really did. I think I don't think it was a scam.
Speaker 2: I think they really did try to study working environments.
Speaker 2: And what they did with his stimulus progression was they
Speaker 2: divided the work day into fifteen minute increments and basically
Speaker 2: set a DJ playlist every fifteen minutes, and they assigned
Speaker 2: a stimulus value from one to six, one being really
Speaker 2: really mellow, six being you know, super up. And they
Speaker 2: basically went through and almost like a Pandora sort of
Speaker 2: curated playlist type of thing to get people to work
Speaker 2: hard and efficiently throughout a day, and companies bought in,
Speaker 2: including the US Army.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we're World War two is basically cited
Speaker 1: as the moment when music kind of proved itself enough
Speaker 1: at least to start being adopted by very large companies.
Speaker 1: And then within a few years after the war, by
Speaker 1: like the very early fifties, they started to spread more
Speaker 1: and more to even smaller and smaller companies. And it
Speaker 1: was this idea that if you played music and music's
Speaker 1: you know, patented stimulus progression model, you know you're going
Speaker 1: to avoid that mid morning slump that like every worker
Speaker 1: goes through, you know, in productivity, and then the mid
Speaker 1: afternoon slump. You could avoid that too, and think about
Speaker 1: how many more widgets you could make if your employees don't,
Speaker 1: you know, slack off productivity wise at ten, from ten
Speaker 1: thirty to lunch, and then from like two thirty until
Speaker 1: they go home. Like imagine if this this very pleasant
Speaker 1: music is just kind of keeping them humming along what
Speaker 1: people call a forward it's just an unconscious sense of
Speaker 1: forward momentum. The tempo in your environment is moving subtly
Speaker 1: faster and faster, and so to keep people from going insane,
Speaker 1: part of the stimulus progression was that the songs in
Speaker 1: a fifteen minute increment would kind of go up in tempo,
Speaker 1: and then you'd have a fifteen minute break of silence,
Speaker 1: and then the music would come back on again. But
Speaker 1: then this fifteen minutes their first song, the tempo of
Speaker 1: their first song would probably start a little faster than
Speaker 1: the tempo of the first song of the last fifteen minutes,
Speaker 1: And so all of a sudden, next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: you're making whidge. It's like a maniac because you're being
Speaker 1: manipulated by this stimulus progression model. At least again, according
Speaker 1: to muzak I, get what you're saying. Like, it's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, Harvard came along and said, yes, we've studied
Speaker 1: this thoroughly, and this is exactly what happens. This is
Speaker 1: you know, company claims, but it is intuitively sensible at least.
Speaker 2: Well. Yeah, I mean you need only to host house
Speaker 2: party and play music yourself to determine how music can
Speaker 2: affect the mood of a group of people. Put on
Speaker 2: groove is in the heart, and you know what's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everybody's gonna shake their groove thing.
Speaker 2: Everyone's gonna shape their group thing, shake their group thing.
Speaker 2: If you put in old sour pus. Brian ENO's music
Speaker 2: for Airports not a good party thing.
Speaker 1: No it's not. And since you brought him up for
Speaker 1: the second time, I say we discuss Brian you know
Speaker 1: momentarily sure.
Speaker 2: I mean I love that record, and I love a
Speaker 2: lot of his stuff, including his ambient music experimental records.
Speaker 2: I think it's really really good stuff to have on
Speaker 2: if it's a nice gray day outside and you're getting
Speaker 2: work done. I really enjoyed his background music, but it's
Speaker 2: definitely not up in any way.
Speaker 1: You know, what I found is a really good one
Speaker 1: for what you just described. You ever listen to Future
Speaker 1: Sound of lund No. They have an album, like a
Speaker 1: double album called life Forms, and it's it's about as
Speaker 1: amazing as ambient gets. So you should check that one out.
Speaker 2: Embly, Emily got me into ambient I call her Embly
Speaker 2: when she's listening to that stuff. She really got me.
Speaker 2: She called it ambient groove. She really got me into
Speaker 2: that stuff. Over the years. Is that like like zero
Speaker 2: seven and you know, stuff that's she calls it ambient groovy,
Speaker 2: just sort of sort of mellow and groovy and like
Speaker 2: zero seven and more Chiba. And it was a certain
Speaker 2: era I think where that stuff peaked Massive Attack a
Speaker 2: little bit. Oh yeah, it's good stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you'd like life Forms then the Future
Speaker 1: Sign of London stuff is normally at a little more
Speaker 1: you know, it's super cerebral and intelligent, but it's also
Speaker 1: fairly dancy. Life Forms is way it's probably their most
Speaker 1: ambient stuff around.
Speaker 2: So Ino though, let's get back to him. He kind
Speaker 2: of came up with this as an as an antidote
Speaker 2: to music, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, if you like ambient music, you better thank your
Speaker 1: lucky stars for muzak because we're not for muzak. You
Speaker 1: might not have ambient music, at least not now. Maybe
Speaker 1: it would becoming fifty years from now, who knows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he said, I loved that. In this article, it says,
Speaker 2: as reported by Red Bull Music, Eno said this, and
Speaker 2: this was I think for the liner notes actually to
Speaker 2: airport or music for airports. Whereas can music's intention is
Speaker 2: to brighten the environment by adding stimulus to it, ambient
Speaker 2: music is intended to induce calm and space into space
Speaker 2: to think, ambient music must be able to accommodate many
Speaker 2: levels of listening attention without enforcing one. In particular, it
Speaker 2: must be as ignorable as it is interesting.
Speaker 1: So he hits on something though, that people would come
Speaker 1: to really resent about musak is not even just necessarily
Speaker 1: the syrupiness of the music itself, but the intent behind
Speaker 1: the music. That it was always intended to basic manipulate
Speaker 1: your mood into making you a better worker, a more
Speaker 1: docile consumer. That it was poking at your brain to
Speaker 1: again to get you to do things that you may
Speaker 1: or may not want to do. Maybe you will be
Speaker 1: less likely to punch some guy on the bus because
Speaker 1: there's musac playing, which is a good thing. We should
Speaker 1: not be punching other people on the bus. But the
Speaker 1: point is that you're being mind controlled in a certain way.
Speaker 1: And eventually people got kind of resentful of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's true.
Speaker 1: We're not there yet, though. We're not there yet. Though.
Speaker 1: There was actually a point in time, though, Chuck, where
Speaker 1: musak and popular music were basically one and the same.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was sort of I mean, one of the
Speaker 2: heydays of musac certainly was in that. When you know,
Speaker 2: when Glen the Glenn Miller Orchestra was pop music on
Speaker 2: the radio. Music wasn't a far stretch from some of
Speaker 2: that stuff, so it was sort of all one and
Speaker 2: the same. I think it was as that as styles
Speaker 2: changed and the sixties and seventies start rolling along, that
Speaker 2: musaic became really sort of a bad word to a
Speaker 2: lot of people, right.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons I saw that really explained
Speaker 1: it to me, because you know, things change. The society
Speaker 1: just changed between the nineteen fifties and the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: It just abruptly changed. But that doesn't fully explain why
Speaker 1: musaic just was suddenly looked down upon. A good explanation
Speaker 1: I saw is that lyrics became really really important in
Speaker 1: the late sixties. People had something to say, and music
Speaker 1: does not include lyrics. It completely undermines the point of
Speaker 1: music if you put lyrics in, or don't you know,
Speaker 1: don't rearrange the lyrics with strings. So music kind of
Speaker 1: couldn't couldn't keep up with that. It's not like it
Speaker 1: went away, it doubled down. It kept doing what it
Speaker 1: was doing. And in fact, it would take some of
Speaker 1: those pop hits that had really monumentally important lyrics and
Speaker 1: just take the lyrics out and replace it with a
Speaker 1: saxophone or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they didn't think do that. I think it's interesting.
Speaker 2: They could have had a really mellow singer at a
Speaker 2: certain point come in and they I really respect the
Speaker 2: fact that they were like, Nope, the singer is a
Speaker 2: violin and I don't want to hear it anymore. Right.
Speaker 1: But a lot of these songwriters, in particular, like I
Speaker 1: think Joan Baez, Bruce Springsteen, Boz Skaggs, all of them
Speaker 1: refused to let their music be covered by MUSAK or
Speaker 1: any of its competitors. But Paul Simon I saw, said
Speaker 1: he always knew he had a hit when he heard
Speaker 1: a musaic version of it like at the mall or
Speaker 1: something like that, which it's kind of like weird Al
Speaker 1: covering Nirvana, Like Cobain said that he knew that Nirvana
Speaker 1: had made it when weird Al covered smells like teen Spirit.
Speaker 1: I think it's basically the same thing. Oh.
Speaker 2: I think most musicians, unless you're a Ted Nugent who
Speaker 2: uh And we'll get to that. But very famously sort
Speaker 2: of offered to buy music when they fill upon hard
Speaker 2: times so he could basically burn it to the ground.
Speaker 2: I think most musicians deep down think it's kind of
Speaker 2: an honor when one of their songs is musicified.
Speaker 1: It's got yeah, you'd have to play right. I just
Speaker 1: want to find out what somebody's going to do with it, because,
Speaker 1: like I was saying at the beginning, like it really
Speaker 1: takes some creativity to come up with, Okay, what can
Speaker 1: I replace this with that's not just completely predictable or boring,
Speaker 1: but also isn't going to grab everybody's attention, because that's
Speaker 1: again not the point of music. It's it's one of
Speaker 1: the the I don't know if it was a slogan
Speaker 1: of the Musaic Corporation or not, but they basically said
Speaker 1: that they fill in the awkward pauses in life m
Speaker 1: to where it's, yeah, you don't like It's like you
Speaker 1: were saying at the party, if you're at a party
Speaker 1: that doesn't have any music on, you just probably just
Speaker 1: get smashed out of your skull because you're just trying
Speaker 1: to lose kate the social situation so much. Whereas if
Speaker 1: you put on music, it's like it takes a lot
Speaker 1: of that edge off. That was one of the points
Speaker 1: too with Musak, and then also to kind of get
Speaker 1: you to linger a little longer when you were shopping
Speaker 1: in a store that was part of it as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean music. We almost always have music on
Speaker 2: in our house unless you know, it's night and we're watching,
Speaker 2: you know, a movie or watching something on TV. But
Speaker 2: it almost all waking hours we have music playing in
Speaker 2: our home, and it just feels weird and quiet and
Speaker 2: not full of life when it's when there's no music happening, Right,
Speaker 2: It's strange. It can be strange for sure. Should we
Speaker 2: take a break?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're we have reached basically the early seventies when
Speaker 1: it is Musak's first crisis point, and we'll come back
Speaker 1: to that after this.
Speaker 2: All right, So I'm born in nineteen seventy one, and
Speaker 2: muzak starts to die a little bit because a real
Speaker 2: rock and roller came into the world.
Speaker 1: That's right, born with a gene jacket with the Van
Speaker 1: Halen logo on marker in the back.
Speaker 2: It did not go away completely though, it was just
Speaker 2: sort of, I guess, the beginning of the end. But
Speaker 2: that didn't mean there wasn't still a business model for
Speaker 2: musak because music was never about its popularity.
Speaker 1: No, but there was a time where it was popular.
Speaker 1: Like JFK had it on Air Force one, Eisenhower had
Speaker 1: it piped into the White House, it was playing on
Speaker 1: board Apollo eleven. Yeah, like it was like it was everywhere.
Speaker 1: Like it's really hard to get across how ubiquitous it was.
Speaker 1: But I found a quote from a guy named Professor
Speaker 1: Gary Gumpert of Queens College in New York.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: He said that that at the time, music was just
Speaker 1: kind of amniotic fluid that surrounds us. It never startles us.
Speaker 1: It is never too loud, it's never too silent. It's
Speaker 1: always there. And that was what it was like. You
Speaker 1: were just kind of moving from one placid bucolic field
Speaker 1: to the next, going from mall to mall, store to store,
Speaker 1: elevator to elevator, bus ride to bus ride. It was
Speaker 1: just absolutely everywhere. So compared to that, the idea that
Speaker 1: it's absolutely everywhere unquestioned. Yeah. It really kind of started
Speaker 1: to take a bit of a downturn in the seventies,
Speaker 1: but it just didn't go anywhere yet. It took decades
Speaker 1: for it to really take a hit. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean even in the eighties, that was syndicated in
Speaker 2: nineteen countries. There were eighty million people listening, whether or
Speaker 2: not they wanted to or not, listening to music every day. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And the company ended up being bought and sold a
Speaker 2: couple of times over the years. I think in eighty
Speaker 2: one or in seventy two, a company called Teleprompter owned it, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and eighty one Westinghouse bought it. And I don't know
Speaker 2: if I believe this. The story goes that Westinghouse learned
Speaker 2: later on when they were buying Teleprompter that they owned music,
Speaker 2: and apparently they didn't know that.
Speaker 1: That's what funding Universe dot Com says.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I mean, who doesn't. Maybe back then
Speaker 2: they didn't do research into purchasing entire corporations, but they.
Speaker 1: Were on a lot of Scotch at the time.
Speaker 2: Man, although we've had companies that bought websites. And then
Speaker 2: they learned there was a podcast program attached.
Speaker 1: I think I've heard of that Things You Should Do
Speaker 1: or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was actually that could happen now that I
Speaker 2: think about it, that's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I kind of actually felt a deeper affinity for
Speaker 1: music when I learned how many times they've been passed
Speaker 1: around corporation by corporation.
Speaker 2: And then I think in the I think it was
Speaker 2: was when did Yesco come along? Was that the nineties?
Speaker 1: So Yesco was around from the sixties.
Speaker 2: Well when they finally came together though, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they were early competitor, no, I guess that
Speaker 1: kind of a mid midlife competitor to Musak. But by
Speaker 1: the eighties Yesco had established a name for itself by
Speaker 1: doing basically the opposite of what Musak did. Rather than
Speaker 1: making you know, covers of canned music without lyrics, they
Speaker 1: would just go get the licenses of like the hot
Speaker 1: new song of the of the moment and play those
Speaker 1: and so rather than background music, which is what Musac's
Speaker 1: whole jam was, these guys were pioneering foreground music. And
Speaker 1: they were just a small little outfit from Seattle that
Speaker 1: you know. It was kind of like the little engine
Speaker 1: that could. And they changed the entire landscape audio landscape
Speaker 1: of the United States just by being persistent by getting
Speaker 1: that word out that, hey, now, foreground's the way to go,
Speaker 1: not background, that's old stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's why today when you go
Speaker 2: into publics to do your grocery shopping, you'll hear Christopher
Speaker 2: Cross singing sailing instead of the music version of sailing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can't we just get both? Though?
Speaker 2: Sure do we.
Speaker 1: Have to choose?
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm a big Christopher Cross fan. You're not
Speaker 2: going to find a bigger fan than me.
Speaker 1: For real. You like him that much.
Speaker 2: He's great. I got his two big albums I still
Speaker 2: have on my shelf.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well he's sitting in the other room at
Speaker 1: my house right now.
Speaker 2: I guess you're the bigger fan. Yeah, you're like, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: he's just tied up.
Speaker 1: Well, I was gonna say he's not here on his
Speaker 1: will and his own will. In fact, you could make
Speaker 1: a pretty strong cases here against his will.
Speaker 2: But so in nineteen eighty four of those when Yesco
Speaker 2: got officially involved with Musak. I think Muzak was did
Speaker 2: they actually file for bankruptcy or were they just at
Speaker 2: that sort of Mount precipice.
Speaker 1: Not yet, they were teetering right there on the edge.
Speaker 1: And it was actually they were bought by the Fields Company,
Speaker 1: the company that owns Marshall Field. So Chicago makes another
Speaker 1: appearance and the Fields Company said, we like where this
Speaker 1: Yesco group is going, We're going to merge with them.
Speaker 1: So Musak actually merged with Yesco, the smaller company, but
Speaker 1: then ended up moving to Seattle right before the grunge
Speaker 1: movement hit. So Seattle's big musical contribution before Grunge was
Speaker 1: Musak exactly.
Speaker 2: I remember seeing the I remember seeing that logo. I
Speaker 2: mean you'd probably seen the vans around before and really
Speaker 2: not known it's that m with the circle around it, right.
Speaker 2: I remember when I first saw that, I was like,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, is that the Musac that's it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that was a big update. They apparently went
Speaker 1: with some design group I can't remember the name of
Speaker 1: it that just completely invented the brand because they went
Speaker 1: from being in the background to manipulating your mood using
Speaker 1: stimulus progression to this other thing, this new sound made
Speaker 1: up sounding thing called what's it called quantum physics mechanics.
Speaker 1: So keep guessing what else?
Speaker 2: Realm leap? Those are all the quantums.
Speaker 1: I know there's got to be another one, Chuck, because
Speaker 1: I'm still looking. Sorry, is that thing called it's called
Speaker 1: it's quantum leap? What was this called it? Quantum leap? Sure,
Speaker 1: So with this quantum leap thing that they had going on,
Speaker 1: the Bacula effect, quantum modulation, the Bacula effect, quantum modulation. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: I like Bacula effect, that's a great one. With quantum modulation,
Speaker 1: it was we are evoking an emotion that is now
Speaker 1: tied forever to this the brand that you're shopping, your store,
Speaker 1: you're shopping and yeah, yeah, sure, so like this this one.
Speaker 1: So they hire people who make playlists, who curate these
Speaker 1: playlists that are start to finish. They all share this
Speaker 1: one theme. They all kind of have this one like cool,
Speaker 1: not scary, uh, super hip, beachy, you know, spring Break
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, whatever, the best, So that like
Speaker 1: a company will will say this is this is what
Speaker 1: our brand is all about. Give us playlists that fit this.
Speaker 1: And so now you're you're kind of like you feel
Speaker 1: cool because of the music of where you're shopping, and
Speaker 1: so that makes you want to shop and associate yourself
Speaker 1: with that place even more. That's what musak, That's what
Speaker 1: the what's called neo musak is all about. That's that's
Speaker 1: the current state of affairs and the industry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like take if you want to use Armani Exchange
Speaker 2: as an example, what they'll do is they will literally
Speaker 2: try and make like a DJ mix with that has
Speaker 2: beat matches and it doesn't break the momentums and it's
Speaker 2: all cross faded. Whereas if Ann Taylor calls them up,
Speaker 2: they don't want a cross fade. They want Selene Dion
Speaker 2: songs and then a little bit of a small break
Speaker 2: and then a sting song coming on and these gentle
Speaker 2: fades in and fades out, and you know, it's the
Speaker 2: same sort of stuff as just curated foreground music. What
Speaker 2: I love about music is in the end, when they
Speaker 2: were finally acquired, they had one point five million commercially
Speaker 2: recorded songs in their catalog and they call that the Well,
Speaker 2: that's amazing, almost eight hundred Beatles songs it is.
Speaker 1: I think that's why they never fully went under is
Speaker 1: that catalog kept them commercially viable for sale.
Speaker 2: Super valuable. It's got to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So they were bought and I think two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine maybe by a group called Mood Music twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: and then two years later they retired the music name
Speaker 1: forever just couldn't do anything with it. So now it's
Speaker 1: Mood Music is the company that owns the well. But
Speaker 1: they're doing that whole four okay, they're doing that whole
Speaker 1: foreground music quantum modulation type thing where you know, you
Speaker 1: just associate a brand with a certain kind of music.
Speaker 1: Like you would walk into that Armani Exchange and hear
Speaker 1: you know, Simon yeah, Christopher Cross, You'd be like, something's
Speaker 1: off here? The mood mood what is it? Mood media?
Speaker 1: Their their job is to make sure that there's nothing
Speaker 1: off while you're in that store, that it all just
Speaker 1: kind of fits together and you feel good about where
Speaker 1: you're shopping.
Speaker 2: I don't know, though, Man, you want to you want
Speaker 2: to move some Harmoni gear put on, you can call
Speaker 2: me out. Just it fly off, man.
Speaker 1: Those kids would freak out there. Their frosted tips would
Speaker 1: stand up on and.
Speaker 2: Then and then they're like what is this. This is amazing.
Speaker 1: I've never felt more alive.
Speaker 2: Why is Chevy Jason here?
Speaker 1: Oh Man.
Speaker 2: A really cool thing though, is what you were talking
Speaker 2: about with Musaic being on the tech forefront. It's really
Speaker 2: cool that over the years they were always early adopters
Speaker 2: of tech, and it's funny to think about them that way,
Speaker 2: but they were always on the leading edge and the
Speaker 2: forefront of what technology was doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they I don't know if they invented them,
Speaker 1: but they certainly were early adopters, if not pioneers in
Speaker 1: vinyl records. People were not using vinyl at the time.
Speaker 1: Then they eventually ditched the vinyl records in favor of
Speaker 1: an electronic brain called mater m the number eight and
Speaker 1: the letter R, which basically was a big deck of
Speaker 1: real the real tapes. They had a bunch of different
Speaker 1: songs on it, but they had different inaudible pulses that
Speaker 1: would trigger a different one to come on next. You
Speaker 1: could curate lists on these huge reel to reels. It
Speaker 1: was just amazing. They were using this thing starting in
Speaker 1: the fifties, so the whole thing became automated. They launched
Speaker 1: their own satellite in the seventies. They had a computer
Speaker 1: database in the seventies. Like they were very much pioneers
Speaker 1: and early adopters of a lot of different technology that
Speaker 1: we take for granted today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that you could make an argument that
Speaker 2: they were doing the Pandora Spotify think decades before they
Speaker 2: were doing it.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean the whole point of it too,
Speaker 1: was virtually unchanged. I mean, it's not necessarily to make
Speaker 1: you a docile shopper anymore, but it's like they're trying
Speaker 1: to make you feel like that brand is part of
Speaker 1: your identity by evoking memories in you using songs to
Speaker 1: unlock them. Totally pretty interesting stuff.
Speaker 2: Man, I'm going to go, what were those two records again?
Speaker 2: I want to write this down.
Speaker 1: Okay, one is more than music period and environment nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one musak record that has not just sailing on
Speaker 1: It has Olivia Newton John's Magic has take your Time,
Speaker 1: Do It Right, which I don't care if the lyrics
Speaker 1: are there or not. If you're sitting next to your
Speaker 1: mom in a doctor's office and baby, you can do it.
Speaker 1: Take your Time, Do It Right comes on. You both
Speaker 1: know what that song's about. You know it may even
Speaker 1: be more uncomfortable in that situation, and then it ends
Speaker 1: with funky Town Nice. It's a good one. The other
Speaker 1: one is called the Blue Album. It's a complete stimulus
Speaker 1: progression album, and it has a bunch of good songs
Speaker 1: on it, including Orlean's Dance with Me, which is, if
Speaker 1: you ask me, the musaic covers way better than the original.
Speaker 2: So not to be confused with Weezer's Blue Album.
Speaker 1: No, that's a little different. And then if you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's music's floating my boat, go start looking up Ronnie Aldrich,
Speaker 1: Frank Checksfield, Montevanni, and just start yeah.
Speaker 2: And if eventually you're like, I'm feeling really goosey, how
Speaker 2: about some actual vocalists going on? And then you'll just
Speaker 2: go right into Josh's other favorite, which is yacht rock,
Speaker 2: easy listening.
Speaker 1: I like yacht rock a lot too. I'm super right
Speaker 1: now into West Coast cool jazz. Stan Getz chet Baker. Yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: I can't remember. I can't remember his name, but I
Speaker 1: just got into him. He's a great jazz pianist from
Speaker 1: that era. Bill Evans, the Bill Evans Trio, Oh love
Speaker 1: Bill Evans. You're just getting into Bill Evans. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just just started getting into him. I started with Chet
Speaker 1: Baker and just started working my way out.
Speaker 2: Vincecaraldi is another great one. And I know he's known
Speaker 2: for the Charlie Brown stuff, but all of Vincecaraldy is great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is. You can tell just by the Charlie
Speaker 1: Brown album that he's an amazing jazz good stuff. So, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I have one more thing. There's you know, people hate
Speaker 1: music a lot, so there's some artists who have like
Speaker 1: tried to a lot of artists have tried to make
Speaker 1: hey out of the whole thing. But one guy, David Schaeffer,
Speaker 1: had something from back in two thousand or two thousand
Speaker 1: and two something. He had X ten R Dot one
Speaker 1: and X ten R Dot two, these two CDs that
Speaker 1: he released that were basically his weird unnerving remixes of
Speaker 1: Musak that just turns the whole thing on its head
Speaker 1: so much so that like you may laugh out loud
Speaker 1: when you first hear them. And I believe they're on
Speaker 1: his website, but it's like a it's like Musak, but
Speaker 1: what you would hear in your nightmares. Okay, it's really good,
Speaker 1: and I believe he's got it on his website to
Speaker 1: go listen to and I think you can buy the
Speaker 1: CDs too, so check that out.
Speaker 2: We'll check it out.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, if you want to know more about Musak,
Speaker 1: just start listening and loving. Just just don't prejudge. How
Speaker 1: about that? And since I said don't prejudge everybody, that
Speaker 1: means it's time for listener male.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call this from Lauren. Hey, guys, a man
Speaker 2: walks down the street and says, why am I soft
Speaker 2: in the middle? The rest of my life is so hard?
Speaker 2: Oh wait a minute, Sorry.
Speaker 1: What a perfect email for this one.
Speaker 2: I was reading my forearm tattoo by accident. Hey, guys,
Speaker 2: been listening to stuff you should know for a few years.
Speaker 2: Off and turn up the volume and play an episode
Speaker 2: while I cooked dinner. My seven year old daughter Lila
Speaker 2: used to complain, oh, you're listening to this again. But
Speaker 2: I recently caught her singing the beat to the intro music,
Speaker 2: and she'll casually mention things she's heard from time to time.
Speaker 2: I suspect she's fond of the animal episodes. Anyway, you'll
Speaker 2: jokingly sometimes say Jerry, well, you have to edit that.
Speaker 2: You're gonna have to edit that part out, and it
Speaker 2: has me curious how often things are cut from an
Speaker 2: episode and why bad jokes too long? Have you ever
Speaker 2: had to completely redo one? I think it'd be really
Speaker 2: interesting to know, and I bet Lilah would find it
Speaker 2: encouraging since she likes to make videos of herself singing
Speaker 2: and dancing for the record, y'all make it effortless and
Speaker 2: see effortless and it's always a joy to listen to.
Speaker 2: That is Lauren from Montablo, Alabama, and she said, yes that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you're probably right.
Speaker 1: You put a little too much mustard on there.
Speaker 2: She says, ps, how cool if a mom would I
Speaker 2: be if my daughter heard her names on the podcast?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Cool?
Speaker 2: So there you go, Lauren and Lilah. The answer is.
Speaker 1: Very little gets edited out, just the singing and dancing.
Speaker 2: Like that siren in the background.
Speaker 1: We'll probably just leave that into proven leave that in.
Speaker 2: No, we don't edit a lot out occasionally, like we
Speaker 2: found out when we said this before. Early on, we
Speaker 2: left in the words stumbles and the ums and the
Speaker 2: uzz and just because it's a conversation and we didn't
Speaker 2: want to make it seem too scripted because it's not,
Speaker 2: or canned because it's not. And so we just left
Speaker 2: that stuff in there. And the only time, like like
Speaker 2: I think today you had to look something up real quick.
Speaker 2: But that doesn't happen much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I had to poke my head out of the
Speaker 1: studio and look at my record collection to come up
Speaker 1: to Evans name.
Speaker 2: So I mean that's gone now, but very little is
Speaker 2: edit it out. It's especially after this many years. It's
Speaker 2: we're not one take wonders, but it's Cherry doesn't have
Speaker 2: the harness job in the world.
Speaker 1: You know, we've taken it easy on her for years. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's about it, Chuck. I can't think of anything else
Speaker 1: we really added out.
Speaker 2: But that's not to say that shows that are heavily
Speaker 2: edited and varies kind of scripty and slick, like there's
Speaker 2: a room for those two. Oh yeah, we're not the
Speaker 2: only way to do it now.
Speaker 1: We're like the Musac of podcasts. There's other people who
Speaker 1: are all like the Ted NuGen of podcasts, and there's
Speaker 1: room for both.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like Roman Mars, the Ted NuGen of podcasting.
Speaker 1: That's right, man, that guy's always wearing like a studded
Speaker 1: leather wrist band and stuff.
Speaker 2: I keep waiting on Roman to text me and being
Speaker 2: like you guys are consistently talking smack about me.
Speaker 1: He doesn't listen, and no one he knows listens listens.
Speaker 1: That's impossible, So who is that? Lila and Lauren correct nice. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for writing in hope. We answered
Speaker 1: your question, and if you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us, like Lila and Lauren did, you can send
Speaker 1: us an email. Send it off to stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.