Well alright… Cheryl from the Madison office is finally coming over to the condo for dinner. I think she said she liked John Denver and Jim Croce…
Gonna make pretty much the ultimate mix… man this is really gonna set the mood…
OK it’s almost 8… let’s get this tape up on the deck. Thanks to TEAC Auto-Reverse technology, the tape will play over and over and over and over again all night, regardless of how long the night ends up being.
What a fox. Oh yeah? Like the music? Yeah I love these guys too… Saw them at the OysterFest a few years ago… oh yeah, glad you dig it…
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I am not making any of this up. This is an actual TEAC print-ad from January 1976. It features single-people in their mid-30s having a romantic evening at the gentleman’s home (condo). The selling proposition of this product is ‘Auto-Reverse,’ AKA, you don’t have to flip the tape over when the side ends. When we were growing up in the cassette-tape era, Auto-Reverse was still a premium-feature of the higher-priced tape players. I actually don’t think I ever had an auto-reverse walkman; they were just too expensive. Flipping the tape was just part of life. Good thing i was too young at the time to have any ladies to entertain. By the time I started dating, the CD was already in-play. ‘Repeat’ is of course a feature of all CD decks.
Anyhow, this advert is a good example of the ‘lifestyle-benefit’ advertising that consumer electronics manufacturers employed in the 70’s. Set a little stage, tell a little story, allow the consumer to insert themselves into the scenario. This was in some contrast to much electronics advertising of the 40s to 60s, much of which was focused on ‘fidelity’ and ‘value.’ By the 70s, 20-20k performance (OK, 30-15k) was a given in most equipment; transistors and PCBs had made this stuff affordable to most working-class folks; so the benefit of one brand over the other needs to be demonstrated in other ways. In this case, the increased romantic-potential of a dinner-date.
These are Ham Radio towers. ‘Ham Radio’ is non-commercial, amateur radio-broadcasting activity which has carried on for nearly a century all over the planet. Although by definition both amateur and non-commercial, Ham Radio is regulated by the governments of the world (including the US) and a license is required in order to participate. The plus side of the this regulation is that, unlike, say, C.B. radios, Ham Radios can be incredibly powerful and experienced operators can (with the right equipment) directly contact other like-minded enthusiasts all over the world. This actually sounds a lot like something else we’re familiar with… oh right the internet.
So much can be said about this venerable institution, and I am not person to do the explaining. So why discuss it here? Well… most common of the signals sent with Ham Radio has always been the human voice; many Hams have, and still do, carry on the tradition of designing and building their own audio equipment; and the innovations sprung from this field have played an important role in the development of audio technologies that we all use today. The importance of the technical aspects of signal transmission/reception in the Ham community cannot be overstated; in fact, most of he conversations that go on using this technology are in fact concerning the signal quality itself. A direct consequence of this importance of signal integrity is that Radio Hams would often send physical postcards, in the actual mail, to those individuals with whom they had chatted with on-air. These postcards confirmed the technical operating parameters of the radio equipment in-place when the successful conversation took place. These are called QSL cards, and they are one of the most fascinating and exciting examples of vernacular graphic design that I am aware of. E. purchased a crate of several hundred at the flea market yesterday; they all date from around 1980-1987 and they are really idiosyncratic and beautiful. Here I will present some of my favorites:
The fact that we are fighting three (3) wars at the moment (don’t try to tell me that those ‘drone planes’ in Lybia don’t represent a direct military strike) has me inevitably reflecting on the truth that we, America, are a militaristic nation first and foremost. In a previous post, we learned about the place that the venerable Altec tube compressors played in cold-war ear civil defense warning systems, an important role that no doubt led to the relative bounty of these devices today. Which leads to an intriguing question: how does an audio-equipment manufacturer get involved in high-level government defense contracting? Seems like a bit of a stretch, even in our highly militarized society. I mean, I don’t expect that Digidesign is making data-mining apps for the CIA….although as I type this, I realize that I am likely naive in this regard.
Anyhow, I found an answer to the question of Altec’s prominence in military/civil defense within the pages of the slim volume depicted at Left. “TRADERS GRAPHIC” (h.f. “TG”) is a private-press investors-guide from 1960. The cover price on this hand-stapled 32pp volume is $5, which would be $38 today. TG is essentially a tip-sheet which alerts potential investors to publically-traded stocks which have ‘major growth potential.’ In January 1960, one stock which TG endorsed was Ling Electronics; and the primary reason given for this endorsement was Ling’s recent acquistion of Altec Electronics.
Nice use of the little star type-pieces as a paragraph break. Anyway, prior to their purchase of Altec, what was Ling involved with? Read below for the full details, but I can sum it up as: vibration testing of ICBM and other missile components, as well as (then-novel) closed-circuit television systems for retail spaces. I.E., video surveillance. Realizing this, it makes perfect sense that we would soon see Altec audio equipment in government-contracted defense applications. Which, again, accounts in part for all the old Altec equipment that we still use today. Kinda cringing as I type this, but this really is proof yet again that the industrial base of any society (in the case of America, military/defense) will always find a way to inform all other aspects of that society (in the case of us, dear readers, music recording and listening – The Arts). Follow the link below for the full text on Ling from “TG.”
It is 1955. WWII-era German military-communications equipment has been successfully deconstructed, economized, and introduced to the American public as the Tape Recorder (via Bing Crosby, incredibly). Economies of scale allow these devices to be sold in vast number at widely accessible cost. For the average person, this is a significant new technology. And with new technology comes questions. How do I make this new stuff work? What can you do with this new stuff? Enter the handy Tape-Recording Guide Book, a once-genre unto itself.
8mm film cameras had been widely available and fairly inexpensive for a few years already; as had bulky, low-fidelity wire-recorders and disc (shellac record) recorders. The tape recorder offered a few new advantages, though. Small size and relative ease-of-use; decent fidelity (sound quality); the ability to edit and to re-use bits of tape; and long recording-time at low cost. It was now possible to ‘capture the moment,’ to ‘capture everyday life,’ in a way never before possible.
This deluge of information was not limited to the book-format; indeed, there were in fact regular periodicals solely devoted to the support of this new technology.
So much to learn. What we take as basic-assumptions regarding the operation of audio-equipment all had to be explained to us at some point. We now learn basic concepts such as ‘what to do with a microphone’ in a very informal, natural manner; early on, though, this was information best communicated /By Experts/ to /The Public/.
Beyond technical details like and ‘where to stick the mic’ and ‘editing the tape,’ there was also instruction regarding what kinds of sonic-event to capture. In these books, experts tell us not only ‘How-To-Use,’ but ‘When/Why-To-Use.’ In the image below, a tape-stock manufacturer of the era (Sarkes Tarzian, INC) delineates several fields of tape-recorder application that you may/may not have been aware of.
It is this last suggestion of ‘inviting tape to the party’ that I find most disturbing. Surprisingly, this ‘party-recording’ application gets a great deal of attention in most of the books scanned above. Please keep in mind that it is TAPE STOCK COMPANY that is suggesting that you ‘invite tape to your party.’ What possible benefit could it serve a TAPE STOCK COMPANY that you roll through seven $3.99 reels of tape in one evening? What possible benefit could it serve a TAPE STOCK COMPANY to reinforce this concept in the culture?
Oh really, you shouldn’t have. No, seriously. You shouldn’t have. Notice the strained look on her face. Is this due to the massive weight of a vacuum-tube powered reel-to-reel recorder, which she struggles to carry while wearing party-heels, or due to the fact that her husband has once again made them the pariahs of the scene by bringing along the dreaded time-binder, the magnetic-mind that forgets nothing, the One Who Recalls Things Best Forgotten, the tape-recorder.
The mirror is fairly ancient technology. In fact, all it takes is for a baby to see her face in a reflective surface and there is some knowledge of the Appearance Of The Self. On the other hand, the sound-mirror (aka Tape Recorder) is a much newer concept. For every person who dislikes seeing photos of themselves, I can bring you 100 people who don’t like hearing the sound of their own voice recorded.
We are inundated with recording technologies today. Almost every cell phone has a video/audio recorder with performance that rivals the 8mm film cam/tape recorder technology that consumers first had access to in the 1950s. But before you capture the moment, perhaps it is best to ask yourself: why am I doing this? What benefit does it serve?
In the film LOST HIGHWAY, Bill Pullman’s character makes a remark that has always stuck with me. The remark can be heard in the trailer (see below), but here it is in text as well:
Ed: Do you own a video camera? Renee Madison: No. Fred hates them. Fred Madison: I like to remember things my own way. Ed: What do you mean by that? Fred Madison: How I remembered them. Not necessarily the way they happened.
Why do we remember?
What does the process of remembering do to our past experiences? How does it shape our future actions?
What is lost by subjugating memory to recording?
What kind of world are we building (via unheralded levels of self imposed ((Facebook)) and Government-Imposed ((Terrorists-already-having-won)) surveillance)?
Well alright… Cheryl from the Madison office is finally coming over to the condo for dinner. I think she said she liked John Denver and Jim Croce…
Gonna make pretty much the ultimate mix… man this is really gonna set the mood…
OK it’s almost 8… let’s get this tape up on the deck. Thanks to TEAC Auto-Reverse technology, the tape will play over and over and over and over again all night, regardless of how long the night ends up being.
What a fox. Oh yeah? Like the music? Yeah I love these guys too… Saw them at the OysterFest a few years ago… oh yeah, glad you dig it…
*************
I am not making any of this up. This is an actual TEAC print-ad from January 1976. It features single-people in their mid-30s having a romantic evening at the gentleman’s home (condo). The selling proposition of this product is ‘Auto-Reverse,’ AKA, you don’t have to flip the tape over when the side ends. When we were growing up in the cassette-tape era, Auto-Reverse was still a premium-feature of the higher-priced tape players. I actually don’t think I ever had an auto-reverse walkman; they were just too expensive. Flipping the tape was just part of life. Good thing i was too young at the time to have any ladies to entertain. By the time I started dating, the CD was already in-play. ‘Repeat’ is of course a feature of all CD decks.
