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Attention K-Mart Shoppers
- footlose_3815 2y agoThis is amazing, but I wish they were in FLAC
- rpmisms 2y agoIt's a collection of K-Mart PA tapes. Enjoy.
- roarkeful 2y agoThis just transported me to the past, shopping with my mom... The difference in tone is sharp vs. e.g. modern Wal-mart
- duxup 2y agoThey even have images of the tapes with the legal notice to not duplicate them on there ;)
- kraptv 2y agoOn a slightly related note, Internet Archive archivist and notable speaker Jason Scott (@textfiles) shared to his Twitter followers Juicy the Emissary's "Attention K-Mart Choppers" - an enjoyable remix from this collection. He linked to the Medium article here: https://medium.com/micro-chop/traveling-back-in-time-with-juicy-the-emissarys-attention-kmart-choppers-3484b0687e4b https://medium.com/micro-chop/traveling-back-in-time-with-ju...
- suddenlybananas 2y agoIf only vapourwave was still popular.
- throw28198 2y agoi mean, it still is, it's just that the window of nostalgia shifted so "vaporwave" has mutated into various strains of Y2K [0] and "windows 7" feeling music [1] [0] https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX9D5dmCM8Lo3 https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX9D5dmCM8Lo3 [1] https://open.spotify.com/playlist/47t3ywNfFeeqSj6gJDjvgF https://open.spotify.com/playlist/47t3ywNfFeeqSj6gJDjvgF
- soupfordummies 2y agoReminds me of a mix between Wii and Gran Turismo 3/4
- rchaud 2y agoYep, vaporwave is very millennial-centric, with song samples rooted in '80s and '90s pop, with an intentional pre-Internet feel. Things that millennials would have fading, but extremely resonant, nostalgic memories about. The younger generation caught on to vaporwave's appealing use of slowed and reverbed samples, and created their their own spin on it now with "Frutiger Aero", which is 2000s vaporwave with a graphical/audio aesthetic that brings to mind Windows XP/Vista, Nintendo DS/Wii, Neopets, Flash games and early Youtube but cuts off before the iPhone age.
- schlauerfox 2y agoSome of my favorites are the purile humor of FrankJavCee and the Simpsonwave excellence of DANKMUS.
- lagniappe 2y agoRIP FrankJavCee
- Apocryphon 2y agoMallsoft - or martsoft? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallsoft
- url00 2y agoI still have it as my main coding music. Along with Wii Shop/lo-fi Nintendo. Still bops.
- esseph 2y agoWith enough age, I've found that popularity has little to do with my enjoyment of a particular song or artist.
- catapart 2y agoWild to actually hear the prices. Shoes for less than $3 USD![0] It's a fun time warp! [0]https://archive.org/details/KmartJuly1992Generic?start=447 https://archive.org/details/KmartJuly1992Generic?start=447
- neckro23 2y agoI picked this tape at random and just got to this part. Imagine my surprise.
- catapart 2y agoSame! It was on the first page for me, and I just jumped right to the shoe commercial on a random click. When that synth dropped I realized that I had just roll'd myself. In 2025. Absolute clownery!
- TimTheTinker 2y agoWhat a needle in a haystack find... excellent.
- trvr 2y agoHow did you find this?
- tgtweak 2y agosigh upvote Leave it to k-mart to never let you down.
- edferda 2y ago
- whalesalad 2y agoListening to October 1989 right now. Loving it! I'm going to download every single .ogg file and create a radio station that I can just tune into while working. Surprisingly effective for the flow state - even with the random product announcements.
- kmoser 2y agoWho knew that K-Mart music from 1989 would be the perfect sound track for vibe coding in 2025?
- neodypsis 2y agoWere you able to find the tracks using Shazam? It is having trouble matching the one from the 28:00 mark here: https://archive.org/details/KmartFebruary1990 https://archive.org/details/KmartFebruary1990
- tempodox 2y agoThey have overdrive and inconstant playback speed! Wonderful.
- halfmatthalfcat 2y agoFavorite vaporwave rendition of this: https://adamneelymusic.bandcamp.com/track/k-m-a-r-t https://adamneelymusic.bandcamp.com/track/k-m-a-r-t
- amiga386 2y agoFrom "The music theory of V A P O R W A V E" where Adam Neely not only explains and critiques Vaporwave but takes a big steaming dump on it by creating the track that captures and parodies its entire aesthetic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdVEez20X_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdVEez20X_s He got his source material directly from this archive.org collection, as it says in the opening titles: "On October 2, 2015, Mark Davis posted his prized collection of digitized K-mart elevator music cassette tapes to archive.org, free for anybody to use. Vaporwave producers rejoiced."
- isoprophlex 2y agoExcellent video, thanks for that. I thought this remark in the comments was pretty interesting: > Something that helps identify Vaporwave is the natural vibrato that occurs from using tape cassettes etc. I often wonder if vibrato, as an effect, gains it's ability to evoke emotion through a psychological connection with the natural vibrato of a person's wavering voice while near to crying. If so wouldn't that be a potential factor in this kind of music's popularity?
- kibwen 2y agoIt's a good video, but I wouldn't go anywhere near as far as saying he's taking a "big steaming dump" on it. He takes pains to explain why the experience of listening to a piece (accounting for the emotions that a given piece evokes) takes ultimate priority, and the trappings of classical music theory only follow from there. To a listener it doesn't particularly matter if a piece of work is unserious, amateurish, low-effort, etc. if the emotions that it evokes are genuine, and nostalgia is a legitimate emotion to evoke, and sampling from period-appropriate music only enhances that effect.
- crabmusket 2y agoHere's a whole remix album based on these recordings: https://juicytheemissary.bandcamp.com/album/attention-kmart-choppers https://juicytheemissary.bandcamp.com/album/attention-kmart-...
- aantix 2y agoI need one of those "Blue Light Special" lights attached to my laptop. Probably will need to develop an SDK for it..
- EvanAnderson 2y agoA buddy has these Woot lights: https://www.woot.com/offers/usb-powered-woot-off-lights-6 https://www.woot.com/offers/usb-powered-woot-off-lights-6 Sadly, they only draw power from USB-- no controlling them in software. (They got me a cheap laugh when I started singing "Turn on your Woot light..." to the tune of Neil Diamond's "Heartlight". Yeah, I'm a dad... >sigh<)
- RicoElectrico 2y agoQuite a bit of wow and volume instability on these tapes. Wonder if this is due to the cassette player quality or the tape being worn.
- dylan604 2y agoyes. cassette tape was a shit format. the longer the cassette, the thinner the tape itself was. the type of tape formulation also played into this. the more brown the tape was, the lower quality. higher end tapes were much darker nearly black. tapes could also stretch which would give you some of that wow. the tape duplicators motors/belts could wear out so that even if the original tape used to make the dubs was solid, the dubs would have that wow when played back in other cassette players that turned at a more consistent speed than the recorder. dirty heads on the dubbers would also lower the overall sound quality. I used to make cassette dubs with professional dubbers for years. We'd clean the heads after every X number of passes. The value of X changed depending on the length of the tapes used. I'd check for loose belts at the beginning of any dub order. For primarily talking content, we'd use the more brown colored tape. For music content, we'd use the darker tapes. At least that's what we'd recommend, but plenty of people would choose the cheaper tape regardless.
- Mountain_Skies 2y agoA once common sight lost to time is the cassette tape that got eaten by someone's car stereo and thrown out the window (presumably in anger). In later years, broken CDs sometimes made an appearance but nowhere near as frequently as strung out cassettes.
- brewdad 2y agoI couldn’t afford too many cassettes growing up. I managed to save a few roadside discards and add them to my collection. I distinctly remember being introduced to Whodini that way while living in the farmlands of Michigan.
- dylan604 2y agowe used to collect the AOL CDs and make different art projects with them. from simple hanging mobiles to catch/reflect light to melting them with torches and other ways of using them in random ways. can't forget the tying cassette tape to your antenna as a streamer. kids today look at cars and ask what's an antenna. no, i don't mean the sharkfin for XM radio.
- dylan604 2y agoListening to some of these, and it just floods back the horrendousness that was cassette tapes. They were horrible, yet they were amazing. They were great in every way except for their main purpose of listening to the recorded content. The sound was atrocious. From the muddled sound from losing all the fidelity of the highs because they were usually lost to any attempt at lowering the infamous tape hiss. The slow draggy sound from a tape that was stretched or the player having loose belts on the driving mechanism. Or worse, when the recorder did and no other player has the exact same issue so every player sounds like the batteries are dying. For those too young to have to suffer through your youth of listening to such inferior sounds, just be grateful. For those trying to be hip and bring back old formats, stick to vinyl. Cassettes are worth losing to history.
- function_seven 2y agoMy brother and I bought the same album back in 1994. Stone Temple Pilots—Purple. I had it on CD, he bought the tape. The CD sounded (obviously) so much better than his tape. But a little while later I made my own tape copy of the CD, and my copy sounded really close to the CD! Way better than his store-bought copy. Those bastards didn't even have the decency to use Type II cassettes for the released album. A Type II (or even better, Type IV-Metal) tape could sound pretty damn good. Still sucked to have to rewind or fast-forward, though. (Also, Dolby NR was terrible. I'd rather have the hiss than have the muted highs)
- dylan604 2y agoDon't forget about quality loss from manufactured cassettes being high speed dubs. There's significant quality loss as you increase the dub speed.
- SoftTalker 2y agoYeah mass-produced tapes were pretty bad but if you copied an album to cassette using a good tape and decent tape deck they could sound pretty good. Good enough for a Walkman or playing in the car anyway.
- Mountain_Skies 2y agoLittle did I know as a child that those security alert announcements weren't real. I'd often go around the store looking for the police arresting someone they chased down for shoplifting but always ended up disappointed. Probably watched too many cop shows in my youth.
- soupfordummies 2y agoIt was cool when mom finally let you roam around on your own. Beeline to the electronics section usually.
- SirFatty 2y agoWow... I spent a lot time in the Naperville, IL Ogden Mall Kmart in the early/mid 1980s, so I probably heard these exact tapes.
- jjtheblunt 2y agoditto...i tried from afar seeing what the spot is now, what happened to flipside, and ogden 6.
- SirFatty 2y agoNot to hijack the thread.. but Ogden 6 (and Fox Valley). A lot of memories.
- jjtheblunt 2y agoYep
- mzs 2y agoI think Ogden 6 is being razed for a future Costco.
- jjtheblunt 2y agoOh wow
- qrush 2y agoAnyone else hiding inside of clothing racks away from siblings (or the world) listening to this???
- dylan604 2y agoright up until the parental unit twisted my ear dragging me out of the rack. never did it again after that. such great memories of parenting in the 80s
- bombcar 2y agoYou need to find and watch the Bluey episode Fairytale. Trust me. It was the '80s.
- cf100clunk 2y agoThere was a security guard dressed like a NYC cop as they did back in the early 60s who grabbed my ear and made me leave the toy section because I was trying to open packages with my tiny hands when mom was in another aisle. I was terrified of K-Mart from then on.
- candiddevmike 2y agoI'm listening to this because Spotify is (was?) down, what a gift to find.
- jasonfarnon 2y agoapparently ears were a real liability back then
- EvanAnderson 2y agoOh, fun! These came up on HN a few years ago[0]. Recycling some of comment from then: The "Tower Sound and Communications" (TSC) company that recorded many of these was located a few miles up the road from my home town. The booming male voice on the recordings also sounded familiar to me, too. I'm fairly certain I heard him on the local radio station that my father played over the PA system in our family grocery store when I was growing up. Turns out that Cecil "Lee" Rutherford, the voice on the recordings, did VO work for local radio stations near my home town, too. He died in November, 2020. He was involved in some ventures that persist today. His company EchoSat[1] (which I'd heard of because I had some involvement in the convenience store / retail petroleum industry) merged with an IT security firm to become "ControlScan", doing PCI testing stuff because gas stations and credit cards. Quoting the obituary[2]: He started Tower Sound and Communications while in Greenville to pursue a venture that would eventually spearhead "in store" broadcasting for companies such as Kmart (he became the voice of Kmart) and Jamesway which evolved into another corporation in KY called EchoSat that would use satellite technology in helping with multiple stores for POS processing and security. There's an interview with Lee Rutherford in 2011.[3] He absolutely still has that "radio voice". [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25271464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25271464 [1] https://www.dandb.com/businessdirectory/towercommunicationsgroupinc.-lexington-ky-14562153.html https://www.dandb.com/businessdirectory/towercommunicationsg... [2] https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/dailyadvocate/obituary.aspx?n=cecil-rutherford-lee&pid=197199331&fhid=8238 https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/dailyadvocate/obituary.asp... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQqoQL3pkyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQqoQL3pkyI
- dang 2y agoThanks! I knew this topic sounded familiar. Attention K-Mart Shoppers: Collected K-Mart background music tapes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35593133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35593133 - April 2023 (8 comments) Attention K-Mart Shoppers: Piped Music Collection on the Internet Archive - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25271464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25271464 - Dec 2020 (91 comments) Attention K-Mart Shoppers: Recordings of K-Mart In-Store Music from 1992 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10369105 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10369105 - Oct 2015 (13 comments) (for those curious, EvanAnderson's prior comment was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25296389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25296389 from the Dec 2020 thread)
- cf100clunk 2y agoSomaFM NEEDS to put up a stream of those recordings atop ambient electronica, please!
- numberwan9 2y agoSomaFM does have a Vaporwave station [1] [1] https://somafm.com/vaporwaves/ https://somafm.com/vaporwaves/
- yellowapple 2y agoHow new is that? I used to listen to pretty much every SomaFM station all the time and never saw this one.
- siavosh 2y agoso many emotions. thanks for sharing.
- iancmceachern 2y agoThis is what the internet was made for, this is great
- barbazoo 2y agoI'd say it was how the internet was used for a short period of time before the greedy corporate overlords moved in.
- jimkleiber 2y agoK-Mart headquarters were in my hometown and I drove by them yesterday and they finally tore them down. Happy to see some K-Mart nostalgia here.
- nullbyte 2y agoSome of these tracks are absolute bangers
- vishnugupta 2y agoI don't know why but I absolutely love to go through things like this. They are a window into a past in a way no history article/book can bring out. Just raw, unfiltered content.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- debo_ 2y agoI listen to the Christmas tapes from this collection each December. It's become my defacto Christmas soundtrack.
- albedoa 2y agoI wonder if anyone remembers the K-Mart diners and cafes. This image search[0] shows various styles. Some or all of them were branded as K-Café. The one that I and my older brother remember from our local K-Mart is the sit-down experience with the brown chairs and tables, the server greeting you with the brown coffee canister. (Brown dominated the palette.) It was removed from the store before my younger siblings could register memories of it. They thought we were trolling when we brought it up. [0]: https://www.google.com/search?q=k-mart+diner&udm=2 https://www.google.com/search?q=k-mart+diner&udm=2
- SoftTalker 2y agoYes, the K-mart in my town had one when they opened the store in the 1970s. I think they removed the cafe some time in 1980s? The store itself closed about 6-8 years ago, sat vacant until about two years ago and was finally torn down. Remember blue-light specials? They had a little cart with a flashing blue light that they would roll around the store and have short-term unadvertised sale prices on things.
- lakkal 2y agoThe K-Mart where I worked in 1983-1988 had a cafe, called 'The Grill'. Ours had booths, with smooth curved plastic (unpadded) benches. The ones along the edges were typical booths but there was also a row down the center of the same thing without side walls. Orange seats and brown tabletops, I believe. A quick look at the google'd images from above doesn't show anything that looked quite like what my store had. I announced Blue Light Specials from time to time myself. There were a bunch of rotary-dial phones throughout the store, and if you dialed a certain number (I forget what it was) you could talk on the PA system. It's surprising it wasn't abused.
- matteason 2y agoIf you like this kind of thing (as background ambience or whatever), the 'WJSV broadcast day' recording from 1939 is worth checking out too: https://archive.org/details/001WakeUpMusic https://archive.org/details/001WakeUpMusic It was apparently the first recording of its type, clocking in at 19 hours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WJSV_broadcast_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WJSV_broadcast_day I chopped up bits of it for the 'Old American radio' option on an ambient sound mixer I made called Ambiphone: https://ambiph.one/?m=1-Ambient+old+radio-bf37bi80 https://ambiph.one/?m=1-Ambient+old+radio-bf37bi80
- smoothbenny 2y agoIt's giving CVS Bangers[0] [0]https://www.mixcloud.com/TOLKIENBLACK/cvs-bangers/ https://www.mixcloud.com/TOLKIENBLACK/cvs-bangers/
- DadBase 2y agoThe old Kmart tapes had a frequency that kept teens from loitering and summoned exact change. Scientists don’t talk about it because they’re scared. I played one backwards once and the parking lot stripes repainted themselves. That’s how you know it’s good audio.
- soupfordummies 2y agoThis is awesome! Thanks for posting. Reminds me of this, similar vein: https://twcclassics.com/ https://twcclassics.com/
- digitalsushi 2y agoI grabbed this about 5 years ago and stashed it on the media server. Two years ago I got into a docker compose project to use mpd and rern/rAudio to stream music 24/7 over multiple channels on a bunch of pis with dac hats, including my wood shop out in the woods. So I'm out there at midnight a year or two ago and I had it pinned on these kmart rips. It's creepy out there. All of a sudden this booming voice yells "SECURITY TURN CAMERAS TO AISLE 13" or some such thing. So be careful if you are likely to get into the same predicament.
- eitally 2y agoGreat to see this here. I was reading to my 8yo yesterday and there was a reference in the book to a "blue light special" so I took a diversion to explain to her what that referred to. Now I can show her the real deal! (btw, it blew her mind to think that stores did this, and imagined it was like a mass of people all running to one place to grab a deal... and sometimes it was!)
- muppetman 2y agoI can't figure out which is the special tape with the 30 years of history. The one I thought it would be 03.01.1992 just seems to be a normal tape?
- thaumasiotes 2y agohttps://archive.org/details/Kmart30thAnniversaryProgram https://archive.org/details/Kmart30thAnniversaryProgram Week of 3/1 is presumably what they played on the other 6 days of the week.
- muppetman 2y agoThank you!!
- srrdev 2y agoMy kid and I use these tapes sometimes as lyrics for songs because we don't have a singer (he plays drums and I play guitar) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPoSe_qMRr4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPoSe_qMRr4
- nunez 2y agoSo I'm watching one of the really old sales training videos [^0] and am wondering: for anyone here who shopped for stuff in the 60s/70s, were retail employees friendlier and more assistive than retail employees today? Do you think the brick-and-mortal retail experience is any better or worse than then? [^0]: https://archive.org/details/S.S.KresgeTraining-TheABCsOfFriendlyService-MakingTheSale/MTS1080p.mp4 https://archive.org/details/S.S.KresgeTraining-TheABCsOfFrie.... It's also really trippy that the tips being given here STILL apply today at a basic level, even in complex technical sales!
- jedberg 2y agoIt was definitely better back in the 80s, which is as far back as I can remember. Back then being a retail worker provided a livable wage, so you had people who actually cared and wanted to keep their job and actually help people.
- jedberg 2y agoThe 30th anniversary one is amazing: https://archive.org/details/Kmart30thAnniversaryProgram https://archive.org/details/Kmart30thAnniversaryProgram All the facts about 1962 from a perspective 30 years later, but 30+ years in the past to us! For example the fact that when K-Mart opened no one could have predicted that it would be one of the biggest real outlets in the country. :)
- anon6362 2y agoThe Egghead Software store I worked at always played the same CD on loop in a lock box. It was a passionless rendition of The Four Seasons by Vivaldi.
- t14000 2y agoAre Americans unusual that they'll do anything for money? Weird for an artist to sell out and make advertising jingles?
- lakkal 2y agoBrings back a lot of memories. I worked at K-Mart when I was in high school. I recall in 1983 when the TI-99/4A was discontinued, and the Sunday morning when we were selling them for (I think) $50 with a $100 mail-in rebate. When the doors opened people sprinted down the midway aisle to the TV/electronics department at the rear of the store where the computers were. I was an Atari snob at the time and had no interest in one for myself. I think we had less than a dozen in stock.