Retro Thing

Murky Depeche Mode Classics Covered By Chirpy Children

It is really, really rare that I laugh till I get tears in the corners of my eyes, but these videos have done it.

I'm a longtime fan of the unrelenting gloominess and early synth work of Depeche Mode. In the 80s I'd never heard sounds and beats like that before, and it opened up a whole world of electronic music to me. The band did a lot to introduce and popularize entirely synthesized music (to more than just me, of course). Their radio and music video hit "Everything Counts" made a huge impact on ears that had never heard such an extraordinary collection of noises, which makes it even more hysterical when children do a pretty authentic cover of it with stuff from around the toy room.

Clearly this family knows how to make good use of Quality Time. My God, they even do "Strangelove"...

I know I'm courting controversy here, but I haven't been nearly as enthusiastic about DM since they moved away from their signature synth sound to a more rock band oriented thing in the 90s. I know plenty of people who (and I'll never understand this) got into the band precisely for that epic rock sound and not the crucial synth stuff that came before. I like to joke that DM has been around long enough to have fans of just their much crappier career phase.

I'm being dramatic, of course. There's plenty to like of their recent work (they have a recent live DVD that's pretty amazing), but those early unrelentingly electronic albums will always be very special in my heart. Those are very hardy songs that can even survive being covered by the mewling of adorable little moppets. Maybe we're down to projects like these to keep those early days of musical Depeche melancholia alive.

links:

One more DM cover from the Schrader family... this time it's "Shake The Disease"
The live Depeche Mode DVD I mentioned is on Amazon

Playskool Rockin' Robot - The Grinning Cassette Recorder

If there's a theme we encounter time and time again here on Retro Thing, it's the irrational emotional bond people form with retro tech... but this 80's (or 90's? This particular one is labeled 1991) tape recorder makes me a little uneasy. Is it just me, or is it almost like this kiddie cassette player is looking and grinning at us?

There have been lots of tape recorders (fewer these days, I suppose) made expressly for children. Usually these were just chunkier versions of regular adult tape recorders with giant colorful buttons. Playskool took kid-friendly design that extra step to create a funny faced recorder that my adult friends seem to take a shine to, even today.

As a budding junior audio engineer, I would have killed for a tape recorder with features like built-in AM/FM radio, and a hardwired mic for recording my own tapes as well as barking out my demands over the PA system. It's in this public address role that we saw the Rockin' Robot make an appearance in the first two Toy Story movies. Our lanky lead, Woody, used Mr. Mike (the recorder's stage name) to make speeches to the other characters.

Mr. Mike was even issued in non tape-recorder mini version as a Toy Story tie-in later in the 90's. The hard-to-find toy includes a voice-changer to turn you into any of several robots, which is very cool... but doesn't really explain the high prices either version of the toy seems to command on Ebay. I've seen this analog relic go for over a hundred dollars - which may be just enough to break my irrational emotional bond with this grimacing tape deck.

Star Wars Has Always Had A Lot To Answer For

The 70s were a decade of the gritty anti-hero in movies. Some film historians credit the success of Star Wars to audiences responding to the movie's "good guy" heroes and high adventure. 1977's blockbuster success influenced more than just movies - sci fi trappings beamed up in a big way everywhere you looked.

Sadly, it wasn't all good. Here's a clip from ITV's Kenny Everett Video Show - British comedy skits and pop music, if you don't remember. This wasn't shown an awful lot in the states, but as a pre-teen I was fascinated by the show's early video effects, music I'd never heard before, and the (quite controversial and underdressed) Hot Gossip dancers. Here they are with their own simply awful sci-fi musical tribute. See how many SF theme songs snippets you can spot in this 1978 video clip.

Ebay: A Forty Year-Old Box Of Cereal

When we find out how much our old baseball cards or comic books are worth today, some of us like to get mad at our moms for throwing out our precious collections when we went away to college. I could see having pangs at the throught of mom taking your carefully curated treasures out to the rubbish heap, but don't be mad at her for throwing out the cereal box that looks like it's going to fetch a couple of hundred bucks in the next few days.

This Ebay auction offers an intact cereal box with a record featuring the stylings of the Jackson 5. That's right - you're bidding on a box of petrified cereal from 1972. I have this record somewhere, and as I recall it's the full song.

Super Sugar Crisp cereal has gone through a couple of name changes over the years - specifically to eliminate the word "sugar" from the brand. Funny that they don't want to remind parents that the cereal is caked in sugar, but it's okay to have a mascot who's clearly high off his fuzzy ass all the time. I actually remember cereal boxes coming with records laminated onto the back like this one. I still have one from Alpha-Bits cereal that tells the spooky tale of Sleepy Hollow. You'd impatiently wolf down the cereal, and carefully cut off the back panel that had a thin vinyl record glued on to the back.

The fidelity of isn't great, but it isn't bad either. The record uses flexi-disc technology, those thin sheets included with magazines that played on your record player.

It's over $150 with two days to go, but I expect it'll get several times that once the hammer falls. There are several points of interest in this auction that will attract collectors of Michael Jackson, unusual records, and even cereal box fans. I'm fully expecting a bidding frenzy in the last seconds, probably by jangle-nerved collectors on a sugar high after consuming too much kiddie cereal. 

Super Sugar Crisp Auction
Collection of cereal box records
evolution of Sugar Bear

related:
Cardboard records
Flexi-Sheets - those weird paper thin records
Breakfast With Nintendo: It's Not A Cereal, It's A System

Every Billboard #1 Single, Ever

SoundCloud user mjs538 has generously compiled 5 second excerpts of all 1,000 Billboard #1 singles, so you don't have to.

Five Seconds Of Every #1 Pop Single Part 1 by mjs538

Five Seconds Of Every #1 Pop Single Part 2 by mjs538

The Billboard Hot 100 first debuted in mid-1958, although Billboard Magazine's original Hit Parade dates back to 1936. How many can you name? (via @jonlustig)

Stretta: Analog Synthesis For The 21st Century

Long-time RT reader Stretta writes, "I recently released a new album rendered entirely with a modular synthesizer. While modular synths are undergoing something of a renaissance these days with dozens of manufacturers producing interesting new modules, there aren't a lot of examples of pure modular synth music made today that transcend the banal.

'A Funneled Stone' is a pure modular synth release, tracked in the old-shool, 1970's way: one monophonic line at a time. Every sound you hear was created, patched and recorded for that moment in time. When a new sound is needed, the patch is torn down and a new one is built. Polyphony is achieved by tracking each voice individually.

A modular album is, by definition, unapologetically synthetic. I also tried to take a more minimalist approach to orchestration, so the individual sounds can be more fully isolated and appreciated. I spent much of the final month of production taking elements out, and editing for length. Sometimes this results in the remaining elements merely hinting at the underlying harmonic movement.

As you can imagine, this process is very time-consuming, but fun. I hope you enjoy the results as much as I enjoyed creating it."

It's easy to get stuck in the past with vintage technology, but Stretta manages to push the boundaries of analog sound in a decidedly modern direction. Aided by a modern digital recording setup, his multilayered compositions range from moody soundscapes like the sharpest function to the rushing glitch-inspired rhythms of the future never spoke that make me wish for a long, aimless drive along a lonely stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway with the stereo cranked.

You can download A Funneled Stone in exchange for a tweet, or buy the album from Amazon, iTunes or Bandcamp. Stretta has also launched a kickstarter campaign to see if it's possible to collect enough pre-orders to fund a limited edition 180g vinyl release.

Listen to A Funneled Stone on Soundcloud
Pre-order the album on vinyl

Digitizing 70-Year-Old Jazz Recordings

As a kid, I used my boombox to record songs off the radio. It was a lot cheaper than buying 45-rpm singles or the burgeoning "Cassingle" offerings in record stores. A couple 90-minute tapes would last me months. If I still had them, the tapes would be worthless.

The National Jazz Museum in Harlem recently took possession of a similar set of recordings that are somewhat more sophisticated — and far, far more valuable. They were made by a sound engineer named William Savory, who in the late 1930s recorded New York radio broadcasts onto 12- and 16-inch aluminum and acetate discs.

The collection includes live performances by a slew of big-name artists, including Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman. The cache has sent jazz fans' hearts aflutter, according to The New York Times, in part because of the recordings' unique characteristics. The discs run much longer than the 3-minute 78-rpm records that were issued commercially at the time, meaning they offer new insights into famous musicians, session men and even disc jockeys. Savory died in 2004 and his son, knowing the recordings' value, made sure to save them. He gave them to the museum earlier this year.

An audio engineer is now working on trying to digitize the discs, some of which have succumbed to the ravages of time and less-than-ideal storage. Some of the discs cannot be salvaged. For others, playing the disc even once destroys it. The newspaper documented that process on video.

(It's a little more complicated than slipping a CD into your computer and pressing the "Import" button or listening to the radio with your fingers poised over the "Record" and "Play" buttons.)

The museum plans to make the collection available
 to audiences by appointment and through public events.

The Police + Dire Straits = Dire Sting?

Mashups are still alive and well, thankfully. When well executed, a mashup (or "bastard pop" or any of the dozen names lavished on it...) fuses two songs so perfectly they can almost become better than the original. A few years back, there were literally hundreds of versions of Eminem raps layered over pop and classic rock tunes, and out of that bombastic mess the mashup was born. It doesn't always work, but when it does the new music fusion can put your head in an all new space.

Mark Vidler of Go Home Productions is one of the undisputed masters of mashup, no doubt. He's still going strong combining not only songs, but their music videos as well. When Sting and DIre Straits met in his latest project, Retro Thing co-conspirator James said, "Whoa. I feel like I'm listening to the radio in a very screwed up dream where the music is from an alternate 80s universe."

What other encouragement do you need?

Early Cassettes Were Pink?

You don't have to look very hard to find that we're in the midst of a lot of audio cassette nostalgia. It's been going on for a while now, having progressed from the hipster underground to the T-shirt rack at Hot Topic. Cassettes have been busy lately. There seems to be a concerted effort to make the visage of the cassette a sort of visual shortcut for the 80s. There are new backroom record labels releasing music only on cassette. I'm also sure that somewhere there's a desperate student scratching out his masters thesis on how critical mix tape culture was to the the zeitgeist of the late 20th century.

That's not too bad for an audio format that was never meant for more than low fidelity recordings of dictation. In those earliest years of the "compact cassette", music labels didn't quite know how to handle selling music on this new format. Early tapes sounded pretty poor, betraying the format's origins in office-fi. It even took several years to figure out what to store tapes in. As you can see from this Bryan Ferry album from 1974, the tape is in a sort of sheath. The setup keeps tapes safe by making it remarkably difficult to actually remove the thing in order to play it.

The label wraps around the outside of the case (which has some curious grooves on the ends - for some snap-in storage system perhaps?), and the cassette itself is pink - so there's some overall sense of art direction. This kind of respect for the original music was largely absent in 8 tracks - songs were frequently re-ordered from the original album, or interrupted in the middle by the loud ka-chunk as your player changed tracks. I always thought that 8 tracks were created by people who despised music, whereas we can see that even in the earliest days of cassettes there was at least some consideration to keeping the original music pure. And pink.

related:

Pink Panther cartoons on DVD
Casio SK-1 sampling keyboard in pink
Pink Floyd as performed on classic Nintendo console

1983 Naked Eyes Song Was A Burt Bachrach Remake?

The song "Always Something There To Remind Me" always reminds me specifically of the 80's. Not only was the song everywhere back then, it's on every 80's retrospective now. To me the sound is so distinctly 80's with those synth bell sounds that were so common in a post Yamaha DX-7 world. The song is definitely a product of its time - a musical snapshot of when synthpop and MTV were new, so imagine my surprise when I learned the song was a 60's Burt Bachrach hit!

The song was originally recorded by Dionne Warwick (I wonder which of her psychic friends advised her to do it) as a demo in 1963, but it became a geniune #1 hit in the UK the next year when performed by Sandie Shaw (seen here in a performance that needs a cup of coffee). The herky-jerky beats of the song definitely work (though there's an unsettling key change toward the end), and now I'm hearing the 80's song in an all new way. How did I never notice those signature 60's chord progressions in the Naked Eyes 1980's mega-hit?

Of course the best known version of the song came 20 years later from synthpoppers Naked Eyes - reportedly Bachrach's favorite version. It's become a sort of musical shortcut for 80's nostalgia shows, so closely identified with the 80's sound that it's still difficult to believe that the song is decades older than I thought. You can still hear the 80's version on the radio everywhere today on "adult contemporary" radio stations. If you've ever had one of your teenage favorites relegated to "adult contemporary" radio, you understand how I'm feeling right now.

1980's Naked Eyes version of "There's Always Something There To Remind Me"

related:
Synth Britannia: the emergence of British synth pop
Yazoo: 80's synthpop is back with five disc box set
Barry Manilow tries his hand at another 80's pop "classic"

Twenty Vintage Synths On One CD

Twenty Systems is a clever CD + Book compilation that showcases 20 different synthesizers, one from each year between 1968-1988. The CD of original compositions by Ben Edwards (Benge) is accompanied by a full color 60 page book filled with photos and diagrams of the equipment, along with a history of synthesis during the period.

This is a clever way to get a feel for the personality of each machine, since the tracks are recorded using nothing but the pure output of each instrument with no additional processing, sequencing or effects. Available for £14.99 from Smallfish Records.

Benge: Twenty Systems CD + Book

8-bit Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon

On his site, Brad Smith asks "Have you ever wondered what Dark Side of the Moon would sound like if Pink Floyd had written it for NES, instead of for a rock band?"

Absolutely brilliant. You can download [zip] the entire album as one long, trippy 8-bit experience or enjoy each track on YouTube.

MOON8 - 8-Bit Pink Floyd [thanks, DC Hillier!]

Vince Clarke's Incredible 'Home Studio'

Matt Musick writes, "The new episode of Electric Independence documents a visit to Vince Clarke's incredible home studio that features more analog gear than, well, probably anyone we've ever encountered. The founding member of Depeche Mode, Yazoo, and Erasure is enjoying the country life in Maine but still cranks out the jams, or as he likes to put it 'making something from nothing.' "

Watch Electric Independence: Vince Clarke and the Temple of Synth

UMG Aggressively Drops CD Pricing

Universal Music Group has announced new retail pricing for compact discs that ranges from $6 to $10 in the hopes that reduced prices will rejuvenate sales. The new "frontline pricing structure" underscores the damage that downloadable singles have done to UMG's bottom line. Modern consumers are ruthless (and smart), preferring to lay down $1.29 for a hit single while avoiding the filler that often pads out an album.

It's amazing it took UMG this long to make this shift -- the move made strategic sense a decade ago. Back then, CD sales totalled 706.3 million units annually in the USA. By 2008, that number had slid to 360.6 million. And physical media sales continue to decline at over 15% each year.

Will it make a difference? Perhaps for a short while, but this will only slow the format's inevitable decline. From a purely analytical perspective, I might be inclined to spend $10 on a CD just to have nice artwork and a high quality backup on hand. But purchasing that disc would require me to jump into my car and then brave the throngs at Walmart (just about the only place that sells CDs around here lately). And that's assuming Walmart actually stocks the disc I'm after. Realistically, I'm far more likely to mash the iTunes button on my iPod for immediate gratification.

Wholesaler reaction has been mixed. The new pricing model carries a 25% profit margin, which has some specialty retailers concerned about evaporating profit. Walmart, on the other hand, has been pushing for lower prices and the return of shorter "EP" discs for a while.

UMG To Launch U.S. Pricing Test

Retro Nirvana: Owl City's Firefly Video

Paul C dropped us a note a couple of days ago, "I'm a faithful reader of your site and thought you'd enjoy this video of Owl City's Firefly. It's chock full of retro robots, toys and gadgets."

Yup, the video is definitely fun. Wish I could say the same about the Melodyne pitch mangling that's slathered all over every single vocal utterance. Ugh.