Saturday, February 13, 2021

Coke, Snap-On, Reader's Digest, Nygard, and Sony all suck


Before I get into today's pile of junk, I'd like to show you the new tape deck I got for blogging. It's a Pioneer CT-F650. I put some new belts and a new tape head in it. If you're thinking about buying one of these to restore, I'd recommend looking elsewhere. There's six belts to replace, and one of them was a real whore to get at. The tape heads in these things are also junk, so unless you've got a pile of playback heads kicking around to choose from, don't bother buying one of these.

So why did I bother putting all the effort into this thing? Because of this little switch here:

So when this tape deck is PMSing, I can turn that shit off (unlike a woman). PMS stands for "Pioneer Music Selection" which will automatically stop when it gets to the next song. If I don't want it to do that, I can switch to Cue/Review to hear all the garbage I'm flying past. I can't ask for a better option than switching between these two modes when skimming through a tape. The audio quality is decent enough on this deck, especially with the new head. I used it on the cassettes in this entry. Speaking of entries, maybe we should finally get to that...

With all the companies dying these days due to all of us staying in our caves, I thought it would be fun to take a look at a time when companies were convinced that their good products were an excuse to be good at filling your houses with their shitty audio releases. Not all of these recordings are made from musical geniuses hard at work. A couple of these are seemingly legitimate tools for trying to sell their product. So now, let me shut up and we'll take a look at what we have...


Reader's Digest - Special Announcement


Some lady named Suzanne Herpes recorded this tape, begging the listener to take part in a sweepstakes. Is it me, or were the 1980s full of these shitty sweepstakes scams? Ed McMahon was the sweepstakes king, and poor Suzanne just can't hold a candle to him. Sweepstakes entries, encyclopedia sets, movies for a penny, all this stuff used to clutter my parents' mailbox. I used to fill out the "no postage necessary" forms with the cat's name and toss it back into the mailbox. We would then get flooded with more junk mail and telemarketers would call the house, asking to speak to the cat. It was all very amusing.

According to this tape, I've been through two of the three stages of the sweepstakes, and now all I have to do is win the money by filling out a form. I tried doing this with the Ed McMahon one with the cat's name, and all I got were more forms to fill out as well as some enclosed stickers to put on the enclosed forms just to keep myself busy. Then I got more forms. Hell, I would have been thrilled if Ed McMahon would have sent me an audio cassette like this Reader's Digest one. I could have used it to save video games on my Commodore Vic-20. Not only did this come with a cassette tape, it apparently came with a free nickel (which is seemingly absent). You would be smart if you didn't mail the nickel back and put it in your piggy bank instead.

At the end of Suzanne's stupid announcement, you can hear an orchestral version of "Leaving on a Jet Plane". It would have nice of them to include the recording of it on side 2, but Suzanne decided her announcement was so important that she recorded it on the other side, just in case you fell asleep the first time around.

Listen to Special Announcement


Walkman Demonstration Tape

So you just bought a brand new Sony Walkman (mine was three bucks), but you forgot to buy some tapes. Don't worry, your Walkman came with one! It has two songs that you'll never want to play over and over again. It contains the hits "Grieg Piano Concerto in A Minor Op. 16" and "Jungle Strut". Remember those classics? No? What's wrong with you???

Even though the songs are shit, it was kinda nice getting an extra like this tossed in with your new piece of technology. I have the one from the first cassette player my parents bought for me which is recorded in very obvious stereo. Too bad the cassette player was a mono unit. I suppose you wouldn't believe that video game consoles used to come with a free game as well. Everybody these days has cheaped out. Why don't new turntables come with a free record? What kind of a crazy world do we live in?

Listen to Grieg Piano Concerto in A Minor Op. 16

Listen to Jungle Strut


Coca Cola Presents The Real Thing Steel Band at Clay House Inn Bermuda

We used to live in a very strange world. Marriages would last until death, car bumpers wouldn't smash into a million pieces when you back into a tree, and Coca Cola had it's own steel drum band. Coca Cola must not have thought very much of their product because this record fucking sucks. 

Here's the weird thing... There are different releases by the Coca Cola band and my copy has the wrong record in it. I was really excited to hear the song "Sell The Pussy" which is listed on the back (I'm not kidding), but the record inside is one of the other releases. I don't know if my copy came from a hard core Coca Cola Steel Band fan who accidentally put the wrong record in the folder, or if someone at the record plant put the wrong copy in this sleeve so I wouldn't be able to enjoy a song about selling pussy.

So here's a couple of songs from it. Neither of them are about pussy, but you get to hear how crappy this band is.

Listen to Siboney

Listen to The Real Thing Theme


Snap On - Out Front & Breaking Away

So, what's more cool than buying Snap On tools? How about listening to a cheesy song about how much cooler Snap On tools are than the other leading brands? You know what would be cooler than that? Learning the lyrics and singing along with a karaoke version! You get both on here. So now you can fix your car while singing along with a real cool song, impressing the ladies with your mad skillz at both.

Listen to Out Front & Breaking Away

Sing to the Karaoke Version


Peter Nygard - Gala Quebecois 1993

Peter Nygard is currently at Headingley Correctional Centre for doing some very bad things to a lot of innocent people (namely, sexually assaulting dozens of women). The guy is a fucking pig. He was also apparently a major asshole according to the people I had a job interview with at his company 12 years ago. Good thing I didn't get that job because all the Nygard buildings are up for sale now. I feel bad for the employees.

Since Peter is busy dropping the soap in the shower, I'm sure he won't mind if I put his cassette up for your downloading pleasure. Most of it is commercial music customized for walking around the house in your underwear. However, there was one fantastic treat right at the end of the tape. It's a parody of the song "My Way" with lyrics about Peter Nygard.

Peter Nygard is the man who did it all with no exception,

He's live a life that's full, He's travelled each and every highway

But more, much more than this, he did it his way

Regrets, he's had a few....


...and on it goes with more surrealism with every lyric passing by your ears. Go ahead and listen to this thing. It's so bizarrely relevant!

Listen to the Peter Nygard version of "My Way"

Listen to Side 1

Listen to Side 2


Well, what a joy this one was! Stick around, I have some more fun stuff coming...

1 comment:

Maya Wardle said...

I really enjoyed your blog posts, thank you.