Muzak—Something You May Not Know
Because I Just Made Some Of It Up
A little known historical musical fact:
Back in the latter 1930s, a company called Muzak Holdings LLC began distributing canned music to different locations throughout the U.S. They would take popular songs and make them into light instrumentals, then sell them to places like department stores, hotels and eventually malls. At the height of their popularity in the 1960s and 70s, Muzak could be heard in over 350,000 places.
Quite coincidentally, this coincided with the self-medicated generation.
A group of musicians largely responsible for the watered down versions of the American Top 40 was an orchestra called Smooth As Silk, or SAS, as they preferred to be called. The orchestra was formed by musicians who had tried to get on with the popular symphonies of the day and failed. As the decades passed, new musicians were recruited, where they were able to play to their hearts content on harps, flutes, baby grands and oboes.
So, if you're in an airport, walking in a mall, riding in an elevator, or lying on a stretcher as they wheel you down the hall to the operating room—and you happen to hear the easy listening version of Metal Health (Bang Your Head)—you now know who to thank.
Smooth As Silk has been nominated for every music award known to man. Unfortunately, they are a 113-time loser.
This post was written as part of today's five minute freewrite. Today's prompt: smooth as silk. I made only part of this post up. Do you know which part is real?
Image source—Pixabay
Lol, here I was thinking that I had to look for this Smooth As Silk orchestra. I'm a bit sad. But the song "Metal Health (Bang Your Head)" is quite good! I had already listened to a couple songs by Quiet Riot, but this one is particularly nice. :)
I haven't taken part of the freewrite's for a while. Maybe I should go back to them.
Hey, @cryptosharon.
I figured I probably should let people know that this was mostly made up or then have to wade through comments explaining it. :) I do like Metal Health (my appreciation for it has oddly grown since I've gotten older). I looked to see if there was a Muzak version of it, but couldn't find one. That would have been the icing on the cake. :)
Hey, you should totally get back into the freewrite. I've just been attempting them for about a week now. I think it's helping to sharpen the mind a little, but my fingers aren't cooperating accordingly. I keep hoping I'll be able to crank faster, though.
Hahahaha, that's me as well. I need to go back to fiction writing. I digress too much and end up writing about anything except for what I set out to narrate. I do have fast fingers, though! The props of having been born onto a computer keyboard.
So Muzak is real! I'll look them up.
Lol, they call it "elevator music". Sadly, no elevators have music here in Venezuela, and shops have hip-hop and accelerated pop songs.
edit: Spotify link for the curious
Muzak is or was real. I'm not sure, based on what I read, if they still exist as a formal business entity. I think they were last incorporated into MoodMedia, which is more or less the same thing, except I think instead of an orchestra version of music, it's more of the original artist's version. At any rate, Muzak did exist for decades, and you could find it virtually anywhere.
Smooth As Silk, sadly, all made up. :)
Damn! I was ready to go out and start a campaign to get Smooth As Silk a grammy. Very nice work of fiction. Do you write those fake news stories? ;-)
Here is today's prompt: Day 294: 5 Minute Freewrite: Thursday - Prompt: puzzle
hey, @wordymouth.
Thanks for today's prompt. This is a pretty cool service.
Yeah, well, they probably need some kind of campaigning, the poor souls You don't lose that many times without it taking a toll on your psyche. Even made up ones. :)
No. I'm very much into truth, but I have been known on occasion to write a fairly convincing faux-news article on April Fools' Day. :)
Hi there @glenalbrethsen good to be back here,
Music has always been a part of us, Someone said " Music expresses which can not be said and on which it is impossible to be silent"
words aren't necessary sometimes, may be this is the reason why we have these light instrumental music being played in hotels, restaurants or stores
hey, @hananali.
I suppose what you say is true. I know for the most part, there's enough background noise going in some parts of a store, mall, etc., that you can't even hear it.
And anymore, the places I've been have switched from the Muzak to the actual artist version of the song, which for me, is much better.
I'm sure they're just trying to provide some kind of mood music, or fill dead space with it. It's one of those things that I don't really think of how much it's affecting me, unless I'm waiting around for my wife to emerge from a store and I hear the music. Then, I might hang closer to a speaker and enjoy it if I like the song. Otherwise, I'm probably moving some place where I don't have to hear it. :)
Even in the toilets of some hotels, you can switch that music off though but at most places like in restaurants or stores etc you can not do so, there is no need to do that anyway because music there is mostly soothing, but if its on a low. At some places mostly at departmental stores the music sometimes is too high and it just starts irritating after sometime as you can not even hear what the person next to you is talking about.
That's true, we usually like our own kind of music, which for others could be very different as they might like it and they might not but for us its the best music ever :D
I agree, there always is something missing in restaurants, may be the feel that is what they try to fill in order to make it look like some atmosphere. Your wife comes out and there's music on background? that would've been really impressive, you can't hate that music for sure :D that's cute too. Moving away from that music isn't always a solution because mostly they use central speakers and you can not defeat that :D
ha! that was really good man, I have no idea which part was made up, what was it?
Basically, I made up everything from here...
...down. I had to figure out something to do with smooth as silk, and didn't really like what was coming to mind until I thought about easy listening or elevator music.
That part is me editorializing, but I wouldn't be surprised if the popularity of Muzak had something to do with the free for all drug scene of the 60s and 70s.
wow sir Glen, you are ..well..let me put it this way: I have no idea how you can do what you do in writing! lol. To come up with a story that fits a certain prompt? I think very few of us are that creative.
I don't know. I think there are probably quite a few who could if they chose to. Who knows. I just like trying. I'm not so sure I'm that successful at it, but you're kind as always to say so.
sir Glen..you're not sure you're successful at it? what kind of more proof do you need? a Pulitzer? I mean you do it everyday. I guess you have super high standards.lol
I would guess the first paragraph is real and then the rest is made up @glenalbrethsen.
I'm curious though. What made you come up with the Smooth As Silk band name? Did that just pop into you head when you saw the prompt? 😊
Yep. Most of the first paragraph is real. The amount of places Muzak reached at its height is made up, along with everything after, because I couldn't find any actual numbers.
Well, so, what do you think about when you see the phrase, smooth as silk? I've read through the other posts and basically, they came up with hair, skin, talking, things like that. All of that popped into my head, and I thought, well, that's okay, but kind of expected.
So, then, my thoughts kind of turned to easy listening. Not sure why, just the idea of smooth, I guess. And then I went from that to Muzak, because that's what I was going after, anyway. (Apparently, they are no the same. :)
And so, I went from there. That's generally how the process has been so far on these freewrites. Try to avoid the obvious, or use the obvious as a decoy. In this case, I went for the former.