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Dave
Guest
There's been a lot of talk on the TV boards about scary production logos (Screen Gems, Viacom, etc.). What I want to know is, what radio jingles used to scare the bejeezus out you when you were a kid?
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When I was in my teens I'd leave the radio on overnight on WLS. The Old Style Beer ads with the horns blowing would wake me up and scare me. 
I wouldn't say I was ever actually scared by either a production logo or a jingle, but I remember radio station jingles and imagers that were unpleasant and creepy.
In the early 70s, 1260/KYA in San Francisco would count down the top 5 every hour. The pre-recorded male announcer talked in a gravelly whisper through an echo chamber..."KYA, Number five - five - five- five - five..." I was a little creeped out by it, and I was in my 20s. It sounded like the voice of the murderer on the phone in When A Stranger Calls.
KRLA used a series of jingles in the early 70s that copied the tune and musical arrangement from 2001: A Space Odyssey (originally composed by late 19th century German composer Richard Strauss, if I remember correctly). It was odd and unsettling - especially for a Top 40 station.
In the early 70s, 1260/KYA in San Francisco would count down the top 5 every hour. The pre-recorded male announcer talked in a gravelly whisper through an echo chamber..."KYA, Number five - five - five- five - five..." I was a little creeped out by it, and I was in my 20s. It sounded like the voice of the murderer on the phone in When A Stranger Calls.
KRLA used a series of jingles in the early 70s that copied the tune and musical arrangement from 2001: A Space Odyssey (originally composed by late 19th century German composer Richard Strauss, if I remember correctly). It was odd and unsettling - especially for a Top 40 station.
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MsMusicRadio
Guest
"770 WABC" on rewound scares the hell out of me cause it reminds me that my youth in gone and I am old. Kinda depressing.
How about the old Westinghouse news sounder?
Lkeller said:
Yeah, you got it... Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30 by Strauss is certainly eerie and unsettling, maybe because of the images of the computer gone wild from the movie.
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FreddyE1977
Guest
Back in the 70's, whenever winter weather was predicted to get rough, Standard Oil would
buy sports for the Boron Winter Forecast (or if you lived in Ohio, the Sohio Winter Forecast).
Those tones at the beginning of that spot made the Screen Gems TV logo sound like a Brahms
Lullabye by comparison. This would be followed by a live announcement "Tonights' Boron Winter
Forecast Temperature, minus 10. Don't forget to full up with Super Boron. Remember, no fuel
line freeze-up or Boron pays your tow".
buy sports for the Boron Winter Forecast (or if you lived in Ohio, the Sohio Winter Forecast).
Those tones at the beginning of that spot made the Screen Gems TV logo sound like a Brahms
Lullabye by comparison. This would be followed by a live announcement "Tonights' Boron Winter
Forecast Temperature, minus 10. Don't forget to full up with Super Boron. Remember, no fuel
line freeze-up or Boron pays your tow".
anotherguy said:When I was in my teens I'd leave the radio on overnight on WLS. The Old Style Beer ads with the horns blowing would wake me up and scare me.
Ah, yes.... "Pure-brewed, double-brewed Old Style. Brew a beer once, you have a good beer. But if you brew a beer twice, you have a great light beer." I loved those Old Style Beer ads. Even 1000 miles away, those Old Style horns came through loud and clear on WLS. I was a big WLS fan here in the Boston area. I still want to taste a bottle of Old Style ("pure brewed in God's Country")! "G Heilmann Brewing Company, LaCrosse, Wisconisn".
Peter Q. George (K1XRB) said:I still want to taste a bottle of Old Style ("pure brewed in God's Country")! "G Heilmann Brewing Company, LaCrosse, Wisconisn".
Well, the original brew as advertised on WLS....like the top 40 days of WLS itself...is long gone. It was a pretty decent beer...a little "perfume-y"...but very drinkable. For a brief time in the mid-late 70s, it was the top-selling brand in Chicago. It got there when the local Budweiser beer truck drivers went on strike in '75 or '76 IIRC. No Bud to be had....so people ordered Old Style. After the strike A-B (and Miller) ramped up their ad spend, while Heilemann over-expanded by buying lots of small struggling regional breweries. Then came ownership and management changes. Pretty soon "The House of Heilemann" was history.
The current version of Old Style is nothing special. Not too bad, but it's no longer "brewed in God's Country/LaCrosse", and there's some controversy over whether the stuff is still produced using the kreusening "double brewing" method (as claimed). The brand is owned by a holding company (same outfit that brought back Pabst and Schlitz), and is mostly...if not entirely...brewed under contractd by SAB/Miller in Milwaukee. Old Style still has a radio presence via sponsorship of Chicago Cubs baseball. The creative, however, is sometimes downright goofy. Vastly inferior to those "scary" horn spots that ran for 20-odd years produced by Campbell-Mithun/Minneapolis.
(Apologies for veering off topic)
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FreddyE1977
Guest
cyberdad said:Peter Q. George (K1XRB) said:I still want to taste a bottle of Old Style ("pure brewed in God's Country")! "G Heilmann Brewing Company, LaCrosse, Wisconisn".
The current version of Old Style is nothing special. Not too bad, but it's no longer "brewed in God's Country/LaCrosse", and there's some controversy over whether the stuff is still produced using the kreusening "double brewing" method (as claimed). The brand is owned by a holding company (same outfit that brought back Pabst and Schlitz), and is mostly...if not entirely...brewed under contractd by SAB/Miller in Milwaukee.
(Apologies for veering off topic)
I had not heard the term "kreusening" since The Erie Brewing Company in Erie, PA went out of business and quit making Koehler Beer in the mid-70's. Before that you heard the word "kreusening" all the time in their commercials here in PA. If kreusening means "double brewed" I doubt that Old Style is still produced using that method. The holding company that makes Old Style, Pabst, Blatz, etc. markets them all at the low end of the price scale. (I can find a 30 pack for around fourteen bucks if I shop around)
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Dave
Guest
What about when you first heard the PAMS sonovox jingles?
I never remember any jingles as "scary" when I was young. However, there remains one that I can still hear in my mind and almost recite from memory. It was done for a car dealership called "Downtown Mercury" and was done in what I now describe as a slap-bass kind of rhythm played with a man's voice (much like Johnny Cash later used). I seemed to always hear this when I was out in the car with my father. At the end of the commercial the address was given and I still remember it being at "1320 Reading Road". That is/was definitely in downtown Cincinnati. No dealership is there now and the street numbers on Reading Road seem to not go that low any more.
Kurt Toy said:
I found the bottom-of-the-hour ABC Entertainment Network news sounder friendly, compared to the ABC Contemporary Network sounder at five or six before the hour. The Contemporary sounder had a synthesizer tone very similar to the Screen Gems logo that got this thread started.
I found the bottom-of-the-hour ABC Entertainment Network news sounder friendly, compared to the ABC Contemporary Network sounder at five or six before the hour. The Contemporary sounder had a synthesizer tone very similar to the Screen Gems logo that got this thread started.
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The ABC Contemporary sounder was a bit ominous sounding. It ran at :54:30, which made backtiming interesting. The WBZ news sounder after the Group W ID was pretty ominous too in the seventies.
[/quote]
The ABC Contemporary sounder was a bit ominous sounding. It ran at :54:30, which made backtiming interesting. The WBZ news sounder after the Group W ID was pretty ominous too in the seventies.
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