Dinosaur Gardens

I just don’t even need to say anything about this, do I?

Well, I will say a few things. As the opening stock-music fanfare gives way to the manly announcer proclaiming, “When it comes to handling manure, you need dependable equipment!” you know you’re in for a good thing. Plenty of fun quotes, such as “Teeth are arranged to pull manure inward,” though for some reason I just love the brief statement, “Adjust suck.”

Incidentally, the reason I have it is that my grandfather and my uncle ran the John Deere store in Plain City, Ohio (yes, “Plain City”… you can’t make that stuff up) for many years. Although my family was far from rural or white trash, this meant we had John Deere everything: John Deere calendars, John Deere bicycles, John Deere wall thermometers. When they closed up shop, my parents managed to hold onto a couple dozen of these records, all 45 RPM soundtracks to sales presentations. This is easily my fave.

• John Deere - Manure Handling Equipment - Side A.mp3
• John Deere - Manure Handling Equipment - Side B.mp3

The liner notes of this 1967 album explain it pretty comprehensively, so I’ll just paste them here:

Americans Speaking is a recording prepared by the National Council of Teachers of English to provide teachers and students with large-scale samples of some of the major varieties of American English, as naturally used by educated speakers. It is the first record to provide samplings of this scale since the inauguration of the Linguistic Atlas project in 1930; thanks to the evidence of the various regional atlases, it has been possible to select speakers whose pronunciation is characteristic of wide and identifiable dialect areas. All speakers recorded represent the cultivated speech of their areas: each had had some college education at the time the recordings were made, and some were postgraduates; no speaker exhibited pronunciation features widely regarded as substandard in his own area.

To permit larger samples than most records of this type provide, only six specimens are given, three from the North, two from the Midland, one from the South, following the regional designations first used by Hans Kurath in his Word Geography of the Eastern United States (Ann Arbor, 1949).

• Northern:
  • Eastern New England (Topsfield, Massachusetts)
  • Brooklyn, New York
  • Inland Northern (Madison, Wisconsin)
• Midland:
  • The Delaware Valley (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
  • South Midland (London, Kentucky)
• Southern:
  • Prattville, Alabama

It is noted that three of the speakers are from the area of the original settlement where local divisions are discussed in the Word Geography. The other three—Inland Northern, South Midland, Southern—come from areas of secondary settlement for which there is as yet no detailed analysis like that in the World Geography or in Kurath and McDavid’s Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States (Ann Arbor, 1961); nevertheless, the evidence suggests that the three principal dialect regions extend west of the Alleghenies and even beyond the Mississippi, with clearly marked subareas.

The fact that these six specimens appear on this record must not suggest any judgment that these are the only models for good American pronunciation. Many others exist-from the older areas, for example, Pittsburgh, Richmond, Charleston; from newer ones, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, New Orleans, San Antonio, San Francisco, Portland, Salt Lake City, and Denver. It is to be hoped that this record will be but the first of a series which will provide teachers and students with an understanding of the many varieties of cultivated American English.

The selection for each speaker is in two parts: (1) a set text read aloud and (2) a sample of free discourse.

The set text, composed by Mrs. Celia M. Millward of Boston University, was designed to give examples of three types of pronunciation features:

1. Differences in the pronunciation system. Does fought have the same vowel as lot, or a different one? Does morning have the same vowel as car or as ford, or are they different? Does Tuesday have a (y) glide following the (t)? Does whetstone have an (h) at the beginning?
2. Differences in the phonetic quality of the vowels and consonants. Do you notice differences from your own speech in the pronunciation of (ai) in five, (au) in out, and the stressed vowels of rode, paper, week, murder?
3. Differences in the occurrence of particular vowels and consonants. Does greasy have an (s) or a (z) sound? Does creek have the vowel of seek or that of sick? Does sister have the vowel of sick or something else? Does laugh have the vowel of grand or that of father?

In addition to the set passage, each speaker talked informally about some topics of interest to him, and from each of these unrehearsed recordings a selection was made. The topics are diverse: small town life in Kentucky and New England, childhood on an Alabama plantation, a philosophy of teaching, developing the craftsmanship of the professional writer, the duties of a specialized National Guard unit. What all the passages have in common is the fact that the subjects were of such interest that the speakers were unconcerned about how they were talking. From these passages one can observe several aspects of oral communication: (1) possible differences from the pronunciation of words as read; (2) the reduced contextual pronunciations of auxiliary verbs (have, will, are), prepositions (to, of), conjunctions (and, or); (3) the conversational patterns of intonations, stress, and word transitions—and the ways these may differ from the patterns found in reading aloud; (4) some evidence on the complex orchestration of speech that scholars now call paralanguage…

1. Inland Northern: “My Eccentric Grandfather”
2. Inland Northern: conversation
3. South Midland: “My Eccentric Grandfather”
4. South Midland: conversation
5. Eastern New England: “My Eccentric Grandfather”
6. Eastern New England: conversation
7. Alabama: “My Eccentric Grandfather”
8. Alabama: conversation
9. Brooklyn: “My Eccentric Grandfather”
10. Brooklyn: conversation
11. Delaware Valley: “My Eccentric Grandfather”
12. Delaware Valley: conversation

Linguistics fans out there should also check out the International Dialects of English Archive.

Here’s another fun one for you DJs out there: the FCC’s 1939 station identification regulations — as sung by Cary Grant.

This is from the second episode of the NBC radio show The Circle, broadcast on January 22, 1939. NBC assembled a top-drawer cast — Grant, Ronald Colman, Madeline Carroll, Carole Lombard, and Groucho and Chico Marx — and put together a show in a round-table format, where all the stars were members of some sort of club. Much to everyone’s surprise, the show almost immediately flopped, only lasting a few months.

Grant singing is inherently amusing — check out his performance as the Mock Turtle in the 1933 Alice in Wonderland — but having him sing FCC documentation with full orchestral accompaniment is another level altogether. Truly to be treasured.

I’ve posted just the song MP3 and also the entire show, which has some other entertaining moments, like a routine where Chico owes Groucho money.

• Cary Grant - FCC Station Identification Regulations
• The Circle (January 22, 1939)

Conquer the Video Craze was issued in 1982, at the height of arcade games’ popularity. Over a background of ambient arcade noise, Curtis Hoard, “Atari Champion finalist”, reads convoluted game tips in a slow nasal monotone.

I’ve not been able to find out much about Hoard; most of the search results point to articles about a different Curtis Hoard, a sculptor of some reknown at the University of Minnesota. Perhaps this fellow’s father? One of the few links I found about this Hoard says that he graduated from Alhambra High School in California in 1981. Perhaps he knew David Wills (“The Weatherman” from Negativland), who also attended around that time.

The liner notes talk a little about Hoard and his sad, sad life:

There are few games in the marketplace that Chris has not mastered. He has extensive experience at playing video games and diciphering [sic] their patterns and techniques of play. His analytical mind automatically envisions patterns and virtual line drawings of the games. He currently logs more than 8 hours of play per day and has been coined by his peers and friends as the “Human Video Game”.

The label, ALA Enterprises of Los Angeles, is similarly obscure. They issued a motley grab-bag of products in the late-1970s–early-1980s, including bootlegs of Memphis Slim and Canned Heat; “Dungeon Key”, a cassette game for the TI-99/4a computer; and film composer warhorse Alan Silvestri’s soundtrack for blaxploitation flick The Mack and His Pack.

I’ve always thought that between the subject matter and Hoard’s slow talking, this would make great sampling material; just snip off the introduction where he says the video game’s name, and you have a man saying things like, “As a beginner, it is better just to kill everyone as fast as you can”, utterly deadpan. At least one DJ, Canadian Kid Koala, had the same idea.

1. Introduction
2. Centipede
3. Defender
4. Stargate
5. Dig Dug
6. Donkey Kong
7. Pac-Man
8. Ms. Pac-Man
9. Tempest

Hello Gardners; a pleasure to be here — and to make my first contribution.

I’ve been a die-hard forgotten media collector and create digger for many years, amassing an enormous library of strange sources to be used to create music as/with The Evolution Control Committee. So, it just seemed natural to start off with a good find — expect more to come.

Having amassed most of my vinyl treasures in the bible belt and Devo state of Ohio, religious vinyl artifacts are a familiar and favorite find. Whether it’s another piercing sermon from Jack Van Impe (or occasionally his kick-ass accordion playing) to irritating Christian puppets, there was always a glut. So much so that I eventually had to split my “Religion” record category in two, separating the adult material from the kids (the latter category becoming “Opiates For The Lasses”). But … always, always, always Christian.

Which was what made “Qur’an for Little Muslims” so refreshing.

Once you’re past the gleeful shock of the title, look at the cover — what’s wrong with this picture? Could it be the blond-haired, blue-eyed, Aryan Youth dutifully studying his Qur’an? There’s also something neatly symbolic about the faceless girl, conveniently looking another direction. Yeah … keep it that way, you.

As for the contents, it’s Islamic storytime with a very white sounding soccer mom. Uh, in a burqa. Not thrilling, but Negativland did use a bit in their 2006 shows after I sent a copy to Mark Hosler, even with no “My First Car Bomb” track. Nonetheless, here it is in its entirety for you, complete with artwork.

1. Introduction
2. Al Fil
3. Al Alaq
4. Al Maun
5. Al Asr
6. Al Fatiha
7. Al Falaq & Al Nass
8. Al Lahab
9. Al Nasr
10. Suras Recitation

Artwork (click for larger images):

For our inaugural post, I’ve put up Christopher Recordings on Sex Instruction, an early-1950’s album for good Christian parents on how to properly teach their children about the mysteries of sex. Highlights include some of the worst adults-pretending-to-be-children acting of all time, and the stern warning against masturbation in track 3.

There’s a semi-interesting story behind these files. I originally made them in 1997 from my copy of the album, a collection of four 78 RPM 10-inches (it was also issued on LP). I then posted them to the newsgroup alt.binaries.sounds.mp3, the best way to trade MP3s in those pre-Napster days. Not long after that, I moved and put most of my records in storage (this will be a recurring theme, I’m afraid). A couple years ago, I wanted to play some of these on my radio show, but the records were packed away and I couldn’t find the MP3s on any of my backups. I did a search, without much hope, on WinMX, and to my surprise I found them all. After downloading them and looking at the tags, I realized these were the exact ones I had encoded and posted years earlier — they had been bouncing around the various P2P networks all these years.

1. How Babies Are Made
2. Girls and Menstruation
3. The Problems of Growing Boys
4. The Marriage Union