[HN Gopher] "Blown Away Guy": Iconic music image
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"Blown Away Guy": Iconic music image
Author : pmoriarty
Score : 95 points
Date : 2022-05-14 16:37 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vintag.es)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vintag.es)
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| The Blown Away Guy campaign did boost Maxell's sales as did their
| Israelites advert (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clD6J9OmkJI)
| and The Skids (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gib916jJW1o), they
| were up against TDK at the time and to be honest the TDK audio
| cassettes probably just had it.
|
| Sticking with an Audiophile theme, I was surprised to learn its
| 50yrs of the Technic's SL 1200!?!
| https://www.technics.com/global/home/sl1200/50th-anniversary...
|
| In the UK in the early 90's you couldn't get these for love nor
| money, not A stock, not B stock, not C stock because of the
| Rave/Acid house culture taking off (along with the de'rigueur
| Stanton cartridge), which is why this
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7ZxRs45tTg) will bring back
| some massive grins for some people! You know who you are! ;)
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Sticking with an Audiophile theme, I was surprised to learn
| its 50yrs of the Technic's SL 1200!?!
| https://www.technics.com/global/home/sl1200/50th-anniversary...
|
| I'm trying to fetch one. At 1099 EUR it's kinda a steal: only
| 100 EUR more than a non-anniversary / unlimited one. And the
| (non limited) used ones anyway can easily go for 800 EUR.
|
| It's not as epic as the 1995 limited run of 5000 gold-plated
| units (which, I'm sure, are now worth a little fortune so I'll
| never have one of these), but at 12 000 units that 50th
| anniversary run looks like a real bargain and the closest I can
| get to that 1995 collectible one.
|
| Are you getting one?
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| I think the MK4's were technically the best on paper but from
| what I've read they were only sold in Japan. Dont forget
| things like leaded solder is no longer used today.
|
| Maybe one day but dont have the time for it.
| thunderbong wrote:
| Your last link is incorrect
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| I dont understand?
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Bicep Glue is relatively recent. It's not from the early
| 90s: people may not realize they're showing images where
| insane rave parties took place.
|
| FWIW I've got the original version of Bicep Glue in my car
| as well as a one hour non-stop repetitive loop. I sometimes
| listen to that when driving. I love it.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| > Bicep Glue is relatively recent. It's not from the
| early 90s: people may not realize they're showing images
| where insane rave parties took place.
|
| OIC, yeah, now whilst its not Helter Skelter, Fantazia or
| something like this
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOMT3bRJXOo I think The
| Prodigy discography perhaps best mirrors the evolution of
| the music scene & mood in the UK through this time.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSTBFZ-To2E
|
| What alot of people dont know is its probably MI5 we have
| to thank for Ecstasy and the US Army. So the US Army
| rediscovered it and the spooks flooded the country to
| stop the fighting on the football terraces (no seating
| back then) as depicted in films like Football factory,
| but MI5 will deny it as it also spawned the darker side
| like the film Essex Boys.
|
| The intro is the interesting bit here:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3931692/
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| The speaker has to be a JBL L100, right?
| Gunax wrote:
| I had not seen this before, but I have seen many parodies of it
| which retrospectively make sense.
|
| I found this collection of some of them:
| https://youtu.be/hmmcgSgt5_c
|
| When i was a kid, we used to call these 'Simpsons moments'
| referring to the feeling of seeing the parody before the
| original. As the Simpsons has many cultural references, but is
| also popular with kids, many of us who grew up watching it had
| various 'now I get it' moments.
|
| What's interesting is that's it's not obvious that there is a
| parody or reference at all if one is not familiar. I remember the
| Simpsons having terminator, 2001, and many other film references
| that I would have an aha moment years later when i finally
| understood it.
| numbers wrote:
| I've been looking for this for a long time but couldn't put a
| good description to it since I saw it as a kid.
| drfuchs wrote:
| Blown-Away Guy may be the most iconic still image, but I'd say
| the most iconic moving image with sound was the commercial for
| Memorex cassette tape with Ella Fitzgerald and the "Is it Live,
| or is it Memorex?" tagline:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeeuT3ciqpI It was so popular,
| there were various sequels.
| martyvis wrote:
| Maxwell may have won the tape print ad war, but TDK definitely
| buried this TV ad in my brain in the 80's. (I think the singer is
| Aussie, so I wonder if this was also a global commercial).
| https://youtu.be/W_cH8Wi0Ggo
| omginternets wrote:
| All these years I thought the company name was Maxwell, not
| Maxell. I can't be the only one...
| [deleted]
| glouwbug wrote:
| Berenstain Bears
| omginternets wrote:
| Exactly!
| [deleted]
| yboris wrote:
| Internet Comment Etiquette - 'Mandela Effect' ;)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6cOkZbWZME
| dqpb wrote:
| Other timeline
| ohyoutravel wrote:
| Wow no joke I used their cassette and vhs tapes extensively as
| a child and this is the first moment I realized it was not
| "Maxwell."
| jordemort wrote:
| As a teenager, I had a modified version of this hanging on my
| room; someone had added a yawning cat on top of the speaker, and
| re-captioned it "Tuna Breath."
|
| Back in my day we walked uphill to school both ways in the snow
| and bought our memes on paper at Spencer's Gifts.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| My memories are very fuzzy but I feel like Maxell tapes lived up
| to the hype and they were better than the usual dreck I had. I'd
| put my "good stuff" on any Maxell I could find.
| rogual wrote:
| Also referenced in the Simpsons: https://tenor.com/view/milhouse-
| simpsons-tv-blasting-thrillh...
| zh3 wrote:
| As a Bauhaus fan, reading the article was "Eh? It was Peter
| Murphy" - and then I found it was a different ad in the UK.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZUIxGJ-ykI
| smegsicle wrote:
| nice save at :25
| dylan604 wrote:
| Oh man, the embedded youtube clip of the spot is priceless in the
| fact that there is an hiss so dominate in the audio just as if I
| was listening to one of the discussed Maxell tapes! It had me
| looking for the NR button.
| danachow wrote:
| Even with a standard bias tape, with a halfway non shitty deck
| one could do a little bit better than that though. Linear VHS
| audio which this clearly is (on an aged tape) has especially
| bad SNR and response, much worse than a compact cassette. On
| the other hand, HiFi VHS audio for a time was basically
| practically the best at home recordable audio format (reel to
| reel was cool but quite a bit less common).
|
| I'm not sure what speed that tape is running at but I'm going
| to guess LP, + the effects of age +/- dirty tape heads --
| someone with too much time on their hands could analyze it and
| figure it out. It looks like the original ad was shot on 16mm
| film.
| omginternets wrote:
| What's NR and SNR?
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| noise reduction and signal to noise ratio, presumably.
| mh- wrote:
| NR = Noise Reduction
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_noise-
| reduction_system
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_reduction
| danachow wrote:
| NR is noise reduction. It's the thing that made Dolby a
| household name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_noise-
| reduction_system
|
| SNR is signal to noise ratio.
| newsclues wrote:
| Wasn't surround sound what made Dolby a household name to
| the later generation?
| chasil wrote:
| Dolby B Noise reduction was followed by Dolby C some
| years later. This was visible in the market first, and
| very prominent to later users of cassettes in HiFi
| systems.
|
| I still have a deck that implements Dolby B and C, as
| well as dbx NR.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_noise-
| reduction_system
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dbx_(noise_reduction)
| danachow wrote:
| By the time surround sound was brought about in the 80s,
| Dolby was already a pretty well recognized brand and the
| Double D symbol associated with noise reduction on audio
| cassettes. And it's doubtful whether Dolby would have
| been around to bring Surround sound to market if it
| weren't for their success with tape NR.
|
| Adults with disposable income introduced to Dolby
| Surround in the 80s for their home theater were still
| commonly using audio cassettes (no other recordable
| medium in the US really took off until CD-Rs - MiniDiscs
| had a small following, DAT even smaller and DCC failed
| completely (and probably just as well)) - so it's not
| even a later generation. However, it wasn't uncommon for
| a household to have multiple HiFi systems and maybe a
| Walkman or two - while Dolby Surround and home theater
| was comparatively less common.
| newsclues wrote:
| Sorry later generation of humans.
|
| Between cassette and surround sound there wasn't much
| brand awareness for people who weren't around for the era
| of tapes being popular.
|
| As an 80s baby, I had no clue about Dolby tape
| technology, they are (to me) surround sound as that was
| becoming a consumer product around when Twister came out.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That's like saying Apple never created a product before
| the iPhone, or that MTV never played music videos
| Wistar wrote:
| Perhaps although I have always associated the name with
| noise reduction.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm aware the sound wasn't from a cassette, but it's
| strikingly ironic to me. Very fitting.
|
| Coincidentally, I used to record a weekend radio show that
| was on for 6 hours straight on to VHS tape HiFi tracks for
| playback later without having to flip the cassette.
| danachow wrote:
| Indeed, was not ragging on your comment. The opposite...
| now that cassettes are hipster Hi-Fi these days for some
| dumb reason. Compact cassettes were a fantastic design and
| set of engineering compromises for their time - a time that
| has long passed.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| What's really ludicrous is that you cannot currently buy
| a new cassette player with good sound quality. With
| vinyl, you can buy an excellent new turntable if you're
| willing to throw money at it. You cannot do that with
| casettes. Utterly pointless.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Good! There are some things that just need to go away.
| Cassette tapes, Zunes, Geo Metros, etc.
| Maursault wrote:
| > now that cassettes are hipster Hi-Fi these days for
| some dumb reason
|
| That's really ridiculous. But when tracking, I like to
| give artists the choice of various R2R tape formats, as
| the technology got really very good before it was
| abandoned[1], and with it comes one of what are really
| non-linear effects, tape compression or tape saturation,
| which happen to sound pretty good when properly executed.
| Some people really love The Beatles production quality
| and want even thinner, slower tape.
|
| But I know that's not what you were talking about. Analog
| tape cassettes iirc had 1/8" width of tape for 2 stereo
| tracks in opposite directions, basically a half-track
| stereo tape at 1+7/8ips, so effectively 4 slow mono
| tracks each 1/32" wide. The wider and faster the tape the
| better fidelity, so even metal cassettes were very poor
| quality, even compared to most consumer 1/4" R2R, and
| especially compared to 16-bit CD audio.
|
| [1] Actually, tape was never completely abandoned, as
| tape formats are still produced and available, and there
| are even boutique R2R manufacturers, and even the
| ridiculously expensive profusely audiophile selections
| are still somehow compelling.[1a][1b]
|
| [1a]
| https://thereeltoreelrambler.com/2020/05/16/introducing-
| the-...
|
| [1b] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc4UgRXD22o
| WalterGR wrote:
| NR = Noise Reduction
| pfarrell wrote:
| Another contemporary parody I remember is from the comic Bloom
| County.
|
| https://www.gocomics.com/bloomcounty/2009/07/27/
|
| (Don't be fooled by the url date, that's just the date gocomics
| reran it)
| [deleted]
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