2003 JULY 10 #191
A brassy, upbeat number from the elusive Hamms Beer industrial show of 1965, titled "Hamms 65 Bursting With Freshness!" This track was written by veteran industrial composer Lloyd Norlin who, before passing away a couple of years back, brought the corporate world a slew of great shows for companies like Pepsi, Ford and Marshall Fields department stores, to name a few that have turned up on record.
There can be no misconceptions about the message to this song, which clearly amounts to something like, "Let's sell the kids lots of alcohol!" And what better way for a hardened Hamms salesman to celebrate his company's centennial? This LP was pressed on nice blue vinyl, and could be easily mistaken for a generic promo record if you didn't look at the track list on the back cover. Find it and then celebrate with a beer!
- Jonathan Ward, http://www.furious.com/perfect/industrialmusicals.html
TT-2:21 / 2.2MB / 128kbps 44.1khz
Tom writes:
Hamm's was a long-time sponsor of Minnesota Twins
baseball broadcasts. And, for a long time, the ad copy
always mentioned "the land of sky-blue water."
I concluded that the Hamm's ads inspired the Firesign
Theatre to create the "Bear Whiz" beer commercial
that appears on their "Everything You Know Is Wrong"
album. Their brew's slogan: "It's In The Water
... That's Why It's Yellow." (And hasn't that irony
occurred to every non beer drinker, like me, at some
time or other?)
JM writes:
The Young Adults! The soundtrack of our fathersí summers,
ca. 1965. Crazy thing is, I doubt this worked one bit.
For one thing, the product doesnít earn a mention until
1:31. Guys on longboards with tight shorts, swinginí sideburns
and the keys to an over-carbed white over turquoise Mustang
did not want anything to do with Hammís. My grandfather
drank Hammís in 1965. My grandfather was a half-retired
prospector from Utah with a rock-solid pension from the
Standard Oil Corporation. Todayís challenge: Live life
to the beat of these infectious grooves. You can not deny
the restorative power of their jangle. The tri-ple-et
breakÖ downs! alone will have you sliding down the polished
hallways and jabbing the elevator buttons with your umbrella.
Let the beats put a shiny new spring in your step. Give
yourself over to the unbridled optimism of their message.
You know you want to. Let go of the darkness and weight
youíve felt creeping in to your soul. Go to sleep tonight
with fresh reaffirmation's of everything you know and
feel to be true, right and just ñ your elected officials
are the few remaining bastions of morality, the burden
of democracy rests solely on the weary shoulders of the
white man, and, as the Protestant God is my witness, there
ainít no replacement for displacement.
(Images courtesy of Jonathan Ward)