Throughout our documentary work Kasafilms used many archival footage from many different kinds of platforms. Searching for hidden treasures on the world wide web. archive.org was all always our go to place. Recently we stumbled on this amazing collection of Kmart in store background music recorded on tape cassette from late 80's until early 90's.

This cheesy atmospheric music is a vintage heaven, mainly for music geeks and enthusiastic crate diggers. That tape hiss sound reminds us of those great times when we used to run tape decks for fun. The best parts are the in house commercial brakes reminding people on this week sales. The full catalog presented in the following link.

Glorifying and embracing our romanticism for the shopping mall, discount price store era is a must. Where so many delightful Americana fused story telling occurred, with the early works of: Kevin Smith, Richard Linklater and Harmony Korine. Setting the atmosphere for the suburbia boredom getaway life style.

Mark Davis worked behind the Service Desk at the Naperville, IL Kmart in the late '80s and early '90s. Every month, corporate office issued a cassette to be played over the store speaker system — canned elevator-type music with advertisements seeded every few tracks. Around 1991, the muzak was replaced with mainstream hits, and the following year, new tapes began arriving weekly. The cassettes were supposed to be thrown away, but Davis dutifully slipped each tape into his apron pocket to save for posterity. He collected this strange discount department store ephemera until 1993, when background music began being piped in via satellite service.

 

Written by: Greg Kotler,

Extra text by: Chris Hampton