Audio Fidelity Stereo Spectacular

Stereo Spectacular

The year was 1963. My father bought a big table-top GE stereo with an AM/FM radio and a swing-down record player. Something that came with the stereo was a demonstration record.

I enjoyed the first side of the record a lot, and I listened to it many times. I liked the way that one audio sample or snippet of music flowed into the next. The frequency sweep was something I used ten years later to test a stereo system I bought for myself with money earned washing dishes at a restaurant.

Also included on the record were a few so-called Cartoons in Stereo, that I think are still pretty funny. Side B was mostly a sampler of jazz music, but there were also a couple audio cartoons that were parodies of then-current TV commercials. The audio player below has the 20 minutes of side A, and the gags from side B.

[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2012/08/StereoDemo.mp3|titles=Audio Fidelity Records Stereo Spectacular]

6 thoughts on “Audio Fidelity Stereo Spectacular”

  1. Hey, I realize this post is pretty old, but any chance you could dropbox or create a torrent for the audio file if you still have it?
    I also had this when I was a kid. I just dug mine out of the basement, but I don’t have a turntable to play it on. Thanks for posting the audio!

  2. I’m surprised the record plays as well as it does. Our GE stereo record player had a ceramic cartridge, and those things tracked at some horribly high pressure that resulted in a lot of groove damage. I removed a few big clicks from the WAV file before converting to MP3, but otherwise this is how the LP sounds.

    I thought the same thing about the jet noise seeming to eerily predict the sound of 9/11. It’s a “USAF fighter bomber” breaking the sound barrier.

    I’ve always thought it was more fun to think the Russian Roulette loser tossed the gun back as he was dying, but he probably just missed his head and that’s him saying “let’s make it 2 out of 3.” Up next from the LP shelf will be a comedy record from the late, great Jackson Paine.

  3. I remember this album very well. Dad himself played it a lot, or perhaps we begged him to play it. Maybe it was that when Mom and Dad were out, we put it on the stereo ourselves, which we weren’t allowed to touch in the early days. I remember Dad, an unbelievably young 35, laughing at the “Russian Roulette” routine, especially when the dead loser pushed the gun back over to the other guy! Great album, pretty beat up, though. Is it just my imagination, or is the jet sound in the very beginning followed by an explosion? Shades of 9/11, 38 years in the future!

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