Here’s a beautiful package of records designed by the psychologists and ex-KGB colonels at Reader’s Digest to brainwash you and your guests into having a good time! It comes with its own “Pleasure Programmer,” a sliding mind control device guaranteed (in writing!) to turn you into a Pleasure Zombie — in case you aren’t already!
This fantastic find, which was just sitting on a shelf in a dud thrift store where we’d previously only spied brass planters and wooden knife holders, also included a catalog of other great boxed sets offered by the Wonderful World of Reader’s Digest Recorded Music. The ones we’ll now be searching for in particular are “Background Moods: Music For Your Every Mood” (including On The Rag?) and “Organ Memories,” to which customer Howard C. Peters of North Hollywood, Calif., attests, “There are no words I can find to tell you how good these records are. They are of the highest quality and are comparable to records costing much more.”
Recorded in RCA’s Dynagroove®, our favorite Pleasure Program of the set is Record 8, Side 13: Two Cigarettes in The Dark, billed as Satin Saxophones. The liner notes to this indoctrination read:
These songs are for the dark of the evening. If there is a delicate crescent of moon, saxophones can make it more silvery. If the candlelight is soft on the terrace, saxophones can make it more golden. And if romance is in the air, saxophones can heighten the romance and create a perfect setting at the same time.
Robert Mandell’s arrangements of these nighttime favorites place that satiny saxophone sound in the center of the tune and then wreathe it in a glimmering mist of orchestra. There couldn’t be a nicer way to let the “last cigarette” moments slip away into dawn.
Mood Music is healthier than pills.
Page Three, Issue Eleven
Mood Music for Dining
