365 DAYS PROJECT

2003   JULY 10   #191

The Young Adults - Hamms Beer

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)