The Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast does a delightful episode on industrial musicals.
For more than three decades, it was common for American companies to put on “industrial musicals” for their employees. These elaborate productions could rival Broadway shows, and featured original songs about the company and its products. And while this music was never intended for the general public, once you hear it for yourself, you might just get hooked. This is a story about bathroom remodeling, corporate art, and one man’s obsession with a forgotten corner of pop culture. Featuring comedy writer and collector Steve Young
Young discovered industrial musicals in the 1980s when he was a writer for the David Letterman Show. Letterman did an occasional segment where he showed the viewers the covers of weird old record albums, read the title and made a snarky comment about each. Part of Young’s job was to scour old record stores and look for those records. Of course, industrial musicals were ideal for the show.
Young started out mocking the records and productions behind them, but he came to enjoy them noncritically.
I feel the same way about the 70s kitsch and 50s recipes I sometimes post. I started out mocking them, but over time I just came to enjoy it. Midcentury was a courageous, experimental and playful time. We’re more cautious and beige today.
Young says this about people who produced the industrial musicals:
There were so many that said, “We only have one setting: Use all our talent and make it as great as it can be, even if it’s a lawnmower show that’s going to be heard once at 8 am in a hotel ballroom. Because that’s just the reason they got into this world of work, because they enjoyed making things great.
That’s how I try to approach my work as well. I know if I’m writing a whitepaper, case study or guest article that what I’m writing is not literature. But I try to approach it as if I were writing the Great American Novel.
Treat your work as if it matters and it will matter.
Also: I was peripherally involved in the production of an industrial musical in the very early 1990s. It was a production for the computer trade publication I wrote for at the time, Open Systems Today. The writer/director/producer was my friend and then-boss, Evan Schuman, whose day job was as news editor of the publication. The whole experience was a blast—great fun, though I didn’t have much to do with it myself, I just served as a sounding board for Evan for his ideas and helped out a bit backstage during the production.