Hey, I have some cool stuff to post today. From what I've researched, GAA had 2 buildings, one on 71 Arch Street in Greenwich, Connecticut, one on 33 Portman Road in New Rochelle, New York. Both of them are now defunct. Here are some pictures of the Great American Audio Corp building as it is today in Connecticut.
Hi there Serveaux.
ReplyDeleteWow. Cool to see the place of one of the offices / studios. You know, I think I've seen that place before. Maybe I have dreamt about it!
I spent quite a long time trying to find out a place for GAA, I only had the New Rochelle address then. As you know, they're defunct, so nothing. And my imagination was running wild.
It's strange, but rather than a public street fronted building - an official looking place - I had imagined some kind of nondescript units in a long, one story row, in a kind of retail / industrial estate. It had the look of a kind of mews row - but kind of trade / warehousing / small business / craft units, not in a residential area. The kind of place that might now be a craft estate. I'd imagined the units, including a great little studio, electronics and recording rooms, a couple of offices and desk dealing with the public. Even though this was - in my mind - not set in an area where Joe Public would be likely to just walk in. The clerk would be generally dealing with phone calls and letters as the administrators in the office agreed contracts with composers - Mr Slap and so on, engineers, the Sutphens, the sleeve artists, cassette and disc producers, distributors, retailers, the media, industry bodies and like minded or similar outfits in music and health aids.
It was just my little fantasy of how these amazing recordings happened - like a kind of highly efficient cottage industry behind the scenes.
Fantasy gone now - it was probably more of a typical small to medium record label and publishing house thing. Reasonably good profile buildings and the typical way these things operate.
My romantic nameless units vision developed I think because of the sheer difference of the recordings to other commercially available stuff.
But then - my vision is just a wild dream I had. And probably came about because I was not used to or thinking of already established and developing music worlds of new age and spiritual music publishing, of old roots and hippie type music publishers, of aural health aids, relaxation and hypnosis publishers.
Valley of the Sun / Great American Audio Corp was unusual in the type of music I listened to, but, again, quite typical for many others. There must have been a lot of similar outfits.
There would be a lot of these today, but in a different world. Everything is digital now, and most things are sold over the internet (and so I suppose hypnosis and aural health aids, relaxation programs and much so-called new age music is created by businesses which must have multiplied by the thousands in numbers).
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Just to be clear - this comment is from the guy who shared a recording of the Robert Slap GAA track, "Aquamarine" a few years ago in Youtube, in 5 separate videos. (Le Cochon Bleu, Youtube).
Hey. Your vision was somewhat similar to mine, honestly. Remember that the Musical sounds of relaxation series was a one-time collaboration with Valley and GAA. Valley of The Sun is still operating and releasing mostly guides on life improvement now.
DeleteThanks again for uploading Aquamarine, without you, this blog would never have happened.
Oh, that's nice to hear. I'm still dipping my toes in the rare music you're republishing here - I'm very slow nowadays. But there are a few tracks on MP3 players I have which can help root me and I'm relieved are there - "Great Peace" and "Winterscapes" mean a lot currently.
ReplyDeleteBefore I shared "Aquamarine" in Youtube, I couldn't find any of this, while I remember from when I was a boy there were numerous cassesttes in the series and other similar ones.
To you the thanks. It's a brilliant endeavour.
I found this information from an internet search today, about a copyright law lawsuit that seems to have been taken against Great American Audio Corp. in 1990
ReplyDeletehttp://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-9037728/sybervision-sues-rival-outfit.html
If I find any information about a case which delevoped or its outcome, I'll post. My first thoughts were along the lines of perhaps this was part of why GAA disappeared, but from the article there's no knowing if any judgement was made against GAA or if the case even made it to a courtroom.
I have actually read about this in my online searches.
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