Toward a Better World #1: Ice Cream Truck Music

Toward a Better World #1: Ice Cream Truck Music

I got some flak recently for my admittedly over-the-top post on Honest Mistakes, so I'm going to make it up to humanity in general and LTH Forum community specifically by giving you what I know you probably want most: my sage advice and counsel, my million dollar ideas offered free-of-charge, my guidance and wisdom, my notes...toward a better world.

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Working at home, I'm subject to many distractions: telemarketers, neighborhood wives constantly coming over to "borrow" something, the temptation to re-review the soft-core Rachel Ray pix that Gary emailed me.

Most distracting of all is the ice cream truck.

The current marketing strategy for ice cream trucks in my neighborhood is to change the "music" every day. One day it was a nursery rhyme punctuated with a "boing-boing" sound effect; today it was just a young female voice saying "Hi...Hi...Hi." I doubt the vendors would try to pull this stuff if Oak Park didn/t have a strict handgun ordinance (we're also a nuclear free zone, which helps a lot).

Irritating ice cream truck music is not a recent phenomenon.

My grad school roommate actually called the Hyde Park police once because the ice cream truck's repetitive music was distracting him from his otherwise complete absorption in Heidegger. At the time, I thought calling heat down on our local purveyor of frozen confections was kind of bush league* and I have now developed an approach that I think will address the problem of bothersome ice cream truck music, increase the ice cream sales, and make Oak Parkers feel even better about themselves.

Ice cream trucks should play opera.

That's right. Verdi. Townsend. Wagner. You know who I'm talking about. Few people like opera, but almost everyone thinks they should, so playing this music would provide a slightly less irritating provocation to purchase ice cream while simultaneously stroking self-satisfied Oak Parkers' well-honed sense of their own sophistication. In few communities will you encounter a more unabashed sense of artier-than-thou cultural superiority, and what could be more crassly classy than a Mr. Softee truck pumping out "La Boheme"?

Heck, I figure the Village would even kick in for sound system upgrades.

Local teachers, instead of launching campaigns to ban words like "jungle," and "tribe"** would spend their time integrating opera music into the curriculum.

I can almost guarantee there'd be not a single complaint and many would feel smug satisfaction that, now and again, they'd be able to recognize something from "Carmen."

Any way, that's the plan. I offer it to the world, gratis, and I am David Hammond.

This has been my first in a series of efforts to nudge you all, unwilling as you may be...toward a better world.

Thank you and good night.


* The phrase "bush league" is not a contemporary political reference. For those not familiar with this quaint Americanism, it means, ironically, "to be inept, foolish, out of one's element, over one's head, at sea, clueless, lost, pathetic, and to appear very much the doofus in public."

**My youngest daughter actually came home one day with a list of "forbidden words" that included the very appropriately banned racist slurs, but also "jungle" (henceforth "rainforest") and "tribe" (replaced with "ethnic grouping"). George Orwell is crying a river and laughing his heavenly ass off.

David Hammond wrote:[i]**My youngest daughter actually came home one day with a list of 'forbidden words' that included the very appropriately banned racist slurs, but also 'jungle' (henceforth 'rainforest') and 'tribe' (replaced with 'ethnic grouping'). George Orwell is crying a river and laughing his heavenly ass off.

Thanks for allowing us a peek into the tribal customs of Oak Park -- oops, I mean, "ethnic grouping"-al customs. Now I think I'll go put on an old Bob Marley song, Concrete Rainforest...

There actually was a piece on NPR last week - New York City, I believe it was but I could be wrong on the city, is gradually moving towards regulation or an outright ban of ice cream truck music as a public nuisance. The Ice Cream Truck lobby is, of course, mobilizing to head off this change which would, they predict, be the death knell (a moment of silence please) for ice cream trucks. They admit to mistakes and even overly aggressive marketing, but want to work this out amicably.

I kid you not.

David Hammond wrote:Working at home, I'm subject to many distractions: telemarketers, neighborhood wives constantly coming over to 'borrow' something, the temptation to re-review the soft-core Rachel Ray pix that Gary emailed me.

Soft serve, I liked to call them. Aren't they wonderful?

David Hammond also wrote:
Ice cream trucks should play opera.

That's right. Verdi. Townsend. Wagner. You know who I'm talking about. Few people like opera, but almost everyone thinks they should, so playing this music would provide a slightly less irritating provocation to purchase ice cream while simultaneously stroking self-satisfied Oak Parkers, well-honed sense of their own sophistication. In few communities will you encounter a more unabashed sense of artier-than-thou cultural superiority, and what could be more crassly classy than a Mr. Softee truck pumping out 'La Boheme'?

Perhaps we can send flotillas of ice cream trucks down the street blasting "Ride of the Valkyries." Even those who haven't seen "Apocalypse Now" won't soon forget the sight. (Maybe especially those.)

David Hammond finally wrote:
**My youngest daughter actually came home one day with a list of 'forbidden words' that included the very appropriately banned racist slurs, but also 'jungle' (henceforth 'rainforest') and 'tribe' (replaced with 'ethnic grouping'). George Orwell is crying a river and laughing his heavenly ass off.

So as not to offend those concerned, please replace the word "ass" with "personal sitting region."

A parent I knew had an evil genius answer for the Pavlovian effect of ice cream truck music: he told his kids that when they played the music, that meant they were all out of ice cream.

By the way, check out the best movie ever made about an ice cream truck driver:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117958/

(And yes, smarty pants, there ARE others, like http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087072/ and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042514/ . So there.)

Mike,

Haven't seen The Good Humor Man, but I have seen the other two movies.

As I recall, Comfort and Joy had the paradigmatic annoying ice cream truck jingle, punctuated with a cartoonish voice shouting "Hey Mate," or something like that. The song rang in my head for weeks after seeing the movie (upside: it temporarily drowned out the screams and commands from Satan.)

David

dicksond wrote:There actually was a piece on NPR last week - New York City, I believe it was but I could be wrong on the city, is gradually moving towards regulation or an outright ban of ice cream truck music as a public nuisance.

According to this week's New Yorker, Mayor Bloomberg also wants the dogs of NYC to bark no more than 10 minutes at a time during the day, 5 minutes at night.

Thanks guys. I laughed my personal sitting region off.

Oh and....er, could someone email me those pics of Miss Ray

pd

How about ice cream trucks tha actually run on all cylinders and don't put out eye-burning exhaust fumes? That would be a bonus.

HI,

At least you have an ice cream truck to complain about. Since moving to Highland Park 30+ years ago, I have never seen an ice cream truck roaming about.

My last regular interaction with an ice cream truck was 35 years ago as it made its way in our suburban Washington, D.C. community. There was no recorded music, just a series of bells which the driver activated with a string while driving about. Probably OSHA took care of the string, very distracting to the driver and likely to cause accidents, obligating the electronic music we loath today.

In respects to opera, I actually do prefer a well trained voice. I remember vividly watching a Viennese Christmas special on public television with two opera tenors and Diana Ross singing together. Her voice sounded so thin and pathetic, clearly she was brought in to attract a new audience but otherwise was out of her league. However, Diana Ross' voice sounded quite suitable singing, 'Love Child' in the mid-60's. I'm sure the tenors substituting for Diana would be two Baby-Daddy's overpowering the song waiting for DNA to identify who is the one!

Still I have my candidate for opera the Oak Park ice cream licking enclave would enjoy. In the mid 1980's, there was a series of American musicals sung by opera singers with full orchestras supporting them. My favorite, one which is my car this moment, is West Side Story. Maria is sung by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, a New Zealand Moari made good in the opera circuit. There are a number of favorite songs on this unabridged version of West Side Story. A particular favorite is 'Tonight' where they slip in a little sex education by intimating part of the evening's activities may include "Sperm to Womb." I have seen the movie, I have seen live productions, I have heard cast albums though I have never heard this snippet of lyrics of West Side Story anywhere else but in this opera treatment conducted Leonard Bernstein; who wrote the music for West Side Story. Perhaps a bit of the director's cut. Something Oak Park can play over their tax-payer enhanced full-spectrum opera music playin' ice cream trucks. And, believe it or not, unlike operas of Verdi or Mozart, they can take pride it is American and understandable!

Hammond is our Timex watch guy: took a lickin' and still keeps tickin'

Respectfully submitted,

pdaane wrote:Thanks guys. I laughed my personal sitting region off.

Oh and....er, could someone email me those pics of Miss Ray

pd

Google is your friend.

http://www.fhmus.com/girls/covergirls/241/Default.asp?area=&id=241&page=1

ohfreddie wrote:

pdaane wrote:Thanks guys. I laughed my personal sitting region off.

Oh and....er, could someone email me those pics of Miss Ray

pd

Google is your friend.

http://www.fhmus.com/girls/covergirls/241/Default.asp?area=&id=241&page=1

Yikes!

FoodTV is a threat to civilisation and Miss Ray is, I fear, galley-slave to Satan.

A

Antonius wrote:FoodTV is a threat to civilisation and Miss Ray is, I fear, galley-slave to Satan. A

You should hear his side of the story!

Hammond

Ohhhhh! I am in love.....or at least in love with the Madonna fantasy anyway: Rachel Ray in the kitchen and Rachel Ray in the bedroom.

pdaane wrote:Ohhhhh! I am in love.....or at least in love with the Madonna fantasy anyway: Rachel Ray in the kitchen and Rachel Ray in the bedroom.

As Emeril might say, don't go there! (The wages of sin...)

(bam)
A

Mike G wrote:By the way, check out the best movie ever made about an ice cream truck driver:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117958/

(And yes, smarty pants, there ARE others, like http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087072/ and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042514/ . So there.)

for my money the best ice cream truck driver movie role was in http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0165798/

Hey Zim, thanks for reminding me of Ghost Dog -- I made a mental note to see it when it came out and then, as usual, completely forgot about it.

Hammond

The ice cream trucks in my neighborhood can be easily identified by their music. It is either Turkey in the Straw or a Scott Joplin tune, the theme from The Sting. Some years we get both, some years there are ice cream truck wars or lack of ice cream buying power and we only get one. In the years when we get only one, the following year it's always the other one.

My oldest friend spent a summer driving an ice cream truck. Not just any old ice cream truck, but a Good Humor truck, very shortly before they must have sold the fleet. She has some hilarious stories.

here in logan square it's usually "la cucaracha" or sometimes the entertainer. i've heard various other tunes I don't recognize at all, though.

and three nights ago an ice cream truck drove by at 10pm, playing la cucaracha. what a way to crawl into bed.

On the South Side, it's usually Turkey in the Straw, with the odd truck playing The Entertainer. Ice cream trucks don't visit Hyde Park much; we usually get the wagons. Every so often a paletero will visit us as well. But it's the neighborhood around 51st and California (Gage Park?) that seems to be the ice cream truck capital of Chicago. In the summer months I haven't been through that neighborhood without hearing Turkey in the Straw.

In New York City, the ice cream trucks have a different tune; it's the one you can hear in the current set of MasterCard commercials (although, strangely, they seem to be shot in California). It's been the same tune at least since my dad was a kid in Brooklyn back in the fifties and sixties; he can even sing a set of lyrics along with the tune, something like "The creamiest creamiest soft ice cream/You get from Mister Softee." There's another verse, but I can't remember it. And in the state of New Jersey, my home before I moved to Chicago, the official Department of Transportation term for an ice cream truck is a "frozen dessert truck." You even see it on your driver's license exam, in a question that asks something like "At what speed should you proceed in the vicinity of a stopped frozen dessert truck?" (The answer, of course, is 15 mph). Is it the same in Illinois?

And finally, any discussion of ice-cream trucks should not go without two of my favorite Far Side cartoons; one featuring a van with a smiling doctor on it driving through a suburban neighborhood. The van had music playing, and on it was written "THE VACCINATION MAN!" The other was called "failed marketing ploys" and showed another ice-cream truck, playing the song "I cuss, you cuss, we all cuss for asparagus."

Marquette Michigan, with its three weeks of summer (in a good year) didn't have an ice cream man when I was growing up. But now it does. The Mining Journal just reported that a local 25 year old teacher took a old mail truck that he located in Dallas, painted it white, added a freezer and a power source, and got into the business.

The Mining Journal article continues

Tyner and his wife, Becky, tour downtown Marquette and Harvey from noon until 8:30 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday and Negaunee and Ishpeming on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.

"There wasn't an ice cream man in Marquette and I thought there should be," Tyner said.

Tyner even found ice cream music for his ice cream truck.

"It's a CD called Ice Cream Man Inc. that I got on eBay, too," Tyner said

Ann Fisher wrote:

Tyner even found ice cream music for his ice cream truck.

"It's a CD called Ice Cream Man Inc. that I got on eBay, too," Tyner said

He says a CD, but perhaps it's actually this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... eName=WDVW

Just imagine, you can have farm animals shilling ice cream for you. Moo.

gleam wrote:here in logan square it's usually "la cucaracha" or sometimes the entertainer. i've heard various other tunes I don't recognize at all, though.

and three nights ago an ice cream truck drove by at 10pm, playing la cucaracha. what a way to crawl into bed.

I can't imagine there could be more - or more annoying - ice cream trucks than what we put up with here in Logan Square. And this year, it seems to have gotten worse. My "favorite" is one that plays a familiar-sounding tune I cannot name, replacing the rests with inexplicable sound effects including rhythmic clapping hands and a woman's voice saying, "Hello!" like a voicemail system.

ah yes, the woman yelling "Hello!". I heard that one when walking through palmer square park. It was fairly amusing, actually..

Ed and Jim,

In my original post, I mis-identified the same "jingle as a young female voice saying "Hi...Hi...Hi." Thanks for the correction (I've heard the same soundtrack since, and it is, indeed, an answering machine-type "Hello...Hello...Hello.")

This sound, I believe, is based on the "abrasion theory" of advertising/marketing: make the message abrasive enough (AAFFLAK!!), and the public will remember it (they will hate it, but it will make an impression). Me, in most cases, I try to turn this stuff off, but this new and disturbing trend in ice-cream truck sound effects opens a whole new world of horrible possibilities. Why not a recording of explosions (just what a post-9/11 citizenry has ears perked to hear), a woman screaming in terror (that'd get my attention), or a child crying?

Hammond

Or maybe just a bullhorn for the driver, who could cruise the streets shouting, "Hello, Assholes! Ice Cream! Buy it!"

David Hammond wrote:Ed and Jim,

In my original post, I mis-identified the same 'jingle' as a young female voice saying "Hi Hi Hi." Thanks for the correction (I've heard the same soundtrack since, and it is, indeed, an answering machine-type "Hello...Hello, Hello")

This sound, I believe, is based on the 'abrasion theory' of advertising/marketing: make the message abrasive enough (AAFFLAK!!), and the public will remember it (they will hate it, but it will make an impression). Me, in most cases, I try to turn this stuff off, but this new and disturbing trend in ice-cream truck sound effects opens a whole new world of horrible possibilities. Why not a recording of explosions (just what a post-9/11 citizenry has ears perked to hear), a woman screaming in terror (that'd get my attention), or a child crying?

Hammond

See, I still enjoy the AFLAC campaign. Simple minds, eh?

Summer in the City

"There's always a correlation between homicides and ice cream trucks..."

Andrew Papachristos, cited in "As weather heats up, so do murders",
page 16, continued from p. 1, front section: Chicago Tribune, 3 August, 2004

Is it the heat or the bad music?

A

Gregorian chants alternating with Yoko Ono.

Breaking news: the City of New York's proposed revision to the noise code might ban some ice cream trucks from playing their music.

In a rare winter appearance, Mr. Softee will roll into City Hall today to try to save his famous jingle.

The owner of the ice cream truck franchise will appear before the City Council's Environmental Committee, which will take its first look at Mayor Bloomberg's plan to crackdown on chronic noisemakers. That includes loud air conditioners, hearty partyers, barking dogs and, yes, the siren song of the Mr. Softee trucks.