MEGA-RARE 1979 Kinney Shoes industrial musical PICTURE DISC

$

130

If you've seen "Bathtubs Over Broadway" or read "Everything's Coming Up Profits," you know that private pressing "industrial musical" souvenir albums are some of the rarest and weirdest records in existence. These motivational musicals were only for dealers, salesmen, distributors and other industry insiders at sales meetings and conventions, and the souvenir vinyl records were not available to the public. And many of these shows boasted outstanding music and performances along with the bizarre corporate subject matter.

I'm the collector and historian profiled in the documentary "Bathtubs Over Broadway," and the co-author of "Everything's Coming Up Profits - The Golden Age of Industrial Musicals." I'm thinning out my stash of duplicates, and offering an assortment of records that range from the scarce, to the very rare, to the "you'll probably never encounter this again."

This one is a super-arcane oddity: the ONLY PICTURE DISC known in the industrial musicals genre. "Work Rest Play - Kinney Shoes." No information on the record, and it came to me with only a blank generic cover, but luckily I'm able to state that the material on the record is the same as the black vinyl pressing of the '79 Kinney show, "shape your tomorrow... get a head start today."
The show stars the Kinney Dazzlers, the four ladies in the cast. They introduce themselves and are about to tell their origin story when they're interrupted by Mr. K, who insists on taking over the narration. He tells how Kinney researched fashion and entertainment all around the world, trying to figure out what would be the right element for the next sales meeting, and realized that Broadway talent was the answer.

No writing credits, and no track listings, so titles aren't known, but there's a cornucopia of tracks with a nice late 70's vibe, about topics like getting a jump on tomorrow, excitement over Kinney's great communications and advertising, a salute to Kinney's skill at choosing store locations, an insistence that Kinney will never stop striving, how America's on the run with running shoes, and fun one about how ladies on the prowl notice a guy's footwear: "The only kind of guy that I cruise... likes to dress it up in his Kinney dress shoes!"
Lots of rah-rah-rah about shoes and Kinney, "The Great American Shoe Store," well produced and of course weird in the way that only industrial shows can be.
The disc is in excellent shape and plays fine. There's some discoloration on one side of the paper picture sandwiched in the clear vinyl, but that's actually good, as it allows you to tell the two sides apart.

A striking and painfully hard to find industrial show treasure... and of course surely in demand among Kinney shoe enthusiasts, if there are any.

Check out my other listings for many more killer examples of this deliciously strange and secret slice of American musical and corporate history.

Buyers of multiple records get a break on shipping charges.