Watch the Belgian Parade with some Lucky Lager!

I have another batch of interesting and widely varying tapes today!

I've periodically shared slide show narration tapes, and today I have one that is actually a bit of a mystery. Because first, I'm not sure this is a narration for a slide show or for an 8 mm home movie presentation. And second, because the subject matter seems to change without announcing itself partway through the material.

The first section of the narration is clearly for a parade featuring Belgian-Americans (and possibly the King of Belgium - see below), but then at some point we've clearly moved on into a tour of one of the many world's fairs which occurred in the mid-20th Century - I'm guessing the one in New York in the 1960's, but maybe the clues on this reel will steer a listener in another direction.

Narrating a slide show makes much more sense to me - my experience with film is that it is awfully hard to line up such a narration with the film and have it work every time, with a pre-prepared recording. Yes, I've actually done this, back when I was 14, with some of my family's home movies. But some of the announcing certainly sounds like it's related more to moving images than slides. Hear for yourself!

Download: Slide Show or Film Narration for a Parade and World's Fair Visit
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And here, as an little added attraction, is a fragment of recording which was contained on the very next box I opened from this collection. This is the end of a radio interview, with a connection so poor as to possibly be a short wave broadcast, interviewing someone who was at a Belgian Reception, mentioning the presence of the King of Belgium, and wishing that more Belgian-Americans had been present.

Whether this reception is connected to the parade documented on the other tape is unknown. That this reception was in Detroit complicates that idea, since the parade seems to have transitioned into an event that I believe to have been in Detroit.

I do love my listeners/readers, though: you've come through many times with solutions, based on things I missed, or didn't have time to research.

Download: Brief Fragment of Conversation about Belgian Reception
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I'm not a drinking man, but I still usually recognize the name of a beer when I hear it. But Lucky Lager was a mystery to me. It seems to have been far more common in the western states, and I have never lived outside of Illinois, so maybe that's why. But it seems to have been massively popular, wherever it was enjoyed, in the 1950's and early 1960's, at least.

And it was in the early 1960's - late 1962, for use in 1963 - that Lucky Lager sent out the following promotional tape to its dealers, and who knows who else. I find this tape highly entertaining, except for the sections where they literally repeat portions of it again, most notably the upcoming new radio ad promotion featuring future game show stooge Jaye P. Morgan, complete with her introductory comments, twice.

Despite that bit of repetitive weirdness, this is a fun tape. One more thing: there is a moment where they were apparently going to insert some other sort of recording or presentation, and there is a moment of silence
instead. The brand was apparently flying pretty high at this time, but not so much by the end of the decade.

Have a listen!

Download: Lucky Lager - 1963 "Lucky Days" Sales Promotion
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Finally, here's this week's "very short reel", chosen at random from a few large stacks. This is a late 1990's radio ad - two promos for use on one specific day, due to the content being related to that night's TV broadcast, on the local Toledo Fox-owned station, promoting both the news, and that evening's rerun of the never-less-than-aggressively-and-painfully-unfunny Home Improvement. 

Download: Two Fox News and Home Improvement Combo Ads

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