To all that worked in audio salons.


What albums or CDs did you have on hand to demo equipment? Was it popular music or some obscure recordings that were well engineered. Im trying to find a pattern here. In the 70's I saw a lot of Dire Straits, Rikki Lee Jones and Al Dimiola on hand at dealerships. Was there any recordings that would be the one that helped sell the equipment? An old faithful or reliable.
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I worked for a large mid-fi, some high end stuff like KEF. Monitor Audio, Ariston etc as a part-timer in the early 80"s in Germany.

Steeley Dan's Aja was IT ! "The Wall" a distant second.
I carried a Schubert cassette in my pocket and used it when boss wasn't around . Worked for me.
Sound Chamber, early 80s. My personal demos were MFSL DSOTM, , ARS Musica Brandenburg Concertos on DCM Time Window, DiMeola's Elegant Gypsy, Police Ghost in the Machine, DG of Beethoven's 5th, CBS Masterworks of the 9th, Drum Disk, Track Record and Harry James Sheffields. Store demos were MFSL Finger Paintings, MFSL Year of the Cat, Riki Lee Jones on Nautilus, Kim Carnes on Nautilus, Jethro Tull Aqualung, Bowie Ziggy Stardust. No CDs; hadn't been introduced yet. Did have a very early Sony PCM deck that used small video cassettes, no pre-recorded material for it. One of our guys worked with Duke Jupiter and made a demo with it. Meh.
Never worked in a store, but the darlings were "Midnight Sugar", which is everything wrong with demo records rolled into one, and the Charlie Byrd Crystal Clear direct disc record with the drum solo on side 2. Not a half bad record.
I have a close friend who worked at a store in Omaha during the late-70's that was selling GAS equipment along with Phase Linear. There were always the Sheffield dierct-to-disc records, as well as Manheim Steamroller. But the one that got the most mileage was the opening to Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. They were demonstrating the Phase Linear Andromeda speaker system that used the dual down firing subwoofer. The slow build up to the ascending climax and "bass whomp" that quickly dissipated left everyone speechless after having been overcome by the pants-flapping low end and the physicality of the what they just experienced.