Sunday, August 12, 2007

TUNES 4 TOTZ Week, Day 5: Mountain Park

Mountain Park was an amusement park in Holyoke, Massachusetts that went out of business in 1987. In it's heyday, which began in the early '50s, it had a number of fun houses and "dark rides" where park-goers rode in open roller-coaster-like cars on tracks through dark rooms past weird pictures and figures and smashed through doors as pre-recorded soundtracks played. A former employee of Mountain Park saved the looping 8-track soundtrack tapes.

The low fidelity sound of the tapes, coupled with the pictures on the site of the park in various states of decay, create a wonderfully weird, melancholy atmosphere.

The Mystery Ride
:
This ride featured everything from bizarre monsters and dinosaurs to visions of Hell(!) but the sound was "always a mix of incessant drums and various jungle animals."

Out of This World: A sci-fi trip accompanied by '50s-sounding electronic bloops and bleeps.

Pirates Den: This poor-man's Pirates of the Caribbean "
had the most elaborate soundtrack, but it never quite worked right."

Zoltan was a fortune-telling machine that played recordings of "fortunes" in a Bela Lugosi-like accent.

"Trip The Light Fantastic" Go dancing. But don't overdo it!




Much thanks to solcofn!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Diggin' all these tunez 4 tots. Wish i had these as a child...

Anonymous said...

Creepy! Reminds me of the film "Incredibly Strange Creatures" set in a carnival fun house kinda place.

- Korlit Panda