Endless Thread - Meet the Gen Zs archiving the Muzak of the Twin Towers

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

On Discord and YouTube, hundreds of Gen-Zers are teaming up for the purposes finding and archiving the Muzak (aka elevator music) that played in the plaza and lobby and mall of the Twin Towers.  On this 22nd anniversary of 9/11,  join Endless Thread in an episode where teens and young 20-somethings collect the seemingly innocuous sonic artifacts of the original World Trade Center people thought were lost and the lengths they've gone to find them.

Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Hey, Quincy. Hey, Ben. Do you ever think about how your name is close to the fruit quince? No. The medieval fruit quince. This is the first time I'm hearing of the medieval fruit called quince.

You can make jam out of it and jelly, and it's delicious. Okay. And that's all. I just hope someday that I make some quince jam and bring it to you. Is it like a fig? It's pretty quincy, you know? Okay. Oh, dear.

All right, so you have a story for us today that's not about quince fruit. Yes, I do. So, Ben, when I say the word musac, what comes to mind? Who's the guy that plays the saxophone? You know the guy. Kenny G. Yeah, Kenny G. Okay.

Yeah. No offense to Kenny G. Yeah. You know, I think that that's usually what comes to mind. That kind of smooth elevator jams. Yeah, a lot of people would call it elevator music or, I mean, some of it does sound like easy listening, but it's got a bad rap, I guess you could say. Yes. But 25-year-old Dylan Sandus listens to the stuff leisurely.

They're great songs. I know that it was derided for years in this country as elevator music or waiting music, but it really is good stuff and they're very talented. And yeah, I do find myself listening to it a lot. You all say this is a really damn good song. What a good cover. What a good thing. When Dylan says, what a good cover there,

he's talking about the fact that a lot of musac tends to be smooth jazz instrumental covers of pop music hits from different eras. He's part of a Discord group and a YouTube group of young people that essentially obsesses over and archives this quote unquote elevator music. Okay. This is already. I'm already in. Get me into this Discord. I'm ready. Good, good.

Because no two groups are as dismissed as the latest generations and elevator music. And this story is going to combine the two. They're going to join forces. Wow, I cannot wait to not dismiss them because I'm a little more, I might be a little more dismissive of elevator music. I always appreciate the younger generations, but I love to see him join forces. Let's do it. There's a very specific playlist of this kind of music that this group of younger people love to listen to, including Dylan. A lot of our people in our search have uploaded.

versions of it, remastered version. It's funny because you'll have like, how deep is your love the 2022 remaster? And the comments are like, this isn't the Bee Gees? What is this? What is this? Why is there a picture of the World Trade Center? Because some people don't know. And then you tell them, you're like, oh, that's really interesting.

The group Dillon's Inn has been specifically combing through video footage and other media from the Twin Towers on September 11th for the past few years. and they call themselves the World Trade Center Musac community. Okay. Well, this story, I wasn't sure if this story could get stranger, and now it has. Yeah, I would. This is very, this is very bizarre. I would say interesting, more interesting than strange, but I might be biased.

So in 2010, footage from a cameraman named Jack Talercio was uploaded onto YouTube, and legend has it that somewhere in London, a Discord user named Wasp that's spelled with a four instead of an A, saw that video, and amid all that destruction, they couldn't help but notice the music playing in the plaza of the Twin Towers. So Wasp started the World Trade Center Musak community to enlist others who wanted to identify the musak that played in the plaza and lobbies of the Twin Towers. They don't have confirmation that this Muzak played in the elevators, though. This is, again,

to me, a community that could only exist because the internet. Because it's just this is not something you could do with a pen pal or something. Like I said, I call him our leader because he's the founder of the group. Wasp. He

has a whole library of thousands of music recordings and he'll see if that title even exists. If it exists, boom. You know, we'll listen to it. Ha, that doesn't sound like it. Ah, it doesn't... Oh, we got a match. And then we find it. And then we put it on YouTube and...

Do you think he would be willing to talk to no problem? No way. He barely talks to me. When they do talk, it's usually through Discord. But the songs in that footage shot by Jack Talercio, there are four songs heard on it. She's always a woman by Billy Joel. How Deep is Your Love by the Bejee's? Classic. Come back, my love, by the Wrens, and then there is this one.

And so what do you hear? Just listening for the music, I'm hearing a very sort of like tinkly, you know, ethereal piano. That's what I'm hearing. Yeah, with this World Trade Center music community, the distinct thing that people heard were those twinkling sort of piano notes. And so the group called it the ice cream song, as in like an ice cream truck. Okay, I'm going to say this, Quincy, as a 10-year-long New York City resident. When I hear ice cream truck, I hear one song, which is the do-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

Right. But it's always in that high note kind of register where the... Toy piano zone. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, I mean... I can hear it.

And, you know, it had like these twinkling keys, and it sounded like wind chimes. We didn't know what was going on. So we called it that. So we always called it ice cream. We need to find ice cream. Ice cream. Dylan and his collaborators

scoured other media for Musak that was playing at the World Trade Center that day. For instance, there's this audio recording from an FBI informant wearing a wire. Wait. Okay. So this is a bit of a record scratch. I didn't know there was some sort of sting operation

on September or last. Yeah, in a complete coincidence, the FBI was doing a sort of investigation in bribery for like several city tax auditors or evaders. No, people who work for the city who handle taxes for the city. And they did get some convictions from that recording. But in that recording from the person hearing the wire, they managed. to hear this. Okay, what I hear Quincy there is like, na,

na, na, na, na, something like that. Yeah, some kind of like halting melody.

Yeah, what I hear is ba, ba, ba, ba, bu, it's probably off tune.

All right, that's not bad. All right. So this group of people really want to know what this song was. Oh my God. Have I told you lately that I loved you?

Of course. Exactly, exactly. So with true classic. Exactly. So with those faint notes to go on, members of this group based on Discord and YouTube scour music collections from the late 90s to early 2000s, and they reach out to composers and the company called Musac.

It's now Mood Media, until they find a match. And in this case, it's have I told you lately, originally sung by Rod Stewart. A needle in the haystack. What a one in a billion chance that an FBI agent is going to be on a sting, have a recording, it survived, he survived,

and it had music on it. You know what I'm saying? Like that was an extraordinarily, one in a billion chance. So Dylan joined the group in 2021, and at 25, he's probably one of the, older people in the group when 9-11 happened, a lot of them weren't even born yet. And it's up to these, this new generation, to make sure that we never forget. And I think that

they're doing a damn good job at it for people who are 15, 16, 13, 10 years old. So are these like intensely patriotic young people or are they just like super interested in this tragic thing that occurred before their lifetimes that has sort of changed the direction of U.S. history? I think it's more of the latter because in addition to the group being composed of a lot of young people, a lot of these kids, I guess, essentially, don't even live in America. They've never been to America before. And it's kind of this thing that they've been attracted to, that they've been drawn to. And I think, dear, Different reasons draw people to it.

Some people do it because they like old music or some people do it because, you know, they're fascinated by 9-11 and went down a rabbit hole that led them here. Huh. And they're really in search of this one song that they call ice cream. Yeah, that's sort of the, I guess, the heart of the group. That's why, you know, it started in the pursuit of looking for this song. They found others. So in this episode, we'll see who these kids are and join the hunt for ice cream. I mean, I'm always down to join a hunt for ice cream.

I'm Ben Brock Johnson. And I'm Quincy Walters. And you're listening to Endless Threat. We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. At 25, Dylan's kind of an outlier in this group. And that's because a good majority of the people are younger, not old enough to remember 9-11. A lot of them weren't even born yet in the first place.

And many have never even been to America ever. Dylan, however, is a native of Long Island. I mean, I still pass businesses on Long Island to this day that still have their age as the World Trade Center. Still, they're not there anymore. They haven't been there for 22 years. They still use them. They were such an icon.

He distinctly remembers being four years old and how the morning of September 11th unfolded. My mom worked at 9. She was home with me. We were watching the news. We were watching CBS, you know, their morning show with Brian Gumbull. And then obviously he says, you know, it's 852 here in New York. I'm Brian Gumble.

We understand that there has been a plane crash on the southern tip of Manhattan. You're looking at the World Trade Center. We understand that a plane... I remember. the South Tower. He had family members who were first responders who couldn't be contacted for hours, so he can't forget 9-11. And he talks about how people sort of commemorated the Twin Towers in the early stages of YouTube.

It was essentially clips from the attack with, you know, a song behind it. It was Hero by Mariah Carey. And then a hero comes along. And it was Hero by Enrique Anglesias. Our hearts and prayers are with the victims. And only time by Enya. Everybody who was alive for 9-11 knows that those three songs are like the three 9-11 songs. That's where they are.

And heaven. Heaven. Heaven. I stand corrected because the track is called, I miss you, Daddy. And I stand corrected because the track is called I Miss You Daddy, and it's supposed to be from the perspective of a young girl who loses her father in the attacks. I really, really miss you. Mommy says you're safe now in a beautiful place.

Anyway, the reason you hear me chime in is because back then, I was seven when 9-11 happened. But my relationship with the Twin Tower started in 1999 when I took a picture of them with my Elmo camera while visiting the Empire State Building. 9-11 made me realize I needed glasses because I couldn't see what was unfolding on the TV. Whoa. Yeah, and my family took me to visit Ground Zero around Christmas of 2001. And also, they accommodated me because I wouldn't go on a plane for, you know, the next two or three years. But this-

So you know what's interesting, Quincy? How old do you think I was when this happened? Let's say 20-something, maybe. 21. Okay. You were seven and I was 21, and we both have the exact same reaction. which was definitely not interested in getting on a plane for like two years. It's kind of something that is just imprinted in your mind maybe. I don't know. But this episode isn't about me.

There's a YouTube channel called Top Trade Center Musac. And it's run by Yuri. And her most recent upload is of 33 tracks of Musak from the World Trade Center. She lives in the Philippines and says she grew up, you know, seeing the Twin Towers and movies. I think I saw, something that said the Twin Towers show up in 472 movies or something like that. And back in 2020, she remembers hanging out with a friend and the subject of the towers came up. In a Lego game, in a PS4 Lego game, I was like curious, hey, where's the Twin Towers in the game? And then my friends said, no, dude, it's gone along those nights. And then I was like, oh, I hope it was rebuilt. And then when I checked on YouTube, yes, it was destroyed, but sadly, it was never rebuilt.

I mean, like, technically it is, but not literally as it used to. Okay, okay, okay. And Yuri, how old are you? Yeah, you'd be surprised. I'm actually tuning 15 this in 20 days as of being recorded right now. I practically already exist. No need to worry. You may treat me normally. Some could say she's an old soul and it's kind of corroborated by how she got into. the Musak group of the Twin Towers. I'm actually the type of person who likes old music. Back in 2021, when I was interested into World Trade Tennis, I heard the songs.

It gave me the edge of like, hey, I want to look for these songs. And then I tried looking for it and, quote, quote, realized the song for How Deep Is Your Love is from Frank Changsfield, which is what I thought. Finding out about the Twin Towers through the Lego video game should have been like a giveaway that this was a young person, but I had no idea. And Yuri says, in a way, finding and archiving the musac that played at the Twin Towers, you know, these larger than life structures that no longer exist, makes her more appreciative of life. Time is like a companion.

It goes with us on our journey. It reminds us to cherish every moment because it never comes again. Yeah. Who said that? Is that? Did you write that? I did not write it. It's from a movie, Star Trek Generations.

And coincidentally, or maybe not coincidentally, Uri was quoting Captain Picard, sifting through the rubble of the Enterprise. Somehow I doubt that this will be the last ship to carry the name Enterprise. And then finally, just serendipity. coincidence as pure as it can get on April 4th, 2023. Dylan says this is an important date because it's the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Twin Towers. And speaking of sifting through things,

on this day, Wasp, the group's leader, came across this tune. It's a very nice song, Quincy, but I don't think this is the ice cream song. I don't think this is what they're looking for. But I don't know. not a professional 25-year-old, you know, muzak hunter. Fair, it's not. But in a way, it was close enough. I heard it and I thought it was unlikely because it was just something about it,

which I thought it gave me a similar feel in a way to this mystery song. Wait, Quincy, we're going to hear from the enigmatic reclusive wasp? We do. Wasp came across this song and it put him on the right path, which we'll get to right after a moment of uncertainty and these messages. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs.

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the creative studio from WBURs, business partnerships team. Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. So we've been talking to these young people who have been archiving what's essentially the elevator music of the original World Trade Center. And they are led by a previously elusive 17-year-old named WASP that is W4SP, who barely talks to his fellow Musak archivists, but thanks to you, Quincy, talk to endless threat. Uh, no thanks to me, Ben.

Our show's reputation precedes us. Amory was just in the New York Times this week. Hello. Anyway, Wasp was making a discovery by finding a musician who might have been connected to the ice cream song. But at the same time, the group was debating whether to reach out to the man who shot the footage the song was in, and that is Jack Talircio, who was a news cameraman at the time. Well, that's something that we've all had quite a few arguments about, because some people

have been trying to contact Jack, and then other people in the group have been like, we shouldn't do this. He's, it might bring back bad memories, or it might, he might not take it well. I don't really know which side to choose on this. But someone basically commented on his Facebook and said how we have heard the music that was playing in his footage. And he actually responded with a sad face emoji. I appreciate that consideration. This is Jack Talercio. This memory is alive with me.

It isn't something that I will ever, for me. forget or am actively trying to forget. He says he gets a lot of requests to talk about 9-11, and he usually ignores them. In some ways, it's helpful for me to talk about it, to revisit it. And when he revisits it, he remembers the debris falling from the towers, cradling his camera, and then taking shelter under an overhang in the plaza. And that's where the Muzak was, which created this really bizarre, surreal feeling. Because I was hearing this music, and there was destruction all around me.

And I sent Jack the video, the World Trade Center Musak community put online that says, mystery song? Can anyone find this song? Well, what do I think happened with this second bit of footage you sent me is a cute little soundtrack over some video? Clearly, not an ambient sound, right? And, you know, I can easily confirm for you exactly what was black. playing in the plaza while I was there. So wait, is he saying that this is not the song on the video?

That's what it sounds like to me. And it was devastating to me. The idea that the ice cream song I and the WTC Musak community had been searching for could be a red herring and music that was added to the footage later and not part of original World Trade Center music. And I wasn't sure what to do next. Well, I can pull up my own footage because for sure it was Billy Joel

and I believe a BG's tune. By the way, Jack says he has no idea how his footage got posted online, but while he's pulling up his original footage, I'm trying to find the silver lining here. She's always a woman to me. But the World Trade Center Muzak community accomplished quite a feat, but, you know, they've wasted all this time and energy and so much hope had been built on this moment. This is that piano.

It's true. Those twinkling piano keys are undeniable, indisputable. And despite his first assumptions that the music was added later upon reviewing the footage, Jack was now an honorary member of our group of online teenage sleuths in search of ice cream, the song whose title was still elusive. And he was getting into a reverie from this WTC Musak community. They may find that the interest in the project may be greater than what they imagine. This may be music that played, you know, repeatedly over the day and the weeks and maybe something that folks that worked at the Twin Towers or visited the Twin Towers heard often. So you never know.

Wasp is the 17-year-old mastermind behind the official World Trade Center Musak community. And he started it when he was 14 years old. and this might sound made up, but it was the 50th anniversary of the Twin Towers Grand Opening, and he was traveling through Canola Fields, listening to Musac collections from the late 90s, early 2000s. Basically, what happened is on the 4th of April this year, I was in the passenger seat of my car,

and I was listening through music recordings that I haven't heard many times. and there was one music song called Elizabeth's Lullaby by Mike Strickland and I heard it and I thought could this be the person who made the mystery song and then Wasp went to Mike Strickland's website to find his email address I was thinking maybe I shouldn't contact him

it's probably it's probably not him but then I was like okay I have to contact him because if it is him and I don't contact him, then we're wasting our time looking for the song. So Wasp sent the email and he attached the footage with the faint twinkling music that would later be nicknamed Ice Cream. He wasn't awake at the time. I contacted him, but his wife responded to my email.

So she received the email and listened to it, And then she said, is this you? I can't tell. This is Mike Strickland. Because the audio was so buried in the fountain noise there at the plaza. And they're shooting it with 2001 technology. But there was this strain of a saxophone and piano, and it was very buried in the audio almost.

And I went, you know, I can't tell. And then I went and listened to it again through my headphones in the studio. And then I went, oh yeah, I hear it. Now, you know what? I said, I think that is one of my songs. And this is the song he heard. He responded to my email and said, yeah, this is something I made. And it's called On the Wind from his 1998 album, On the Wind. And I listened to it, and I was like, that's it.

But then I realized it has differences. It's not the same that was playing in the plaza. He listened to it, and he said, yeah, but it's not quite the right song. And he said, because we're listening to how it lines up with the music, because how the music is being played in the video footage, that sort of thing. It wasn't lining up on certain things where the sax makes an interest here and this sort of thing. We've realized that there must have been another version that he made on the wind. And then the email back and forth just stopped.

Wasp had been looking for this song for the last three years. since he was 14 years old, and up until this point, Mike had completely forgotten about this song. Back in the 90s and the early 2000s, he was at peak success. It's being played in music. I'm hearing it on grocery stores when I'm shopping.

People call me up or emailing me saying, hey, Mike, you know, I heard your music in Seoul, South Korea, you know, in a shopping mall or whatever in the airport. Then he was hired by CBS and Disney, and so he'd composed something, and it had to be on to the next one. So here in 2023, he had to solicit outside help to see if anyone from around that time knew what song this could be. And the sudden stop in the email exchange between him and Wasp was because Mike was waiting for an old producer to contact him back. But Wasp sort of nudged him in a follow-up email. He said, you wouldn't believe how many people are waiting for this song.

This was like the missing part of the entire puzzle of the playlist of what was going on in the plaza that day when the 9-11 attacks happened. And here is this juxtaposition of this horrific scene of Twin Towers, both still standing, burning. And the video is showing that and then panning down across the plaza with the fountain. and my music is playing in there. I mean, it's just like surreal. And so now, Mike, with a newfound determination, was going to get this song for the community that was eagerly waiting for it.

He went up into his attic where he has an archive of his old music on an old format called Digital Audio Tape. Mm, love me some debt. Exactly, a blast from the past. And the first tape he played wasn't it? Well, actually, he said he had to repair the machine. machine because it didn't work.

Oh boy. And so then he played the second. I went, holy smokes, this is the cut they're looking for. And I bet this is going to line up because there's a certain minor ninth interval when he goes into the sax solo that happens and

that was kind of the tell. And he found the 1996 version of On the Wind, which is also known as Windless on this tape. He emailed me to tell me He's found it, and he sent us the MP3, and that's how we found it. To the layperson, this difference may be so minute, but Wasp is a musician.

He plays piano and he composes, so he has his kind of ear out for these things. But I think it's also a testament to the sort of meticulous method that's done to confirm these songs. And so the official World Trade Center Musak Community's YouTube channel posted it. It's really surprised me how this thing has taken roots and how many, I looked at the video a month ago and it had 9,000 views. And I went, that's amazing.

My mission statement on my life and as a musician and everything is to create good musical works that are put out there in the world, that make up the world a better place. leave people feeling better. You said Windless was a song he forgot about, but now he says he's kind of taking in the humanity of this moment.

Now that the World Trade Center Musak community has all of the music confirmed from Jack's footage, they're continuing their search for pre-9-11 Musa. And Wasp says there's still a trove of home movies of the Twin Towers that they're combing through, all towards this effort of helping preserve the entire story of the Twin Towers. is not just their ending. Huh. It feels like a fun thing to be a part of trying to find this music. And also, it feels like where we're recovering something that we thought was lost,

like we're recovering history that we didn't know even existed anymore. The music is rare. You don't hear it much anymore. It's a big part of the 90s. And what it would have been like to be at the complex around that time, be at the World Trade Center. around that time. And I just think it's,

I just think it's quite important to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, well, this is a community I never would have imagined existed in the first place. And I certainly never would have imagined would necessarily be up to the task of successfully identifying all of the Musac in the World Trade Center. Um, it's a strange and a bit of a beautiful story, Quincy. Yeah. Strange and Beautiful is a good way to put it.

And just some closing thoughts. You know, 9-11 was an event that started this century. And forgive me if this runs a little long. But it's colored everything after it. It's there, you know, when you go through airport security. You probably know that on a daily basis, your safety isn't guaranteed. Your government spies on you to keep you. you safe and also to keep you safe, your government goes out into the world to vanquish terrorists.

It may have even created some new ones. And I think that this musac in a really roundabout way maybe is a token from a time before all of that. It's like this is the music that played on the last day of this century's sort of innocence. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR here in Boston. This episode was produced by me, Quincy Walters, co-hosted by Ben Brock Johnson, and Immaculately Sound Designed by Matt Reed. The rest of our team is Amory Severson, Dean Russell, Grace Tatter, Sameta Joshi, Emily Jankowski, and Paul Vicus.

Endless Thread is a show that explores the blurred lines between the latest generations and elevator music. If you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or a wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, hit us up at endless thread at WBUR.org. As always, thanks for listening.