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29 November 2015

Post 312: MUZAK? UGH!


I was having a meal in a smart restaurant here in Nottingham with eight other people. The food and drinks were excellent (as well as pretty expensive). This was a classy place.

But in the background - constantly - there came the sound over loudspeakers of 'music'. The recording did not seem to be music played on musical instruments by real musicians. I guess it was computer-generated. It sounded like this:


Doum doum doum doum doum doum doum etc. - with some kind of two-bar riff as if plucked on a single string and repeated ad nauseam.

When the 'track' ended, it was replaced by another, almost identical. And so on all the evening.

I found it so irritating that I thought about asking the management to switch it off. I wondered whether everybody else was as annoyed by it as I was.

I looked around the restaurant. Neither my party nor people at other tables appeared the slightest bit troubled by it. And I have to admit it was being played quietly. It did not prevent people from holding animated and audible conversations.

So I could not bring myself to be so curmudgeonly as to complain and I did not even mention the matter to anybody before we left the restaurant.

I then asked people who had been with me: Did you notice whether there was any background music being played over loudspeakers in the restaurant?

The most common answer was 'I can't remember'!

To those who answered, 'Yes', I then asked whether they could describe what kind of music is was. NOBODY could.

Interesting?