My hobby horse - loud music in public places. I hate it. Not at concerts in halls or outdoors, but so-called background music in restaurants, pubs and these days almost every shop in the country, places where it should be unexpected and inappropriate.
A few examples: The Sue Ryder Bookshop in Spalding: an excellent second-hand bookshop managed by people knowing what they're doing, yet when I want to browse in peace, I'm constantly distracted by loud classical music pumping out of speakers perched on a shelf.
In a cafe in King's Lynn: almost empty of customers, yet rock and roll pumped out of a replica Wurlitzer in a corner so we could hardly hold a conversation.
In the Co-op in Long Sutton: blaring contemporary music very much in the foreground.
In Charity shops throughout the land: head-thumpingly loud music.
When I've tried to discover what marketing advantage shop proprietors perceive by playing music so intrusively the only response I receive is along the lines of: nobody else has complained. And what I find particularly worrying is that nobody else seems to notice the clamour, much less recognise it as a problem. My wife tries to argue that if it were jazz I'd be quite content, but in reality the opposite applies - jazz is music to listen to, not to hold a conversation over so I especially do not want to have unsolicited fusillades of jazz bombarding me, but then I want NO music thrust down my throat uninvited.
Volumes are inevitably increasing. Either the British population is becoming more and more deaf, or most of us are compensating by switching off that part of the brain which is receptive to muzak and, therefore, marketeers are twiddling the knobs to amplify the sound even more. Life is becoming noisier and noisier; life in public is becoming difficult and uncomfortable. On the other hand, are people afraid of silence these days? Is there something sinister about peace and tranquility? We need a scientific study to discover the whys and wherefores and to pinpoint the true effects physically and socially of this perpetual din.
I have a theory: behind the music are insidious subliminal messages designed to influence our thinking, with commercial and political motivations. We are being manipulated by coded messages implanted into our brains, a form of Brave New World indoctrination. How else, for example, can we explain the outrageous behaviour of British Politicians unless their minds are being taken over by a force the provenance of which we've yet to identify?
The fight back starts here: so let me introduce an acronym: CALM - the Campaign Against Loud Music. Our slogan: Silence is love supreme. John Cage knew a thing or two. More about the campaign in a later post, because this blog is already too long.
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