I was sitting in the Subway in Aintree retail park. Well, actually I’d popped in to use the loo, and felt I ought to buy something lest the highly trained Subway staff drop kick me to the floor and tell everybody that I was just a loo user.
The PA system was shrill and unnecessarily loud. It was playing various old tunes from many many years ago. Indeed, one of my pet hates, the 43 year old Maggie May by Rod Stewart came on. Time to shift outside and sit with the tobacco junkies, in order to finish off the cookies we’d bought to hide the loo usage incident.
What is it with music systems in public places being infested by very old records? Not only very old records, but the same very old records.
My complaint here is two-fold I guess. Firstly, it’s about the audio quality and level. Obviously, I’m not some old fart who goes around shouting “turn that rubbish down” just because music is playing. I like music playing. I love it.
What I don’t like is it sounding so shrill that it hurts. A good quality PA system is cool, giving a nicely rounded sound with plenty of high and low frequencies and a nice feel to the bass (or base). Instead, what most seem to have is a system that is all mid-range, almost telephonic, and turned up to the point where it’s distorting or just about to.
This shrill sound cuts across any chance of conversation, or even any chance of being heard by those there to serve you. There’s a Burger King near Liverpool Central station that always has their shrill and distorting music up so loud that they cannot hear the customers making their orders, or they mishear what the customer is asking for. I deliberately order in the quietest voice I can muster and then when they ask for me to repeat my order I say, “Turn the music down a bit and you’ll hear me fine.”
British Home Stores in Liverpool suffers the same shrillness issue. It’s hard enough to even work out how to think, let alone compile a question for the staff. It’s easier just to walk out and head off to a rival store. That’s what most do.
I reiterate it’s not the playing of music at volume that annoys me, it’s the shrillness and distortion.
Next, it’s the oldies. So, a lethal combination likely to send me loading up my AK47 is shrill oldies.
What is it with most places playing music over the PA? Why oh why all these old records from 40 or 50 years ago?
Was it really the case that speakers in shops in the 1970s only played music from the 1920s? As we strolled around Woolworths in 1971 was it really playing us music from the era of the Charleston? Nope, it was never thus.
So, why now?
Sitting down to a meal can be dangerous for me. Shrill PA systems playing oldies make me an unhappy chappy. I was in Damon’s the other day. It’s a kind of ribs and chicken place inhabiting what was once, many many years ago, the Liverpool airport building, probably from an era when five planes a week took off or landed from there. Brilliant food and service, and luckily we were seated in a not so loud area. The tone of the speakers was fine, as was the volume.
But, within 3 minutes of us taking our seats on it came. Maggie May by Rod Stewart.
Nooooooo!
A succession of equally old records, including lots of Elton John, enough to put the playlist on CityTalk to shame (CityTalk is a Liverpool based talking radio station that no longer talks except when football is on, and instead plays mainly Elton John records all day), and Queen, and 10cc, and … what was that? Within 5 or 6 songs on came Maggie May again.
Did they know I was there?
Under instructions from my far superior better half, I stopped complaining and sat their sullen faced as I bit down on the wonderful Char Sui ribs and Terraki chicken combo with yummy garlic mash potato. Eventually, Rod Stewart went away, to be followed by I don’t like Mondays.
Despite being banned from saying anything out loud, I took a look around at all the other tables. There were quite a few with very young children, but even those without offspring, were all unlikely to have been alive when Rod Stewart first sung Maggie May on Top of the Pops. The manager and all the servers were equally all in the 20s and 30s.
So, why were we all having to listen to all this old music? Even something from the 2000s would have been more appropriate.
Something seems to have happened in a kinda Groundhog Day stylee. Why is all the music in these places nearly 50 years old?
I had not mentioned a single thing. I was being good. But my other half clocked the horror on my face when on came Maggie May for the fourth time. I was shuffled off the premises and into the car and was soothed by a very loud high quality playing of Jack by Breach in order to make all the bad music go away.
England's England 