Strange Music In Public Places

"automatic" by jamc played quite loud while installing 30/40 pcs in a bank. Amazingly, nobody told me "put that thing off!"

Our local rapid transit system (tyne & wear metro) recently was playing a compilation of sci-fi film music. The first time I encountered it, they were playing this stockhausen-ish bleeps & bubbles piece - I think it was the end of "2001". It really freaked me out.

Before that, BTW, they played pastoral classical music, because (thiz bitz fer U, geordie racer) IT PISSED THE CHARVERS OFF!!!

x0x0

i remember pulling into gateshead metro - looking at that oriental mountain art and as the doors opened - that music from 'breakaway' came on - eine kleine nachtmusik - and i strode purposefully into Monday.

Don't stations south of the river get the ropey art - hebburn - urgh !

Irrelevant in solid socialist Tyneside (and scarcely more relevant these days even in Dorset), but of course I recall that snatch of Massive Attack at Tory events.

And Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody Who Loves Me" at a Momus show.

As best I recall: In 1977, when I was a teenager (ages me, doesn't it?) I was stuck at the Honduran/Nicaraguan border at a little grass- thatched pop stand operated by impoverished Central American Indians. While the border guards ransacked our bus, the kids at the stand seemed to take pity on us by playing Frankie Valli's "December 1963" on their little portable record-player. It was probably the only American 45 they owned. I'd always hated that song, and I hated it even more because they must have played it ten times in a row while we languished in the heat and drank sangria soda-pop. If I ever hear that song nowadays, I'm still taken back to the heat, the dust, the squalor, and the sad eyes of those Nicaraguan teenagers trying so hard to entertain the "rich" Americans.

I don't expect to hear anything decent in the local record stores (HMV, Virgin), and I never do.

I was in a clothing shop and I heard some lite, inoffensive House on the PA.

breakaway = 'breaking away'

Seems pretty normal to me, Mark.

i was queuing in a bank recently and dean freidman's You Can Thank Your Lucky Stars - the worst song in the world - came on the radio.

*shudder*

Shouldn't you expect such things in banks, though? Not exactly "strange".

Just a strange way of listening to music. Frequently I find myself racing through traffic on my bike (Oh look here I am) and hear the radio coming out of windows, most people are listening to Radio 1, Kiss or XFM so I get snatches of the tracks I hear so often that I unconsciously fill the gaps from memory. What's interesting is following two or three songs at once, having them mix in my head as I move down the line.
Last summer I was picking up some Moby in traffic, as usual. But it was really fragmented, out of sync, all over the place. So I pulled over, into a garage where I know they play loads of radio, when I found it wasn't on, it dawned on me just how many people were playing the first side, repeatedly (Wasn't there a ridiculous stat from the 80s about the percentage of people listening to Phil Collins on the M25??)

VU - "Sunday Morning" at a restaurant in Granada, Spain. Not a hip, youth-oriented restaurant, it was a moderately "classy" place and the song was sandwiched between the stuff you'd expect to hear in a place like that.