music ruins an otherwise perfect moment.

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

I am in Victoria on Vancouver island for a week long vacatian.
Today at 4 in the morning i walked the block to the ocean
Before i went i packed my notebook and my cd player, i looked through my cds wanting to figure out what was approite for the occasion .

There was nothing, it was too sacred a moment
So the question, when in your life was/is music completley inapproite

― anthony, Saturday, 23 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

1. However, when you try to recapture that moment, in some smelly urban location, music may prove to be an invaluable aid to the memory and imagination?

2. The noise of the ocean and other background was itself music?

3. You took rubbish CDs?

― christopher, Saturday, 23 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Oh sorry. Answer: in a piano exam waiting room, when the previous victim's desparation spills through the walls. I got a similar feeling in a doctor's surgery on Thursday morning, where they played nasty pop through tiny buzzing-wasp speakers. The room smelled of sweat and cleaning fluid.

― christopher, Saturday, 23 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

If I'm not mistaken, it's spelled - or even spelt, if you prefer - 'appropriate'. The opposite of 'appropriate' is spelled 'inappropriate'.

― the pinefox, Saturday, 23 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

tonight i saw a band play a lot of covers of songs i would've applauded wholeheartedly (Wuthering Heights, Jacques Brel, Roxy Music, Survivor) if I hadn't unfortunately contracted an inaproite addiction to 'I can't seem to make you mine' by the Seeds. After the first few chords of each song I started to think but why isn't this . . . so inaproite . . . But now I know how uncomfortable smokers must feel.

― maryann, Saturday, 23 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Sunrise. Or when I'm emotionally devastated beyond repair.

― Robin Carmody, Saturday, 23 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Any musical soundtrack that is used for a highly intimate, personal moment is both monumentous and terrible. Take sex: during seduction to foreplay, you or your would be lothario are having to contend with the mechanics of your/their stereo system and playing just the right song for the "moment". That you find yourself interrupting coitus and running back to said stereo to change the disk is laughably awkward and all too human - we strive to ever define our moments via media, culture and taste. Never quite defining the moment, but it certainly defines us.

― Jason, Saturday, 23 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Not very often. If I'm feeling bad, there's usually something to provide a little solace. Leonard Cohen always manages to draw the beauty out of pain. If I'm feeling good, a little Stevie Wonder or Lee Perry makes it sublime.

A bad lack of sleep is probably the only time that music grates rather too much.

― Johnathan, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

When I persuaded two friends to go for a picnic in the mid 80s, but they thought it necessary to blast out the SOS Band or Cheryl Lynn or something like that over the otherwise silent Essex marshes.

― David, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Just about every cafe or restaurant I visited last week in Thailand was severely compromised for me by dismal mullet rock by the likes of Bon Jovi. The nadir was a place in Chiangmai on Friday where I had to sit through the complete works of the Spice Girls.

As far as I'm concerned, all music in public places damages their charm and demeans me. When I want music, I seek it, buy it, play it. (Currently Nico's 'Distant Shore' album is totally dominating my life.)

Music is a pull medium now, not a push medium. To be subjected to someone else's taste in a public place is a grotesque invasion, a humiliation. When will cafe owners catch up?

― Momus, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I should add that I recently stopped going to a swimming pool because it insisted on playing commercial radio all day.

― Robin Carmody, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

playing music over the otherwise silent Essex marshes . . . when there was another thread asking 'What non-musical noise have you enjoyed lately?' I could only think of the first time I heard complete silence, when we drove up to the top of a barren mountain. Apparently people's respiratory rate is elevated by background noise. Playing music in the rare silent places me of when I used to go to the beach with my teenage girl friends and eveyone would lie in the sun smoking.

― Maryann, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

There is a version of the lovely film Metropolis out there with a terrible 70's-ish cheese rock soundtrack. Another film marred by the soundtrack, Dead Man with Johnny Depp. I like some Neil Young, but his guitar playing in tthat movie was boring and intrusive.

― bnw, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Momus wrote: "Music is a pull medium now, not a push medium. To be subjected to someone else's taste in a public place is a grotesque invasion, a humiliation. When will cafe owners catch up?"

That's too bad: you obviously don't have a Bossa Nova Supermarket near you. Bossa Nova Supermarkets are a dying phenomenon, alas: no one's using Muzak anymore. Then there's this radio station that only convenience stores can pick up. It plays all the greatest hits in hell - the ones you thought you'd never hear again, like "Let's Hear It for the Boy". I like being subjected to this, since I'm usually in a bad mood when I'm in convenience stores and can use the laugh. Oh, and the music at the Mexican supermarket on the corner is fabulous. Before I know it, I've got a cart full of avocado.

I don't know if I have any experiences with "inappropriate" music, since I tend to submit to whatever's playing. I don't think I have a philosophy of perfect moments.

― Kerry Keane, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

At Tanya Headon's funeral. That would be really disrespectful.

― duane, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I had a really rough breakup recently, and the day afterwards all I could think of were the lyrics to "Long December", a song I dislike 99% of the time. So of course I put it on. Bawled like a two year old. That'll teach me, I guess.

― Dave M., Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yes, B. Weiss! I saw that Johnny Depp film 'Dead Man' just last month, and it's not a bad film at all but just utterly, utterly ruined by that unspeakably bad and intrusive fucking Neil fucking Young fucking guitar soundtrack. I was sitting by the TV raising and lowering the volume (remote missing) and fuming!

By the way, in my earlier post I should have called the Nico album I currenly love 'Desertshore'. John Cale + Nico = genius. And actually it's a film soundtrack (La Cicatrice Interieure by Philippe Garrel) that works really well. Pay close heed, Jarmusch!

― Momus, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well, sort of. Whenever I smell frshly cut grass in the summertime, I'm always reminded of Genesis' "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)" because of one time doing my paper-round in the summertime, listening to that. There are certain moments in your life when you don't wish to be reminded of Genesis.

― Steve.n., Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

We have the same sort of thing here, Kerry: Asda FM, with the Lighthouse Family on maximum rotation (circa 1997, at least).

― Robin Carmody, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

one month passes...

I once spent a night at my best friend's house. It ended up passing as a completely weird night, despite us not taking drugs or owt. When we awoke from a doze early morning we went for a drive in his car. We saw our solar system's sun rising and we didn't say a word. Music would have ruined that moment, so we didn't play a tape or anything.

And we didn't have a gay experience or owt!

― Kodanshi, Monday, 6 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i was a bit worried about playing ice t in the tape player at the back of the vegan co- op, but i went for it anyway, and nobody seemed to care. actually, i don't think anyone was capable of understanding the lyrics in real time, but it was still a bit risky.

― ethan, Monday, 6 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.