CITY FRAMES COLUMN: The pub music hater

BENGALURU: Why do bars even have music? Sometimes at night, especially on a Saturday when I’m walking on Indiranagar’s 100 Feet Road, I can hear music blasting. Or on Church Street, for that matter. Sometimes it’s EDM thumping away like a monstrous heartbeat. Otherwise it’s hip hop –remember Akon and Flo Rida? Some Bengaluru drinkeries do. But most of all, its rock music of the 80s and the early 90s, played at ear-splitting volumes.
I don’t have a problem with bar bands – even though, by definition, bar bands are supposed to be bands whose music sounds good only when you’re drunk. At least those guys are trying to earn their money.
Maybe the answer is in psychological warfare. In the early 2000s, new media reported that the CIA had used popular music to break the spirits of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay prison.
One of the songs used in this music torture was that Queen standard, “We are the champions”. (It was also reported that the CIA used I Love You, the theme song from “children’s” show Barney and Friends played at high volume, on loop 24 hours a day, but that’s something that’s too horrible to contemplate). Others included Metallica’s Enter Sandman and Prince’s Raspberry Beret, again played at eardrum shattering levels.
If you are going to hear one 80s hit after another, in a dark room, the simplest remedy would be to try to go deaf and ask the waiter bring you another large one.
Personally, I blame major general George Owen Squire, who in 1922 essentially invented piped music – the stuff that throttles you in elevators and some supermarkets, and had people thinking that background music was a good idea.
I hate music. Unexpected music. When I call anyone and I hear the words “To copy this tune…”, my heart sinks. I steel myself and wait for the music to hit me. There was the time I called a notoriously hardheaded and ruthless financier to find that his caller tune forced me to listen to Celine Dion warbling about her heart going on and on and on. He didn’t pick up my call.
I had to listen to that same segment on loop before the mobile phone software showed mercy and told me that he wasn’t going to answer my call and that I should try some other time. I didn’t bother.
The other problem is ringtones. Custom ringtones are unexpected music. I had a friend whose ringtone was a mournful lament about the hardships of factory life, where blue-collared men walked out of gates with death in their eyes. “It really speaks to me, man,” my friend said. He was the playboy son of an immensely wealthy family who had never done a day of work in his life, but I thought it inadvisable to mention this because he was paying for my drink.
But there must be a special circle of hell for people who design the musical interludes for your IVR wait times. Have you ever tried to call your TV or internet provider – or the insurance company or bank and been forced to go through a rigmarole of selecting numbers to choose from a huge list of services when all you want to do is talk to someone who can help you? I am sure that these IVR designers make sure that the musical pauses just to mess with your concentration so that instead of pressing ‘3’ you press ‘1’ and have to start the process all over again.
There are studies that say music enhances cognitive abilities, but to that I say that there are studies where a scientist spent six months teaching a tortoise to yawn. All I ask is that you do not play a tinny Fur Elise when I want to know why my TV channels seem to have disappeared halfway through Kohli’s innings.
Ultimately, I may end up with the attitude that the idea of music is better than music itself. Or atleast up until the time I’m in a pub, seated next to a group of affluent 40-somethings talking very loudly about their college days and the time when one of the boys was caught with a bottle of whisky tucked into his pants, or how a very drunk duo puked on each other the first time they tried Andhra aavakkai pickle to chase their rum with.
DJ, please play Beat It at top volume. Please.
(In this column, people record their impressions of Bengaluru)