April 26, 2002

9:52 AM

Pipedown:The campaign for freedom from piped music (aka elevator music or Muzak). A noble cause if ever there was one.
posted by dchase (8 comments total)

your right to silence ends at the tip of my "Ray Coniff Singers Present The Best of Lennon & Ono".
posted by quonsar at 10:15 AM on April 26, 2002

Don't laugh, quonsar, if you live long enough, you will hear the most hard-core, uncompromisible anthems of your generation transformed into aural wallpaper, and you will understand, truly, that there is no "alternative" anything, that it's all one stream, flowing together in time.
posted by Faze at 10:40 AM on April 26, 2002

Unrelated thought:
I want to start a campaign against streaming text in any context outside of stocks/stock exchanges in websites.

On topic:
Yeah, piped music can be annoying. Specially annoying is what the banks/card companies/utilities subject you to when you are on hold.
posted by justlooking at 10:51 AM on April 26, 2002

What an odd way to campaign for the "right to silence." Afterall, musak is usually fairly quiet and played indside a privately owned building (implying that you could leave the building to avoid it). On the other hand, much more insidious noise-makers like loud trucks and motorcycles and cell phone users really are polluting a public place and infringing on my right to silence.
posted by plaino at 10:54 AM on April 26, 2002

i already have, faze, i already have.
walks away humming upbeat boston pops rendition of "Hello, I Love You"...
posted by quonsar at 10:55 AM on April 26, 2002

What is sadder is when your favorite songs appear on Muzak unchanged. Steely Dan, Howard Jones, Alan Parsons, Mike & The Mechanics... I admit to liking them. Not to the exclusion of all else, of course. I always have liked a spectrum of music from soft to hard.
posted by kindall at 11:03 AM on April 26, 2002

It's not elevator music, it's audio architecture! Coming soon to a demographic near you....
posted by groundhog at 11:54 AM on April 26, 2002

Right on, Faze...I remember the first time I heard the Stones 'Satisfaction' in an elevator: it was musical genocide and I realized the world had changed profoundly. And just reading this post ignites an evil memory: that filth music they played on the ward in 'One flew over the Cuckoos Nest'.
posted by Mack Twain at 12:08 PM on April 26, 2002