'Perfect' placement.

I absolutely love music, can’t get enough of it. At home, in the car, via the i-pod, when in the city or about town; there’s just so much talent out there. Whether it’s delving deep into the past, in order to unearth some previously unheard requiem, listening spellbound to the haunting strains of a newly discovered African oud player or just revisiting old favourites from the sixties, it often really doesn’t seem to matter.

I would say that music is one of my true passions. Therefore, it might seem somewhat strange to here read that it is also one of my pet hates. Or conceivably not. A love of something would necessarily hone and perfect one’s appreciation of such, would it not, leading one towards an ever greater discernment for what feels ‘right’ for one's self.



Atmosphere by Niall McAuley's photostream

Were you to stop me in the street or driving in my car you would not have the first clue as to what my particular taste in music was, that is unless you already knew me and had had the distinct ‘misfortune’ to have listened to me banging on about this artist or that composition, or the particular resonance of a favourite instrument. My music would not have been permitted to encroach upon your day.

You see, that’s really the thing about music, at its very best it’s sometimes going to be quite personal. Areas of common ground probably, but in the fine detail it’s got to be personal, hasn’t it, appreciated and listened to largely on a personal basis, at a volume that reflects particularly this aspect of its choosing? That, of course, is not to say that some people will not also choose to listen to their particular choice of music collectively, amongst others who will have chosen to do likewise.

So now allow me to attempt to explain also my absolute loathing for music. Surely I cannot be alone in recognising that music is an art form and, as such, cannot be loved, or even liked, by everyone when represented in just one dominant, invariably rather mediocre, form.

So, as I was attempting to explain, why a loathing for music, or some forms thereof? Allow me, if you will, to transport you back to your last telephone call to any company. Recall, if you can, the imposed music that was piped down the line as substitute for the interpersonal contact you were perhaps hoping for. Or permit me to remind you of your last shopping trip, where you may have been subjected to constant assault by the musical preferences of someone-else-entirely. Or maybe last Friday night’s strained attempts at conversation, over the foot-stomping beat offered as pub ‘atmosphere.’ Picky, you’re thinking. Maybe you had assumed that your hearing had somehow taught itself to become more attuned to TV advertisements or that it was a fault with the volume control of the same said set?



And again from Mr. Greenjeans' photostream

Maybe some people would have ‘chosen’ those very ‘musical' scores, with which to have approached each individual task. Maybe I’m wrong. It’s possible but, then again, most unlikely!

What about the ear-splitting (don’t you even dare contemplate starting a meaningful conversation) bursts of drum’n’bass (is it?) that ‘have to’ fill the ‘void’ between every point in Davis Cup Tennis, or the ‘humorously’ chosen snippets that follow every wicket during the One Day Cricket Internationals? Who are we catering for; those who want to follow the tennis or the cricket are already there? Please, for the love of God, don’t tell me that we are trying to bring other civilized sports into line with the ‘needs’ of the football-type supporter! Sport for the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder spectator?



Atmosphere we can all do without from perldude's photostream

I feel that I must warn, again, of the ease with which such minds are subjected to the advertiser's whim, and of the related mind-wash that is currently rife already within 'our' lives. Music is a powerful and a  curiously dangerous tool. You would no more leave the likes of a Robbie Williams or some gun-toting rap 'artist' in charge of such than you would leave a baby alone with a razor-sharp kitchen knife- contemplate the carnage that either decision might cause!

Recognise, if you will, where such evident damage has already occurred! The youthful driver, with those vacant eyes and skewed baseball cap, that half-threatening yet terminally confused frown, window down, perhaps the ‘delicate’ strains of some rap (surely a spelling error) ‘artist’ ‘wafting gently’ outwards, ‘selling’ the ‘virtues’ of mob violence, before going on to clarify that said ‘artist’ has not yet grasped the simple definition of a word like 'respec(T)' (and surely yet another spelling error).

Which will live on longer in the memory, we are forced to consider, the imposed thrum of the bass behind the rant, or the guttural roar of the lad’s new exhaust that seems to have evaded any social requirement to considerate driving? Listen on and you may be able to track his journey for a further mile or so, before he is usurped by the next unwitting advertisement on wheels. Worryingly the link in this paragraph is to a US site, at least there the problem has been acknowledged. Meanwhile, here in the UK?



Encore Jeremy by boxchain's photostream

And that, I’m afraid, is it. Advertising, impure and simple, leaking into our lives, just like all that mercury at Minamata Bay, that seeped so venomously into the lives and bodies of all those unfortunate villagers.

It would appear that frequently the loudest of ‘musical’ impositions is selected from the very narrowest of ‘musical’ choices- perhaps from one of those cloned commercial stations, revolving around the same wafer thin selection of music industry imposed ‘tunes'. Maybe the rap number that we are ‘encouraged’ to listen to is the current cloned ‘identity’ of rebellious youth, either way the 'choice' was almost certainly an illusion, no more than blatant product placement upon an almost inert 'vehicle'. Whether that vehicle is a current sporting fixture, or the challenged intellect of a mobile youth, it makes little difference.



Yet more from Robbie Howell's photostream

Whether the roar of that surely illegal exhaust is being endorsed by the ‘razor-sharp intellect’ of Jeremy Clarkson or just ‘Darren’ (Dazza to his ‘mates’) from down the road the differences are separable solely through the turgidity of semantics. It's no more than product placement by those with huge vested interests, the Motor Trade or the Music Industry, sales figures are, as ever, ultimately the bottom line.

And you thought that Clarkson was 'speaking his mind'; you thought he didn't reap certain rewards for all that screaming product placement? I wonder if he might have chosen to reside somewhere where idiots like himself might roar past the house at any time of the day or night, or else somewhere that he doesn't have to put up with morons like himself?

In effect what he appears more than happy to perpetuate is a world where outrageous driving is almost endemic, just so long as he is able to comfortably cushion himself from these excesses; a sort of stuff you outlook.



And yet again from estherase's photostream

Has nobody explained to him the psychological and physiological impacts of this type of sustained noise upon the human mind? The softer the brain the more compliant to the advertiser's influence it will become. Beware!