IF MUZAK is the food of love please do not play on says Marina Alta restaurant critic John Deacon – a Spanish-based ambassador for campaign group Pipedown.
The world is getting noisier and he believes piped music plays an unwanted part – along with the unsocial use of mobile ‘phones – and says there is a growing movement to get it turned off in bars and restaurants.
Pipedown is a group seeking for the freedom not to have to listen to muzak in public places – shops, pubs, restaurants, airports, hospitals, bus and train stations, car parks and a host of other locations.
In a Daily Telegraph article news presenter John Humphrys warning of the dangers of a world getting louder and actually damaging health, saying “It’s time we all turned down the volume.”
And John, who lives in Javea, agrees. “Noise of any kind tops the list of what annoys people the most. Muzak is number three but the other two are both noise related.
“But more people hate piped music – or muzak – than like it and the story starts when the authorities carried out a survey. It was more than 20 years ago but there is nothing to say anything has changed since.”
AIRPORT
Of 70,000 people interviewed about the piped music played at Gatwick Airport, 43% said they disliked it and only 34% admitted to enjoying the muzak. As a result the airport pulled the plug on canned music – and its policy saved £1.8 million in PRS copyright fees.
John said later opinion polls showed much the same picture – even young people sharing a dislike for the noise pollution.
“Even if you find yourself a quiet place, you can still here the ‘boom, boom’ of the bass coming through the walls and floors,” he said.
“Supermarket muzak is especially awful and some of them here – like Iceland, Consum and Eroski – blast it through the car parks as well.
“It is amusing that in the United States someone went to court claiming they were being ‘abused’ by muzak in a public place where their rights to silence were being denied. They won the case but I have heard of no
other.”
And he said in a recent classical music concert in Teulada by musicians from the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music from America a totally inappropriate pop CD was played loudly during the interval.
RAGE
“I flipped,” he admitted. “And the President of the Curtis Institute was quivering with rage.”
He said people often asked what kind of music he liked. “It’s totally irrelevant and secondly, it is not about what I like, it is about silence – I would never presume to invade someone else’s privacy by stuffing my love of opera down their throats.”
John said he understood an empty restaurant or bar playing music to create atmosphere but as the premises filled, it was only the background “thumping” that could be heard.
“I am sure there are youngsters who think I am a boring old fart. However, there are people writing to me and fully supporting the campaign against muzak and more and more people are speaking out.”
Unwanted noise raises the blood pressure and depresses the immune system – deaf people have particular problems with piped music because it plays havoc with hearing aids, while blind people who rely on background sound to help them get around find it disorientating.
And two thirds of Europeans – 450 million people – are daily exposed to noise levels the World Health Organisation says are unacceptable yet it remains a problem receiving little public attention despite it occasionally provoking people to kill!
Find out more about Pipedown at www.pipedown.info
Source: RoundTownNews
Our urb's bars were stopped from having live entertainment recently which, naturally, has upset the bar owners. If they'd not played music quite so loud maybe they'd still be permitted live entertainment?? 