I’m always kind of interested in what the ambient music is in various public and commercial spaces. True Muzak-style “elevator” music (i.e. light instrumental covers of familiar pop tunes from a few years back) is very rare these days; and the most common mass-market store/restaurant music (heard in, say, Target and Wendy’s) is a kind of light-ish pop-rock from the late sixties to the mid 80’s — lots of hummable pop, from Motown to the Eagles. Kind of “Classic Rock Lite”: the lighter end of the 60-to-80s pop/rock hits that the boomers and Gen Xers came of age to.
It’s so much the norm that when a place uses something else, it’s a bit of a statement. So, for example, Panera Bread (which I go to a fair bit, both for the decent food and the free wi-fi) has classical (instrumental) music. And this makes sense; Panera is trying to sell you an experience that’s fast food turned classy: Nicer and more genteel food; natural woods with earth-tones everywhere in the decor; the faux fireplace and a couple of armchairs. Down deep, it’s fast food; but they want to portray it as a worldly little cafe. And what says worldly little cafe to Americans better than classical music?
But I actually kind of miss muzak — although toward the end of musak’s time, I can remember the disconcerting sense that the songs being covered were no longer “old” from my late-boomer perspective. I can remember, for example, sitting in an old-fashioned diner-deli about 10 years ago that still had real Muzak, and having a moment of slightly nauseating recognition when I realized that the tune being covered was REM’s “Man in the Moon”. It was hardly the first time I’d noticed a (then) pretty recent piece of music transformed in a slightly disorenting way into muzsak — I can actually remember the first time I heard a Talking Heads tune get the treatment. That was strange too, but more funny, and less unsettling. And the unsettling nature of this isn’t about musical style and the distance from there to muzak — REM is light and melodic, and so a natural; Thelonious Monk is dissonant and abstract, but hearing “Straight, No Chaser” as muzak isn’t exactly disturbing, even if it’s a little odd in some other way.
Being turned into muzak was, of course, the mark of something passing from now-and-almost-hip to white-bread mainstream old-people-might-hum-along passe. And hearing Talking Heads or Elvis Costello get the treatment — music from my college days — mostly brought on mild amusement at the idea that I had become a real honest-to-God grownup, whose “hip” tastes were now permating the atmosphere at Wal*Mart. But by the time REM came along, I was an actual grownup. And hearing music from your established grownup years turned into muzak isn’t funny — it’s just depressing.
(OK, there’s probably an exception to be made for cases that are intentionally ridiculous — like Grunge Lite, a collection of grunge rock pieces covered in an elevator music style. If you get a chance, check out the cover of Pearl Jam’s Even Flow. It’s just plain funny.)