Hell is Other People's Music.

Straight from GILD’s public profile:

"Occupation:
radio presenter, sound engineer "

I work in Retail Radio.
If you click on “Radio Stations” and then on Radio Pick 'n Pay, you’ll see a loudhailer at the bottom of the page. If you click on it you can listen to an on-air montage. My voice is the second male voice on the clip.

I love music- but i agree that, like many things, if it is plastered everywhere (especially in public places) it can destroy its effect. Music transports me to places and times of my life, and magical crazy backwards lands (Ok that last one mainly when i’m listening to the flaming lips and Devendra barnhart).

I really enjoy seeing music live, infact most of the recordings i have on my Ipod are from live gigs. A lot of music is, as Augey March so elloquently put it “there is nothing there, it’s like eating air, like drinking jin with nothing else in…and it doesn’t hold anything together”. The sheer mass of this “filler” music does get on my nerves- silence would be preffered in lots of situations.

mark

[quote=“Naomi”]

It’s designed for exactly that effect. You don’t notice it, but it distracts you from the pain of being alone with your thoughts…

I’d like to go on record as being in complete agreement with Billy on this point.

The April 10, 2006 issue of The New Yorker has an interesting article titled, “The Soundtrack of Your Life: How Muzak Makes You Buy” by David Owen. Unfortunately it does not seem to be online.

It ends disturbingly with this:

"…the first thing many of us do when we find ourselves alone with our thoughts is to reach for the handiest means of drowning them out–by putting on a pair of headphones, say, or by sliding a disk into the car’s CD player.

…‘Our biggest competitor,’ a member of Muzak’s marketing department told me, ‘is silence.’"

It’s an interesting article, though, with some information about the company most probably don’t realize. I didn’t.

I happen to like being alone with my thoughts. Though I still like listening to the radio when I drive. It’s the only time that I listen to the radio.