Music To My Ears

People who know me will be aware that there are some criminal offences for which I feel rehabilitation is sadly ineffective, and upon which society would be far better off taking an approach more in line with medieval standards. Foremost among these felonies, that should have any magistrate rushing for their maiming-gear, is the appalling crime of beginning a sentence with the words: "But our market research shows...!"

You see, on my excursion to Cockermouth on Saturday, we toured a variety of pubs with many quaint and wonderful selling points, ranging from their superlative cask ales, through their extensive bar menus, to their decor of amazing Lakeland paintings. But they had one thing in common; one dark and terrible shared shame.

The music in each and every pub was a monumental sack of wank.

It was a never-ending parade of the most banal, facile, middle-of-the-road pap you could ever imagine. From Whitney through to Celine Dion, with every imaginable power ballad in between, we were fed a diet of mediocrity. And I don't believe for a second that anyone actually asked for things to be this way.

Why? Because in the last two pubs that I worked, I was responsible for a significant proportion of the music played.

In two separate establishments of mine, customers were serenaded by artists as diverse as Phil Ochs and The Ramones, Desmond Dekker and Half Man Half Biscuit, Sham 69 and Paul Simon. In both pubs, the customers happily accepted the music, and often sought me out to tell me how much they enjoyed it, sometimes to the extent of coming in especially to hear what was being played. A lot of the time, I got folks asking me where they could hear more of this music. But in the first job at least, it was not a view shared by the company management.

Statements like "Bruce Springsteen represents everything that this company is against," especially when coupled with follow-up remarks such as "couldn't you play some Sade instead?" are designed to drive you to the brink of despair. And as you begin to protest that you can personally see the positive difference good music has made on patrons, then comes the coup de grace: "But our market research shows..."

Their market research. Which is invariably conducted amongst the audience they want to capture, rather than the one that's ready made for them. In their testicle-sized minds, they believe that sticking Luther Vandross on the sound system in a neighbourhood boozer is going to tempt middle-aged, middle-class parents down with their kids of an evening. And of course, it doesn't. They're all sat at home watching Ant & Dec, or a documentary on middle-aged, middle-class parents who listen to Luther Vandross.

But it doesn't end there. It's a domino effect. Once one company has done this market research, the others leech off it, and take it as the word of God. And the people who suffer are the loyal regulars, and younger drinkers with a bit of style and taste. When confronted with the same lowest common denominator everywhere they go, these people end up thinking exactly what we thought in Cockermouth on Saturday: "Sod this, we're off home."

Corporate prannies of the world, be warned: there is more to humanity than market research. There is more to music than Abba and The Corrs. And there is still more to pubs than your dismal parochial opinions.

Now jog along, before I tie you to the rack and blast some Springsteen into you.