Well, here’s my weird and disturbing post for the week; Can anyone suggest a good song for use in psychological warfare, like if you’re trying to get someone to come out of a building that they’ve barricaded themselves into, or if you’re launching a particularly flambouyant commando raid? I’ve come up with O Death from the “O brother, where art thou?” soundtrack, and Bodies by Drowning Pool. And maybe that Mexican trumpet solo mentioned in the movie Rio Bravo-(Or was it El Dorado?
I think it would depend on how good your speakers are. If it’s the sort of situation where you’re trying to cover up your tunneling activities, any heavy base rock sort of thing will do, since they lower frequencies carry better anyway.
If it’s a situation where they will be able to hear the lyrics, I’d go with something that would just drive them batty. Something funny the first time, but suicidal the tenth. Maybe the ‘Countries of the World’ song by the Animaniacs, or a nice selection from They Might Be Giants.
I enjoy them both, but they’d drive anyone batty after enough repetition.
For me, just play country music for an hour and I’ll raid myself.
“Twist” by Korn. 48 seconds of heavy-sounding gibberish, with guys banging on guitars and drums in the background. Play that a few hundred times and you’ll have 'em doing whatever you want.
Failing that, anything by Regurgitate (look 'em up yourself if you’re not at all squeamish; their album cover probably constitutes a forbidden link) or Deicide. Make sure you’ve got decent speakers, so you can really get 'em.
To get someone out of a barricaded building, a shorter piece would be better - more frequent repititions. Anything shrill. maybe yodeling or accordian music.
Worse yet. “It’s a Small World” performed on violin by a six-year-old who’s only had one month of lessons.
Don’t Go Breaking My Heart by Elton John and Kiki Dee. One of my favorite games to play at work is to casually walk by a coworker and quietly sing “I couldn’t if I triiiiied…” and see how long it takes before the entire restaurant staff is either humming, whistling or singing, and generally cursing my name. Good times.
Several years ago some numbnut decided to hold up the adult bookstore down the street during a vice squad sting. The robbery was disrupted, and the miscreant wound up holed up in the porno store.
The SWAT team cordoned off the neighborhood and set up speakers. They played local radio station KIKK full blast - it took a couple of hours, but he did come out. That was a commercial country and western station.
IIRC, right after the sound bombardment of the Vatican embassy (where Manuel Noriega holed up) was successfully concluded, there was a press conference held by a senior Army PsyOps guy, and the question of music selection came up.
He didn’t answer the question directly, but suggested that HE was in favor of playing “Achey Breaky Heart” repeatedly.
I’m reminded of the night in Anderson’s Fun House on the recently completed “Mole II” – one version after another of “Tiny Bubbles,” soft, loud, slow, fast, techno, reggae, waltz…
