Music you have been forced to listen to

Cafe Society
1

Has anyone here been in a place or a situation where you can’t just leave or expect to only be there for a few minutes, and meanwhile, someone is playing a type of music you don’t like? You have no control over the music being played, or it wouldn’t have been appropriate to ask that the music be changed. At my previous job, a retail store, we had a five-disc CD changer. The rotation of the CDs was infrequent and we’d all get stuck listening to the same CDs day after day, usually at least twice in the course of one shift. The CDs I remember were Ace of Base, No Doubt, and Garth Brooks, plus a few others. Being a hard rock fan I didn’t really like any of these in the first place , and hearing them played repeatedly at least a dozen times a week made them even more maddening. How glad I was the day the CD player broke and they replaced it with a radio tuner. The music wasn’t necessarily any better, but at least it was more varied.

When I was 13 I was at a friend’s house for a sleepover. That night he played The Cars Heartbeat City five times in a row, turning the tape over each time it reached the end. About halfway through the fifth play I couldn’t stand it any longer and asked him to PLEEEEZE play a different tape!

Then when I was around the same age I rode with a friend and his Mom to go skiing almost every weekend. It was about an hour’s drive to the ski area. His mom had a bumper sticker on her car that read “If it ain’t country, it ain’t music!” and she lived by this, as all she ever played was country music, forcing both me and my friend to listen to it all the way there and back. How nice it was to get home and put on some Motley Crue.

2

Last year I shared an office with a guy who liked to listen to “smooth jazz.” “Smooth jazz” is a nice way of saying “elevator music,” apparently. It was torture, but I didn’t say anything to him because he was very into it and would talk to me about all his favorite musicians (how could he tell them apart?), and I felt bad.

Now I’m in an office by myself and can listen to whatever I want. Hooray!

3

Last Saturday, as a matter of fact.

The WMZQ Country Music Festival.

The things I do for Lady Chance. Oh, the things I do.

4

I once worked in a store that played an endless loop of a Claudine Longet album.

I would have gladly traded places with Spider Sabich .

5

When I used to ride in my brother’s car he would listen to the same Jimmy Buffet tape- but only the one side, over and over. I wanted to, still do, get a bumper sticker for my car that said “Nuke margarittaville.”

6

I’ve been stuck on army training courses in rooms with people who listened only to top 40 radio, which meant the flavour of the week got played about eight billion times a day.

“I would walk five hundred miles” is still burned on my brain.

7

I had a friend growing up who had an unerring knack of picking one hit wonders and playing the tapes until our ears bled. He liked such classic bands as Dead or Alive “You spin me Right round…etc”, Asia “The Final Countdown” and the one tape I buried in my glove compartment cause it was soooo bad Kajagoogoo “Too shy…” More recently I had to suffer through about ten repetitions of the Notting Hill soundtrack cause both my gf and I were too lazy to get up and change or turn off the damn thing.

8

Got stuck on a trip back from Nashville listening to Destiny’s Child over and over with two people who knew all the words and weren’t afraid to sing along. Ugh.

I was on a blind date, and the girl’s friend, whose car our group was riding in, kept playing the single of “Unskinny Bop” by Poison on a loop. Painful, painful, painful!

9

When I was a pre-teen, my tastes ran along the lines of Cyndi Lauper and the like.

My older brother would drive me insane…every single day, over and over he played the same music. Every morning I’d wake up to that same band. Every day during the drive to school–same band. Bedtime…you catch my drift. I HATED this band!

It was my now beloved Rush. Guess some things just stick to ya.

10

BTW, Europe did “The Final Countdown”. Asia did “Heat Of The Moment”.

11

I once drove from Boston to West Virginia with a copy of Frank Zappa’s “Joe’s Garage” stuck in my car’s tape deck. It’s not that I minded the tape so much, but after 11 hours it was gtting a bit weird. It did motivate me to get a new stereo pdq.

12

As a teen, I had a boss who fell in love with Achy Breaky Heart, bought the single, and played it over and over for three months. I was lucky enough to only work there on Saturdays, but even so, 6 hours a day of Achy Breaky Heart was enough to send me Nucking Wucking Futs. While she was on lunch, we’d turn it off for a much needed break, but otherwise it played for the whole day.

13

Hm…well, in high school, my driver’s ed teacher put on horrible country music, which the other person in my car and I had to listen to. He and I had the same taste in music, so we were equally tortured.

14

I worked in a place that decided they’d get an endless loop tape of country music. The tape was two hours long, we worked ten hour days. Most of it I could blot out except for one song. Dolly Parton’s up-tempo, bluegrass cover of REO Speedwagon’s Time For Me To Fly. Needless to say, I was nearly suicidal by the end of my shift. Thankfully they only kept the tape for about a day.

15

My gosh. My whole life, I am forced to listen to music I don’t like. It is a rare treat to go somewhere else and listen to music that I DO like.

Most popular, rock, Top 40 music is not my cup of tea AT ALL. I grew up with Classical, Opera, and general instrumental/orchestral stuff, and that’s what I love. (OK, I do like a few select rock or popular artists, but radios do not play a steady diet of them, so it’s uncommon for me to hear these artists.)

I got a lot of grief for my love of Classical when I was a kid, and was always subjected to all my friends’ musical tastes. They gave me a hard time and seemed quite peeved because I didn’t try to “fit in” more and listen to more “normal” (according to them) music. Of course, I never got “my turn” at the radio. It was beyond unreasonable and outrageous for them to ever listen to any of my music. But of course, I was the “closed-minded” one. :rolleyes:

Listening to some form of modern or popular music is the default for many people. At least with many of the people I am acquainted with. Classical is not in their universe. It is never even remotely considered as a musical choice. So I end up getting forced to listen to stuff I don’t like quite frequently. I don’t complain about it, (the world does not revolve around me) but yeah - it sure as hell isn’t MY choice to listen to it.

When I am in my own car, I am the radio goddess, and NO ONE, I repeat, NO ONE, gets to turn the dial to something I don’t like. I have paid my dues, I listen to everyone else’s stuff all the damned time, with no complaint. I don’t have to tolerate it in my own house, or my own car.

I can’t believe how some people will come unglued when they have to (shudder) listen to some Classical once in a blue moon. I’ve had people really freak out and act as if I was subjecting them to Chinese water torture, because they had to listen to a little bit of Classical. I mean, get a grip. I tolerate all kinds of music that I detest all the time, and I manage to suck it up.

Sorry, apparently I have a bit of pent-up hostility on this issue! :slight_smile:

16

My Brother makes me listen to Tom Waits whenever we are in the same car together. UGH!

17

A number of years ago, I moved. From a place where Skinny Puppy and Ministry were well-known and loved, to the land of (shudder) Tejano music.
You have not felt true culture shock until you’ve seen someone play the “air accordion” and really mean it.

18

Santana. For three hours. A long, long drive back from a conference with some guy who kept saying ‘it’ll grow on you’. It never did.

Also, have to say I feel sorry for a guy here at work who shares an office with a woman who loves pan pipe music - full volume - every day…

19

About 11 years ago I was the assistant manager at a beauty supply store and my boss had the radio set on a country music station. So that’s basically what I was forced to listen to 8 hours a day for a few years! Eventaully she quit and I threw the radio in the dumpster! To this day country music absolutely offends my senses. Like fingernails on a blackboard! As a matter of fact, I don’t think I could even date a guy who was even remotely into country music!

20

When I was in high school, my brother fell in love with Cheap Trick’s “Dirty Deeds.” He played that over and over and over and over and over. Whenever the song was over, he’d lift the needle and put it back to the beginning. I wanted to die.

And the day my grandmother died, the *itch living in the apartment upstairs played “What I Am” by Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians, so loud you could hear it all the way down the block, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. I wanted to kill her.

Don’t know what’s up with this violent streak! :wink: