most incongruous background music in a restaurant

[sherribabee]

Oh, and then we went to see The Triplets from Belleville at the Sunshine Cinema -- excellent flick. 

that's the animated one right?

so it was good?

Yes! I laughed a lot. For a 'silent' flick, it was pretty damn funny.

[tryska]

i'm gonna have to see it when it comes out here. I saw the trailers at the Art Cinema here a couple weeks back.

[mongo_jones]

We've been running this site for well over 2 years, and I marvel every day at the ability of eGulleters to come up with brand new topics.

the success of threads like this one does partially explain the popularity of the non-cooking shows like top 5 etc. on the food network (i think i recall people wondering about that in another thread).

Yeah - except this is entertaining and Bobby Rivers is thankfully nowhere to be seen.

oh, i'm not knocking the thread: i'm the one who started it.

[Lady T]

Possibly my fave experience in this category occurred when, sitting in a local greasy spoon, I heard a radio (tuned to a station clearly chosen for its taste in inoffensive medleys from musicals) playing "A Little Priest" from Sweeney Todd.

Thank God all I was having was eggs and toast.

[phaelon56]

Not entirely off topic.... many years ago when I worked as a waiter the restaurant I was working at had a multi-tape system for background music that utilized 8 track tapes. 8 tracks were starting to become obsolete and the owner was also too stingy to ever buy new tapes. Now, twenty-five years later, I can once again listen to Ravel's Bolero without wretchign but please don't play Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat". Listening to that 500 or 600 times really was enough.

[dls]

2 entries from a few years ago:

1. A local barbeque "joint" in a predominately black area of Birmingham AL with a Monkees tape (Great barbeque though).

2. A Ravi Shankur tape at a Polish restaurant on Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago.

[Mayhaw Man]

Not entirely off topic.... many years ago when I worked as a waiter the restaurant I was working at had a multi-tape system for background music that utilized 8 track tapes. 8 tracks were starting to become obsolete and the owner was also too stingy to ever buy new tapes. Now, twenty-five years later, I can once again listen to Ravel's Bolero without wretchign but please don't play Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat". Listening to that 500 or 600 times really was enough.

I know what you mean. A couple of places I worked had those loop machines mentioned above and there must have been about 75 songs on a loop. I used to laugh because the servers wuould start singing the next song on the loop before it actually started. I feel the same way about "Maggie Mae" as you do about "Year of the Cat".

[VeryApe77]

Everytime I've been into the Friendship Chinese Restaurant in Logan Square (Chicago) - which is often - I hear a version of that old Scottish classic Loch Lomond...performed in a traditional Chinese Style (complete with Chinese Singing).

I love it.

[Pumpkin Lover]

Sade's Greatest Hits, while at Diwan.

Aw, man, that is a GREAT music-while-eating-Indian suggestion!

[SobaAddict70]

um, yeah but now I've got that song "Smooth Operator" playing in my brain and it won't stop.

Soba

[elyse]

um, yeah but now I've got that song "Smooth Operator" playing in my brain and it won't stop.

Soba

DAMN you.

[ludja]

We thought it was strange when we heard American country music in a small Carribean restaurant in St. Kitts... until we rode in a few different cabs and found almost eveyone playing... American country music...

[Pan]

My peeve is when the music doesn't suit the place. I want Chinese music in Chinese restaurants, and Andrea Bocelli in Italian. In a donut shop? How about nothing? It would distract from the aroma.

Put me down as preferring not to hear Bocelli anywhere. Some opera arias performed by really good singers would be fine, however.

[markovitch]

i used to run a small cafe location for my last restaruant job in a corporate complex. just me and one other guy, so we got to pick our own music.

i really got into it and started having theme days, cuban tuesdays (poncho sanchez, Tito, afro cuban all stars, los van van etc) western wednesday (nothing but the man in black baby) Tribal thursdays (i'm a percussionist, so i have lots of weird drum stuff) funky fridays (Sly and the family stone, bootsie, umar bin hassan) and Modern mondays (post big band ear jazz. bop on). my tips tripled and people were dancing through the salad bar.

i got a lot of weird looks tho-- i mean i was 16 and salsa-ing in front of the grill top while serving all these button down corporate types.

i got one complaint-- i was playing Art Blakey and the Jazz messengers with Thelonious Monk and this guy told me he hated MUZAK.... i almost lopped off his head.

Edited December 12, 2003 by markovitch (log)

[Pan]

i got one complaint-- i was playing Art Blakey and the Jazz messengers with Thelonious Monk and this guy told me he hated MUZAK.... i almost lopped off his head.

God, talk about clueless!

[mags]

Dinner at Matsuri -- a high-concept Japanese place -- to the swinging sounds of Clifton Chenier and his Zydeco All-Stars. I always say nothing goes with sushi like accordion-music.

But, if I can digress a little, that was nothing compared to my very favorite incongruous music. I was in a New York City cab about five years ago, very late at night, when another car whizzed in front of us, narrowly avoiding a bad crash. My cab driver screeched to a halt, and we both took a few seconds to calm down. Then, in very heavily accented and broken English -- I think he was Egyptian -- he asked if I minded if he put on some music, to relax. Sure, I said. He fumbled with a boom box, plugged in a tape, hit the volume, and out poured the dulcet sounds of the original-cast album of "Camelot," with Julie Andrews warbling away about "the simple joys of maidenhood."

Not exactly what I had been expecting.

[phaelon56]

We thought it was strange when we heard American country music in a small Carribean restaurant in St. Kitts... until we rode in a few different cabs and found almost eveyone playing... American country music...

A friend who was raised in Jamaica informs me that American country music was second behind reggae in her household growing up. Apparently it's very popular in many parts of the West Indies.

[blue_dolphin]

In a toss-up between resurrecting a 15 year old thread and starting a new one, I'm going with resurrection 🙃. 

 

I recently enjoyed this article in the NYT: Annoyed by Restaurant Playlists, a Master Musician Made His Own about how Ryuichi Sakamoto came to compile the playlist for the Manhattan restaurant, Kajitsu and I loved this letter he sent to the chef after being so annoyed by the background music that he left the restaurant:

Quote

“I love your food, I respect you and I love this restaurant, but I hate the music,” he remembered writing. “Who chose this? Whose decision of mixing this terrible roundup? Let me do it. Because your food is as good as the beauty of Katsura Rikyu.” (He meant the thousand-year-old palatial villa in Kyoto, built to some degree on the aesthetic principles of imperfections and natural circumstances known as wabi-sabi.) “But the music in your restaurant is like Trump Tower.”

 

Here's a Sakamoto-designed playlist:

I'm an admirer of Mr. Sakamoto but have to say that a few of the tracks he selected for this remind me of the trippy sounds that came out of the Muzak machine when the tape was playing backwards at a restaurant where I worked .

Edited August 7, 2018 by blue_dolphin (log)

[lindag]

7 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

In a toss-up between resurrecting a 15 year old thread and starting a new one, I'm going with resurrection 🙃. 

 

I recently enjoyed this article in the NYT: Annoyed by Restaurant Playlists, a Master Musician Made His Own about how Ryuichi Sakamoto came to compile the playlist for the Manhattan restaurant, Kajitsu and I loved this letter he sent to the chef after being so annoyed by the background music that he left the restaurant:

 

Here's a Sakamoto-designed playlist:

I'm an admirer of Mr. Sakamoto but have to say that a few of the tracks remind me of the trippy sounds that came out of the Muzak machine when the tape was playing backwards at a restaurant where I worked .

I personally like it so much they'd have a hard time getting me to leave.

[blue_dolphin]

9 minutes ago, lindag said:

I personally like it so much they'd have a hard time getting me to leave.

 

I'm listening to it now and find it very pleasant!

[Thanks for the Crepes]

On 12/3/2003 at 12:10 AM, Eric_Malson said:

I finally managed to ascertain that it was Karen Finley's "Tales of Taboo". Naturally, I'm now the proud owner of a copy. I love to play at for people, introducing it as "the song I heard in a quaint little restaurant during my very first trip to Paris!"

Ah, I'll always remember Paris......

 

I often enjoy going back and reading most of these older dredged up threads. I stopped at this post and looked up the mentioned "song"  on Google, because prurient interest, you know. Good Lord! That was a mistake. Don't go there if you have a romantic thought ever left in your head. The "artist" may have had some point to make, but I quit listening halfway through the rant because my scatology overload threshold had been reached. What kind of demented personality would play this to a restaurant full of people trying to enjoy their dinner? I'm not a prude, but this was shocking and just gross.

 

There is not a lot of music anymore in most of the restaurants around here because the Cary PD is very aggressive in enforcing copyrights. Restaurants either have to pay steep royalties, or go without. You can't make your own mix tapes or CD's here anymore and play them in your restaurant for your patrons. Also, sadly, the trend is for horrible acoustics so the restaurants tend to extremely noisy during busy times. 

 

I was delighted that when my sister and niece had a meal with me at Torero's in Cary and my sis seemed to enjoy the mariachi band. She can be very strongly opinionated about stuff, so I was afraid she would not like the very loud playing next to our table, but she loves live music. I told her I was very happy she enjoyed it, but took the opportunity to remind her how much she drove me crazy practicing her clarinet when we were kids. I mean she drove me out of our shared room in the home into 20 F below zero weather in Vermont. Wind instruments are difficult to master and can really hit the irritation nerve if not played well. The trumpet player in the mariachi band was very good, but he needs a mute in the confines of the restaurant. It would probably be fine outdoors on a patio like they have in Mexico.

[liuzhou]

Restaurant lunch yesterday. August. 40ºC

 

"Jingle Bells" and "Auld Lang Syne"

 

Astonishingly common in China. Makes a change from "Edelweiss" and "Yesterday Once More", the only songs ever to have been written outside China.

Edited August 8, 2018 by liuzhou (log)

[kayb]

I was quite entertained in Tokyo once to hear an arrangement, on Japanese stringed instruments, of Tennessee Waltz playing in a restaurant.

 

I approved.

 

[liuzhou]

9 minutes ago, kayb said:

I was quite entertained in Tokyo once to hear an arrangement, on Japanese stringed instruments, of Tennessee Waltz playing in a restaurant.

 

I approved.

 

 

Now you mentiuon it, I have heard that in China, too.

[Spork]

13 hours ago, liuzhou said:

Restaurant lunch yesterday. August. 40ºC

 

"Jingle Bells" and "Auld Lang Syne"

 

Astonishingly common in China. Makes a change from "Edelweiss" and "Yesterday Once More", the only songs ever to have been written outside China.

 

 

 

From my travels in China, Country Roads. Restaurants, hotel lobbies, elevators, etc, it’s played everywhere.