Posted on 03/12/2005 8:44:47 AM PST by prman
One of the many complaints about the ubiquity of cell phones is that they offer people little respite from the hurly-burly of daily life. If people can be summoned by gabby callers while in the privacy of their cars, or even in the confines of a bathroom stall, there are not many places left where we can retreat and let our minds contemplate the sounds of silence.
Even more disturbing, however, is the current marketing push to surround people with music almost all the time.
According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, toy maker Hasbro Inc. has developed a musical toothbrush — "Tooth Tunes" — that would feature a two-minute prerecorded song by a pop star that would be transmitted through the enamel and bone in your head. The recording is stored on a tiny microchip and starts playing when a button is pushed. The sound waves travel from the teeth into the jawbone and then to the inner ear.
Hasbro thinks there might a big demand for this gimmick, and will market it under the guise of better dental health: The longer a toothbrush is in a kid's mouth, the longer the brushing session. A kid would have to brush for two minutes to hear the end of the song.
Leaving aside the question of whether a person might get bored with the same song rattling through his bones with each brushing, one cannot escape the thought that, as with the cell phone, high-tech marketers assume that there isn't an inch of personal space which cannot be invaded by some sort of music.
Of course, demographers would slice and dice the market segments into more than just music or children. The brushing possibilities are endless. There could be investment info for investors; recipes for homemakers; car care tips for the fall season; jokes and comic Top Ten lists for the lighthearted to start their mornings. You get the picture.
I guess it started with the growth of Muzak in the 1940s, when anodyne tunes were played as environmental backdrops in elevators, department stores, supermarkets and physicians' offices. Borden's Dairy used to advertise back then that they piped in music at the milking stations, because milk from "contented cows" was somehow better. I wonder if the cows got to choose the music.
It got worse in the mid-fifties, when the transistor radio was born, and people started listening to radio stations while they made their perambulations. And restaurants started installing speakers in the ceiling — a trend that continues today — to annoy patrons with radio stations or recorded music as they tried to eat.
A decade or two later, we got boom boxes — large, steroidal contraptions that blew away not only the carrier but also those in proximity as well. I recall surly youth in Chicago boarding buses with these things hoisted on their shoulders — blasting out and disturbing the peace, to the reproachful grimaces of intimidated passengers.
Today, the latest battle for the skulls of youth is Apple's iPod, a $300 portable digital storage and playback device that holds upwards of "5,000 tunes" and whose owners are encouraged to "carry their music collection around with them."
Wildly popular on college campuses, the real benefit of this device, it seems, is that the business end of playing music is a set of headphones, a more civilized version of the boom box, sparing the health of those not wishing to inhale secondhand music.
Notwithstanding the fact that most of the music marketed in today's pop culture is sheer dreck, even if people could wander about the campus enraptured by, say, Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony, it doesn't address the issue as to whether it is good for them to go about their activities in a relentless, portable cone of noise.
Observing people thus preoccupied with bombarding their heads with noise of various sorts, one cries out for universal silence, if only for time to unscramble all those brains.
Perhaps the late composer John Cage was onto something. His most famous work, 4'33", was divided into three movements and played at the piano. All the notes were silent.
It could be argued that the plethora of so much poor-quality popular music today is a direct result of, among other factors, bad listening habits. Experiencing the epiphany of a Bach cantata while driving through a car wash should not be attempted by the untrained listener.
There is a proper way and a proper place to really listen to music. It is in the concert hall, in a club, in church or in front of a good stereo system. It is not while trying to do several things at once, or while peripatetically roaming the streets and corridors. It also isn't, dare I say, while brushing your teeth.
Barrett Kalellis is a Michigan-based musician and writer whose articles appear regularly in various local and national print and online publications. He may be reached at kalellis@NewsMax.com.
I go sit next to my wife.
I don't know, but I have heard unconfirmed rumors that today's most advanced technology developers are working on a brand new device -- called an "off" button.
You are to be envied...
I totally disagree with this snobby viewpoint. I have discovered lots of classical music (including Bach cantatas) through the headphones while taking a walk in the woods or along the beach or on the car stereo going to and from work.
People just don't have time these days to sit in a chair at home and listen to music through a hi-fi. Especially when there are kids running around and a wife telling you to get off your ass and take out the garbage.
My daily walks and my daily commute to and from work are the only times I can listen to music uninterrupted.
It all about who has the coolest toys.
I've seen folks with digital cameras at sporting events spend more time watching the action through the camera's tiny viewfinder than just sitting back and enjoying the game.
Bach in a carwash?? Naw, that's Stevie Ray Vaughn time.
Speaking of car washes, there is this awful, awful 70s movie called "Car Wash." It spawned that equally awful hit disco song by Rose Royce. Anyway, about a year or two ago, my kids and I found it while scanning though the cable stations. They were cracking up to see what passed for entertainment when I was their age. We started riffing it MST3K style. Sad to say, I think I remember actually paying to see it when it was in the theatres with some girl.
The bane of my existence. When music had to be produced live, it was a rare and beautiful thing, and few people had the time or resources to waste on producing crap. There is nothing like surfeit to dull the edge of pleasure.
At least they were watching the game, albeit through a tiny viewfinder. Apparently, you spent the whole game watching them instead of the game :)
Just turn off anything that makes noise. My cell phone has an "off" button, my iPod has an "off" button, my stereo has an "off" button, etc. The only thing that doesn't is the land-line telephone, and that you can disconnect.
This article struck me as some snob whining (more on "snob" later); in the book Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends by Penn & Teller, Penn writes about an encounter with just such a person. Basically, he and two other people got on an elevator. Each person was listening to their Walkman, and then a fourth person boarded. She looked at Penn and the other two people who were already riding and rolled her eyes. Penn asks her what her problem was, and the woman replied how everyone shuts themselves off from society or something. Penn then berates her, asking her if she really wanted to talk to some big ugly dude (Penn), some secretary, or some bicycle messenger (the other two people). He then says that they will give in: take off their headphones and talk, but that woman better say or do something to entertain them and actually care about what the music-listeners said. He then points out that this woman really just really wanted to complain about something that really is not a problem. Same thing here.
As to why I call Barrett Kalellis, the author of this article, a snob. Towards the end, he says:
"There is a proper way and a proper place to really listen to music. It is in the concert hall, in a club, in church or in front of a good stereo system."
Man, I guess I've been listening to music incorrectly all these years. Do I get my license to listen taken away? Will Kalellis break my iPod? Is he more deserving of it? This guy is a prick, and should get over himself.
I do it in my car and in my house. Everything I own has an off switch and I, being the super genius that I am, actually know how to push it.
You might want to go read some of the old drinking songs. Crap was produced back then as well. Almost every tavern had singers and they were not sing Bach.
Not if his wife is a Freeper and reads post #2.
I was on a commuter train the other day, talking to a friend on my cell phone, NOT loudly. The b!tch in front of me, thinking she was in a library I guess, kept turning around and giving me dirty looks and shaking her head in disgust. I finally said out loud to my friend "It's odd how you can hold a conversation with someone right next to you on the train, and nobody thinks a thing of it, but if you're on a cell phone, people think you're doing something wrong".
I eventually got disgusted and finished my conversation. I couldn't contain myself, and finally asked the woman, "I'm finished now, are you happy?", and she said yes. I'm not a violent man, but if it hadn't been for the risk of arrest, I'd have kicked her self-righteous ass.
I understand that there are places where cell phones are inappropriate (theaters, court, libraries), but the question again has to be, what's the difference between talking to someone on the phone versus in person? Is the conversation any less acceptable if no one can see the person you're talking to?
the dryers seeing you do a drum solo or lead air guitar to SRV can have its own tramatic implications
rock on!!!!
Jim Croce had, IMO, the best music-to-go-through-the-car-wash-by.
(thoroughly depressin', low-down, mind-messin', workin-in-the-carwash blues)- wasn't that Croce?
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