Having sat today in a local hostelry for 20 minutes, I was able to identify that the 'piped musak' consisted in at least four differing manifestations of essentially the same type of noise. The mechanical 'beat' in each item was continually interrupted by essentially the same kind of whining vocalization that expressed (I thought) aggression rather than passion (though in each case the clearly 'mock' US accent did little to fool the ears).

I was left wondering this: is it now to be the lot of 21st-century 'pop' music (like it was of that from the late-20th century) to continue relentlessly the tradition of creating noises that seek only to imitate the raucous noise of a rusty jigsaw being worked inside a popcorn factory?

AAH!

Opilec,

I'm here and thinking about you. I lived on a council house estate myself in the 1970s and that sort of behaviour was unheard of then. In this case the parents should have to pay for the damage and the children concerned should have to apologize to your face and see at first-hand the trouble they've caused.

Opi; sorry to hear about your experience.  I live in a pretty quiet area, but that sort of stuff still happens.

You're clearly not sensitive enough to the subtle differences between various works in the genre.

opiopiopi!
you should have told me, and i would have whizzed you straight round to mein haus!

hope you're feeling a little less shaken.
i know...try working on a vocal score or something...

opi,

That sounds like a very dispiriting experience: I hope that with the new day you're feeling better about it, but the aftershocks from such events can tend to ricochet across your emotions for a while, so remember to post here whenever you need more support.

 As George says, they've really no concept of the distress they're causing, and it's not even usually intended personally: just the only way they know of getting kicks and showing off to each other; a sad indictment of society at large and the total lack of parenting skills, direction and responsibility which are becoming an ever growing facet of it.

Ron

Consider super "markets" - not actually markets at all since people are discouraged from haggling therein - but they (in contradistinction to hostelries) are filled the whole long day with the recorded sound of women wailing, cleverly disguised as a sort of music. For this reason we ourself do not care to enter them, but we understand that in the ears of a good many people the sound is somehow a psychological encouragement not as might be thought to acquire worldly goods but on the contrary - in line with funeral rites in many parts of the world especially Asia - to part with - sacrifice - considerable quantities of money by showering it in sympathy upon those who suffer and grieve.

On the more general point of Mr. Iron's experience, what he describes is just music for the unmusical - the waving about of a guitar is more a symbol than anything much else. We suppose it to have begun with Picasso and Braque, and been carried on by such as Shortacowitch. But it makes one think: what for those with no visual sense constitutes art? And what for the unliterary literature?

Surely the so-called 'free' news-papers distributed throughout London and particularly on the Underground one suspects at least partly as a measure for the creation of employment since legions of poor downtrodden persons appear to be employed either in their forcible distribution - we are often required to change course on the pavement to avoid an almost violently proffered journal - or in their disposal from tube carriages.