The renowned pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim gave a BBC Reith lecture two years ago in which he launched into a two-footed tackle on elevator music. "Angry and disgusted" types found a new hero, and the BBC was bombarded with supporters of Barenboim's attack.
In a rare DIY fit, the BBC asked some of the people complaining to keep a diary detailing all the times they were exposed to such music on a daily basis. The survey found an average urbanite is exposed to 76 minutes of "unchosen" music every day, ranging from elevator lift music to mobile ringtones to hoodies playing their ghetto- blasters on the bus to all the piped music in department stores.
The results were pounced on by a quasi-militant UK group called Pipedown International, which for the past 15 years has campaigned for a blanket public ban on unwanted public music. Their patron, the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, talks about "the spreading cancer of piped music everywhere, an aural pollution every bit as bad as cigarette smoke".
Pipedown activists carry printed cards around with them when they go shopping. In shops with no piped music, they hand the manager a card that reads "Thank you for having no music". When their ears are assaulted by so-called passive music, they hand over a card which reads "Your music has lost you my custom". I'm not making this up.
With patrons ranging from Stephen Fry to Joanna Lumley to Prunella Scales to the reformed music journalist Tony Parsons, Pipedown International is a well- oiled political lobby group that regularly drags senior managers of large retail groups into a room, where they are sternly lectured about their use of piped music.
These noiseniks have scored some significant successes. In the UK they persuaded Tesco and Sainsbury's not to broadcast music in their aisles. In their "biggest victory ever", they persuaded Gatwick Airport to stop playing all piped music in the terminals after a passenger survey found that 43 per cent were very opposed to it. They're currently browbeating Marks Spencer.
Pipedown International are big supporters of "No Music Day", which happens to take place today. No Music Day is organised by Bill Drummond, who was one half of the "art terrorists" KLF in the early 1990s. The avant-garde pop group had a number of big hits, then abruptly deleted their entire catalogue and publicly burnt £1 million of their royalty money.
Drummond began No Music Day in 2005 because he felt overwhelmed by the amount of music that is either "unchosen" or a click away. For him, No Music Day is a time to reflect on the role of music in society and act as a necessary "palate cleanser". Three years on and No Music Day has become a bit of a fixture. You can find out what the Irish chapter has got planned at www.nomusicireland.com.
No Music Day is perhaps more a concept than a practical call-to- arms. It's true that, on No Music Day 2007, BBC Radio Scotland dropped all music from its programming (even jingles for the news). All very conceptual-art- statement of them, but the Beeb slightly undermined the serious intent of Drummond's plan by sending out DJs onto the streets to "arrest" people wearing headphones.
There will be music on BBC Radio Scotland today. And everywhere else. But maybe that's missing the point - if there is a point to be missed.
bboyd@irish-times.ie
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