This afternoon I found myself back in the dentist’s chair. Part of my four-session, four-figure, root canal journey. It’s not all that pleasant to have the inside of a tooth filed clean. Even when it has been heavily sedated.
But the whole situation was made worse – much, much worse by the soundtrack. Dentists of course always want nice relaxing background music. Maybe some warbling [cough] r’n’b, or classic hits to hum along to as they drill and fill. Maybe a little Erik Satie. So what was the sound that had me begging for mercy in the dentist’s chair? Right now it is July. I am in Australia. The dental music of choice? It was “Last Christmas,” by Wham. Yes, during root canal.
The question is, have Town Hall members had similar inappropriate music moments?
(Please note: I spared you a link to any video connected to any of the above.)
Decades ago now, I was the Ride and Moral Support for a girl going for an abortion consult in the Great Northeast. (Across from the Nabisco factory.) If anyone’s interested, I believe this is the Nice Guy thing you can do for a girl that has the highest likelihood of assuring you Finish Last. Well, anyway, I sat there in the waiting area surrounded by shell-shocked, emotionally turbulent young women, wishing for a Children’s Highlights or something to distract myself with. But being pumped through the building was that gem from back then, “Me So Horny.”The levels of uncomfortable irony just rolled back and forth across the room again and again…
Interestingly, I was at the dentist this month, and I’m pretty sure I heard “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” Or does Brenda Lee have another song with the exact same chords and melody, but non-holiday specific lyrics?
When I was in Chicago earlier this month for a conference I was taken out to dinner by a vendor at the very nice restaurant in the Four Seasons hotel. The restaurant itself had music so nondescript I didn’t even notice that at some point a pianist had appeared to produce tinkly, low-key background sound. But when I excused myself to go to the bathroom during dinner, I discovered they were playing Wilco in there, I think something from Sky Blue Sky. It wasn’t exactly inappropriate maybe, and I know Wilco is a Chicago band, but it was definitely unexpected.
General, I’d have been looking for a cigarette machine, and taken up smoking again just to get the chance to get out of that room!
I don’t know if this exactly fits the question, but I always wonder if the people that pick songs for radio programs have any idea what those songs are about. Jim Rome using Lust for Life (same with the cruise line) just cracks me up. Why would anyone promoting family friendly stuff use a song about heroin as their theme? Or Rush Limbaugh missing the point of My City Was Gone entirely. Every time I hear that associated with his show, I just think, “here comes that guy that wants to turn the world into one giant Wal Mart in an empty city.” I always figured if I ever got to pick music for a show, it would be The Mentors or S.O.D. or something that if you found the song and got it, the average listener would be utterly offended.
My brother was at a corporate trade show thing once and Bad Company played one night. They played Feel Like Makin’ Love early in the set and then at the end they played it again. He said it was a bit awkward to be standing in a room full of middle aged guys dressed in business casual attire while they were all singing “Feel like making love to youuuu!”
My dentist happens to look very similar to Kenny Rogers. He’s cool enough to pipe a country station through his office. It’s a mix of older country hits (from the 80s, not Hank Sr. fare) as well as newbies. He’s pleasant enough that he hums along to whatever is playing. Everytime I go in, though, I just pray that a Kenny Rogers hit doesn’t start playing. I don’t think I could handle it.
TB
“Born To Run” playing over the PA in Big Lots (like a close out store version of Wal Mart) I felt the need to sing along at the top of my lungs, which drove my wife out of the store in a hurry)
latelydavidband, that’s very funny. I hope my dentist never grows a beard. I don’t want it going all Kenny Rogers on me.
General! I too have taken a woman to get an abortion at that VERY SAME clinic!!!
It was not even MY girlfriend, but the girlfriend of a friend who was away at college. I gotta agree with you about the nice guys finish last thankless quality of it. ugg!
What are the odds?!?
However, no ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ was piped in this day I can tell you.
But, more recently, in the bowels of Northeast Philadelphia, I had to take my 15 year old cousin to a heroin detox at friends hospital, which is a mental institution in the middle of a few cemetaries in the middle of the ghetto that used to be my childhood neighborhood. While i was in the waiting room (for hours) the reality show “Intervention” was on the TV. This show is about taking your relatives to the mental hospital.
Another time, I took my wife to the hospital in the middle of the night for servere abdominal pain, and while we waited (for hours), a security guard put on a bootleg DVD of “Live Free or Die Hard”
LOUD!
I was at the beach in Belmar, NJ this weekend and heard an ice cream truck playing “jingle bells.”
Some friend of mine had a jazz gig (ie background music) at a bar’s happy hour and at one point they played something that seemed out of place. I looked at them, they’re all cracking up and I recognize the tune as Kiss’, “i was made for loving you”.
There was a TV ad back in the early 90’s for some luxury car and it used part of the Mozart Requiem. Which part would you want to associate with riding in a car? Yes, “Dies Irae”, the day of reckoning. No sale!
Above should read “some friends of mine”….
The supermarket I go to insists on playing R. Kelly while children scream at their parents for cereal. Nevermind that the song of choice is still “I Believe I Can Fly”–last I heard, Mr. Kelly was up on charges of child rape. Even if the charges were dropped (and with that blurry tape, I don’t see how they could have), the stain of taint in something like that should still be enough to boot him out of the family grocery store for good. Short memories may destroy us…
I try to make sure to carry my old-school Sony Walkman just so I get make it through the produce aisle. Tapes, batteries, rickety headphones. Ahhh…
Good stuff, brendabehan!