Dec 292011
There’s a cool Italian restaurant Philadelphia called Osteria. It’s one of our favorites, on a local list that includes chef Marc Vetri’s other two restaurants. Check it out if you find yourself seeking a fine, pricey meal in Philadelphia. However, as a regular in the Halls of Rock you may be distracted by the off-the-shelf AAA music in the background. It cheapens the hand-crafted food they serve. It’s like the waiter tossed a bag of Harry & David breadsticks on the table. I’ve been meaning to talk to them about this.
Today I’m in NYC, at a Miyazaki film festival. Between movies I ate a bowl of pho at a Vietnamese place playing a Jackson Browne album in the background. What’s wit dat?
It continues: heard Thorogood at an organic cafe tonight. At least it was Madison Blues.
Tonight while dining on Thai food, we were serenaded to some current non-descript American pop music. I don’t know what it was but it did not complement the spring rolls.
There’s a place downtown called Marliave that always bugs me in this regard. The food is really good and the room is gorgeous — pressed-tin ceiling, black and white tiles, old-fashioned radiators…all very between-the-wars. But the music is like Doug from accounting took over the DJing at your mom’s Christmas party. It should be small-group Ellington, some Brubeck, maybe a touch of bossa nova, but the stereo is playing, like, “Woolly Bully.” It just doesn’t work, and it’s made me stop going there.
About fifteen years ago I was in a trendy restaurant in Cambridge (East Coast Grill) when I heard most of the first side of the first Clash album played while we were eating. While I was thrilled by this, I heard at least two tables complain about the music. This past Tuesday night I was out with friends in Boston and we were talking about music in restaurants and I told that story. The very next song that came over the sound system at The Pour House was the Clash’s version of “Police and Thieves”. I’m still trying to make sense of it all.
If I heard The Clash being played I would focus more on the music rather than the people I was with. Sometimes a good thing, often not.
Don’t restaurants have to pay royalties to play music? Or can they use a service that gives them canned music?
Pretty much the same thing happened to me at salad cafe called Sweetleaf — but they were playing Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love.” I was picking up take out Chinese takeout recently and The Replacements “Achin To Be” started cranking — compliments of piped in XM radio.
Exactly!
I don’t know how much restaurant owners/managers think of the music when designing their restaurants. You would think they would! Mr. Royale and I are font snobs and turn down our noses/shut our pocketbooks when restaurants use bad font choices in their design. And the visual elements are usually very thought through when designing an eating establishment.
Here’s one service that’s used. Anyone know how much this sort of thing costs? I’m guessing oodles. Maybe, as andyr said, they have to pay royalties on their choices. Would playing the radio circumvent that?
http://www.magnummusicgroup.com/restaurant-music/
“Bad to the Bone” would be appropriate at a veggie cafe.
In theory, restaurants and bars get blanket licenses with ASCAP and BMI. There is significant debate about how much benefit most artists see from those licensing fees.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/12/restaurant-music_n_958419.html
http://www.woodpecker.com/writing/essays/royalty-politics.html
Marliave in Boston? I’ve not been there, but I hear good things about the recent improvements.
I can’t imagine that someone that owns a restaurant doesn’t know someone with some musical knowledge that couldn’t work something out like that for next to nothing. What music geek wouldn’t love to take his friends there and ask between bites, “what do you think of the music?” The site is dead on, though. The music does matter. Muzak is still around because they can back up their claims with increased sales and customer satisfaction.
Jimmy John’s is getting bigger around here, and I gotta admit, I really like their BLT’s. The first time I went I thought, “hey, this is pretty good Classic Rock – not the typical crapola.” But now whenever I go I notice it’s too loud (because the rooms are so hard), and the oddity seems to be that they play a lot of live songs that probably are bonus tracks on new rereleases.
This little cheapo place I like has the worst music on the planet, and it only goes for about an hour before it repeats, in the same order. The staff must be bonkers. But it’s all cover versions of stuff like Girl From Ipamena (weird with a man singing it), or Sinatra classics by people completely lacking charisma. If they didn’t keep my iced tea full and cold and make fantastic gyro’s, I wouldn’t eat there because the music is a joke. Sirius has to be cheaper, just turn on the 70’s station or something!
Never noticed the music at Osteria when I was there. One place in Phila with good food and music is Pub & Kitchen. Mostly ’80s but not extremely obvious. Last time I was there I picked up on New Order, Aztec Camera, Talking Heads and Red Ryder. There was probably 1/2 recognizable tracks and 1/2 oddities only a music nut would catch.
It’s time for the Rock Sommelier to pay a visit to these places, man. It’s time!
We’ve started frequenting a local bar nearby on Friday evenings and they play pretty good music. We’ve gotten into discussions with the owner about some of the stuff he plays. I think we’ll probably bring in a mix for him at some point since he now knows us well enough to know what we like to drink.
That’s cool. There’s a bar on South Bass Island that’s off the beaten path, and I really like it because it’s kind of dark and big assed cans of Labatt’s Blue are actually not crazily priced. They use a cd player full of burned cd’s and an iPod for their music. He let me plug my mp3 player in and we listened to a Dexateens album, which he liked and grabbed off my mp3 player. They make Bloody Mary’s with a big beef stick in them instead of celery.