The Day Music Was Put on Life Support

One listener’s vital rock is another’s background music to be ignored or not even heard

Photo by Alexey Ruban on Unsplash

Background noise for people scheming, seducing, revolting and teaching
That’s all right by me, don’t think that I’m complaining
After all, it’s only leisure time, isn’t it?
Robert Wyatt, Moon in June

Seems as if every store I shop in nowadays has some sort of classic rock on the store speakers. Not “classic” in the sense of Dylan, Joni Mitchell, or the Beatles, but “big” hits from the past few decades.

Last night in late-night Wal-Mart, the intercom blasted XTC’s “Mayor of Simpleton” from 1989.

Now most of my music self-education stops around 1980, but I’ve come to appreciate a number of well-crafted pop / rock songs from the 80’s (the AllMusic bio of the band mentions Ray Davies as an inspiration for this album, so there you go).

Well, I’m grooving on the background music (“Where were these cucumbers grown”) but then start wondering: how does such a classic song resonate…