Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Party Mix Food Music: What Do You Wanna Hear?
Posted by Carrington Fox on Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 8:27 AM
I recently dined in a restaurant that made a lovely visual impression, but the dreary music creeping across the room--an über-depressing electronica that might best be described as Synth-Dirge--made me want to put my face in my plate and cry.
I'll be the first to admit that my music palate is unsophisticated. (Just ask Scene music maven Tracy Moore how my forehead scrunches up when she talks about Emo and Death-Core.) I'd be happy if every restaurant played a happy loop of Frank Sinatra singing Cole Porter songs, with a little Miles Davis thrown in--unless of course it's the kind of friendly low place that calls for beer-soaked country songs.
Especially these days, I want all the cheery, treacly songs I can find, tunes that put a spring my step in this winter of discontent. I was thinking about giving the restaurant in question my old When Harry Met Sally CD? Or maybe suggesting they follow Obama's musical prescription: "Pick Yourself Up" from Swing Time makes great dinner music. Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra and Diana Krall all sing it beautifully. Any version will do.
What's on your ideal restaurant play list?
Comments (21)
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I'm not a huge fan of background music with vocals while I'm in a restaurant, especially when there are already volume issues in the first place. And songs with vocals are short so there's a stop-start-stop-start that makes me crazy and I end up focusing on the music instead of the cell phone call my dinner companion is making. So I don't mind the noodly electronica, as long as there's a consistent pace to it and I never notice it; I just want it to sound like something's going on that doesn't interrupt my meal.
If I wanted to hear Frank Sinatra sing to me while I ate, I'd bring a snack to a seance.
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I'd rather have the music be as low as possible in a restaurant—the booming techno at Ru-San is an instant moodkill. I want to hear my companion, not Sirius. And I'm a big fan of unadorned ambience.
Did anybody else hear Diana Krall when she played the (alas) defunct Caffe Milano downtown? Boy, it was sweet having national jazz headliners playing club dates here for a while....
There are many great things to do while listening to Frank Sinatra. Eating is not one of them.
Eno's ambient works?
Windy & Carl?
Tortoise?
Related question: Why is it that every time I go to Samurai as of late I end up listening to the Eagles Greatest Hits? Talk about a mismatch of music and food...
I used to program music for a restaurant company I worked for and it is a bitch. Everyone has an opinion and you will make no one 100% happy. I found the best median to be Bill Evans/McCoy Tyner piano trio stuff (late-50s/early 60s). Or you can just play "Kind of Blue" on an endless loop.
I did find that the Sinatra-type stuff is good for lunch and busy weekend nights. Keeps it popping and moving fast. On slow shifts the big band vocal stuff is brutal.
It was fun to occasionally torture the wait staff with 62 different versions of "You Make Me Feel So Young"...
I did love the all-honkytonk jukebox at Buster's in Murfreesboro, though. Nothing goes with ice-cold bottled Cokes, crinkle-cut fries and hand-patted burgers like Ferlin Husky's "Wings of a Dove."
I thought about Kind of Blue too, but I don't really want a record I love that much to be reduced to sonic wallpaper. It's not a mood enhancer, it's not audio decoration: it's a work of art deserving of your full attention.
My personal feeling is that if I notice the music when I'm dining, something is not right.
I usually cannot hear the music in a restaurant. Payback for too many loud concerts (occupational hazard). But my favorite music in a restaurant experience was at Woodlands on West End. Half way through the meal, my friend said "is that Pretty Woman?" It was the most entertaining Bollywood rendition of Roy Orbison's classic, sung about twice as fast as the original! I would not have recognized it or understood the verses, but the words "Pretty Woman" were sung in English and tipped me off.
When Sitar used to be up at Rivergate in the same shopping center where Books-a-Million is now, they had a 100% insane music mix. The highlight was easily the sitar version of Culture Club's "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?" It was seriously beautiful. We asked about it and Noresh made me a tape of it and gave it to me the next time I was there.
If the Yellow Porch would stop with the f'ing Muzak, I might actually go there for drinks. As a Woodbinian, it's damn near my only option for a cocktail anywhere close by and I'm not impressed with Melrose at all (shitty service from an apathetic staff does not a neighborhood bar make).
Dear Yellow Porch - turn that crap off
Genie's Persian Palace in Cool Springs has one of the strangest music I've ever encountered, some type of Iranian sitar mix. They play it through a TV, so it has pictures. Still, I love some Genie's buffet...great food.
Taste Of Tokyo had some type of Yanni-esque piano music playing when I used to visit. Very strange, which kinda went along with everything else there.
white noise. that's it. I have stopped eating in some out of town restaurants with expense account funds to spend because their muzak drove me away. "Yesterday" on a classical guitar is bad enough, but A Flock of Seagulls in that voicing makes every bite a time marker waiting for the dentist's drill to end. And I will not succumb to eating with earbuds and my own soundtrack. I want to enjoy the space!
If it has to be at all, I find I prefer the less complicated but still high quality vocals of yore: Dean Martin over Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney over Ella, Doris Day over Judy Garland. Just pleasant and non-complicated enough to go by smoothly. Not Perry Como smooth, but bright, sparkly, done. Billie Holiday is drinking music. Peggy Lee is - scratch that, Peggy Lee is somewhere else entirely (including my iTouch). Maybe it's because those songs and singers were before my time, so I don't have 10,000 memories zinging by with each verse. And I'm not analysing them like I do the so-called classics, or wincing at accompanying personal histories. I just hear them and smile, with no baggage. Good wine, good food, nice touch.
Alinea in Chicago doesn't play music at all - it's dead silent. And the silence makes everyone whisper. Even when the room is full, it's like being in a library. It somehow discourages any conversation at all.
I like the ipod put on shuffle at Martin's. Occasionally some one will have to quickly fast forward some of those David Allen Coe songs.
when my friend and i were at alinea last summer we talked up a storm... talked to the waiters - laughed out loud. so ummm, i dunno what you mean. same at per se. we weren't whispering - or annoying anyone. it was kinda normal.
WOW! Claudia ate at Alinea AND Per Se...
AND!, she had conversations at both! She is SOOOO metropolitan...
I kid!
Alinea, not for me. But, Avec is a whole different story. Why can't N'vegas have such a genius concept? Oh yeah, liquor laws...
nat - feeling insecure?
http://www.cookeatfret.com/travel/2008/08/25/avec-blackbird-and-charlie-trotters/
