Nothing quite so mildly irritating as being in a store when an objectionably bland soft pop song from ten years ago comes on…

“Oh no, no, not Celine Dion… I wore myself out braving her first half-hour of fame…”

…except if, as you register the thought, someone near you starts to sing along with that song…

“You were myyy voice when I couldn’t speak…”

Yup, to most middle-aged heads of household doing their weekly grocery shopping, that music is soothing enough to hypnotize, perhaps into buying more stuff.  Whatever happened to silence?  Do people’s thoughts scare them so?  Maybe they fill our heads with muzak just so we aren’t aware enough to think we don’t need to buy half the terrible stuff we do.  And if they wanted to entertain us, they’d play decent music and not 102.7 Fresh, Today’s Best Music From The 90s.

I wrote a short play called A Job is a Job is a Job, about my first job – a month mostly spent marking down baby clothes at Macy’s.  In that play, as in my life, the musical culprit to this irritating end was James Taylor, especially – but also Billy Joel and Elton John – endlessly – on a loop – forever…   The good day out of four was when they played early Eagles songs, which at least had some guitar riffs.

The other end of this spectrum is Abercrombie & Fitch, that pulsar from which generates an aural assault of wordless cacophony at a volume not heard (literally) since I saw that awesome Faint show at Webster Hall in May 2005.

I’d read and type at Starbucks but there’s music there, too.

Endless distractions.