Name That Tune
No one complains about Musak (aka elevator music) anymore. That’s because there is not, strictly speaking, any more Musak. Nowadays, elevators, stores, bars, and restaurants get their background music from a variety of services, which allow them to choose a specific type of music — smooth jazz, for example. Many locales choose oldies, which to me doesn’t mean the 2000s.
Recently, my husband and I went to a chain restaurant for lunch. We were there early, which means it wasn’t noisy yet, so we could actually hear the ambient music. When we walked in, we immediately heard Clapton’s “Lay Down, Sally,” and took this as a good omen for agreeable music.
Indeed it was. While we were there we heard some Whitney Houston (the early, pre-drug years), Sinatra singing “My Way,” and a bit of Fleetwood Mac, all of which were just fine. Then a song came on that puzzled us at first — Coolio’s “Gangster’s Paradise.” Or maybe it was “Gangsta’s Paradise.” At any rate, I eventually recognized the song, though Dan didn’t. I told him it was by Coolio. (“Kool and the Gang?” he said. That’s how stuck in the past he is. But I digress.)
Even more puzzling was an instrumental piece that came through the speakers. There were rhythmic trumpets and drums. At last I recognized it. “That’s the Imperial March. From Star Wars.”
“No,” Dan exclaimed. “It can’t be.” But it was. And the longer it played, the easier it was to recognize. It couldn’t have been any more recognizable unless it was the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark. (Actually, that’s what I wanted for our wedding recessional. After all, we were embarking on an adventure, though it has seldom involved snakes. (Except for the time we were driving through Arizona and thought we saw a shed snakeskin on the side of the road. On closer inspection, it turned out to be a weathered piece of duct tape.) At any rate, the church organist balked and substituted the Love Theme from the movie Superman, which he probably figured was more appropriate but still a movie theme, though one that had no personal meaning for us. He was probably weirded out enough that I insisted on “Wildwood Flower” for the processional. But I digress at length.)
Returning to the aforementioned Coolio song, the reason I recognized it was that I knew the tune from Weird Al’s “Amish Paradise” and that it was Coolio because at the time there was confusion over whether he had given Al permission to use it.
Song parodies have sometimes proved even more confusing. I have friends who write song parodies, and sometimes the only way I know a tune is from their songs. My friend Tom Smith, for example, wrote a parody of “The Colors of the Wind” called “The Curlers of Delenn,” a Babylon 5 reference. I heard the original one day in a supermarket and wondered why they were playing a Tom Smith song. (I missed the Pocahontas movie.) Tom’s parody of The Proclaimers’s “500 Miles,” “500 Hats,” a Dr. Seuss tribute song, has affected me the same way.
(I have other friends who write parodies, too. Michael Longcor is one. He wrote a parody of the old folk tune “Lorena,” except about Lorena Bobbit, and one of Buck Owens’s “Act Naturally” called “Write Romantically.” He even wrote a parody of one of his own songs, a beautiful, tender love ballad called “Eternity’s Waltz.” He made it into “Eternity’s Polka.” But I digress some more.)
Of course, it’s not likely that I’ll hear “The Curlers of Delenn” or “Eternity’s Polka” as soothing background music anytime soon. But I like to imagine the kind of restaurant that would have them. I’m pretty sure there’d be a life-sized cardboard cutout of Weird Al right next to the hostess stand.
