I don’t remember any of the birthday parties I had as a kid, but I remember every single time I went to the doctor.
This is in large part due to Muzak. Muzak grounded you. It let you know where you were and that something bad was about to happen to you.
Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Muzak was everywhere. Doctors, dentists, optometrists, grocery stores, pharmacies, elevators—they all had Muzak piped in through invisible speakers, and like death, it was out of your control.
Over the years, I’ve discovered that I miss Muzak. I miss those bad, tinny re-records of familiar songs. It was almost fun trying to figure out what exactly the song you were hearing actually was in the real world, away from the dying rubber plants and the subdued murmurs of the sick.
It’s mindboggling to me that kids today aren’t forced to sit through a maudlin string rendition of Feelings while thumbing through an ancient issue of Highlights for Children that looks like it was dropped in the toilet, hung out to dry, and then returned to the table.
Today, you sit in a waiting room that, without exception, contains a flatscreen TV playing cable news or HGTV or something. Anything is better than reading a three-year-old copy of People. No Muzak necessary.
Plus, now there are smartphones. I would have sold my tiny soul for a smartphone back in 1975 while I waited to be called back to that chamber of horrors where the shots were dispensed. It doesn’t seem possible, but I’m pretty sure I got at least one shot every single year from whenever I gained consciousness until probably high school. So many shots.
Whyyyyy? Whyyyyy?
And speaking of which, why were they always in the butt (or hip, as they like to say)? I haven’t had a shot in my butt in thirty years. But when I was a kid, that was the only selection on the menu. Drop your pants and turn around. And here’s a crappy sucker for your troubles.
The History Of Muzak
I’ve always thought the term “muzak” was a derogatory and deliberate butchering of the word “music” used to refer to any generic, bland instrumental background music. It never crossed my mind that somebody actually invented Muzak and that they put thought into the name.
Muzak was in fact invented in 1920 (!) by Major General George O. Squier, the Army’s Chief Signal Officer during World War I. As if that weren’t bizarre enough, it was at first transmitted into homes through electrical wires. I have this vision of music emanating from people’s light sockets, but I assume there had to be speakers of some kind.
Remember, this was before radios were widely used and available. People were probably crazed for any kind of entertainment or distraction, even if it came through the toaster.
General Squire formed a company in 1934 to distribute his invention, which he named by combining the words “music” and “Kodak”, another forward-thinking company that was taking off.
And thus, for better or worse, was Muzak born. Original orchestrations (since no Spotify to select from — the horror…. the horror….) sold as a package to businesses to hurl aggressively at their clientele and to elevator companies to distract people from the fact that they were being transported to great heights in something closely resembling a coffin.
Of course, you can’t trust anybody, even an Army general with a penchant for harp music.
Muzak As Mind Control
In the 1940s, as World War II placed greater demands on industrial output, efficiency experts discovered that workers worked harder, better, faster, stronger when they listened to Muzak
This enticed the Muzak company to patent a system called Stimulus Progression, which offered 15-minute blocks of instrumental background music that slowly got faster and more intense as it neared the end of the loop, creating a subconscious sense of forward movement and leading directly to the creation of spin classes in the 1980s. [citation needed]
Stimulus Progression had questionable results, but the company survived, even when Ted Nugent pulled an Elon Musk and attempted a hostile takeover in 1986 with the sole intent of shutting the company down. (If only somebody could shut Ted Nugent down.) Ted deemed Muzak “uncool” and chose this particular hill upon which to make a stand.
Muzak Holdings was acquired by Mood Media in 2011, which has been busily acquiring other background music providers, at some point adding “scent” to its range of offerings.
This seems like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic since brick-and-mortar is slowing going the way of the dinosaur.
Personally, I was never soothed by Muzak. It’s the music of too-bright lights and small, institutional spaces. I associate it with pain and sickness and trips to places I didn’t want to be. Grocery stores with weight pads that flung the doors open and the smell of refrigerated meat. Spit sinks and wood paneling and indoor ashtrays.
But if you’re interested, here’s somebody’s private collection of tapes uploaded to the internet—scratchy, but recognizably proto-Muzak. This one is better because Percy Faith. Good ol’ Percy.
Maybe that’s what we need in these nerve-jangling times: a little less Post Malone and a little more Xavier Cugat.
Are we soothed yet?
Seriously, the beach??? Omg. What an abomination
It reminds me of Blue Velvet because Muzak is the kind of shit you'd be listening to while you murdered someone.