The end of lunch as we know it

In the restaurant where I had lunch today there was music playing. This is fairly common practice in eateries, presumably aimed to provide some semblance of ambiance, to provide the patrons with a pleasant environment, escaping for a brief period the firestorm of hectic modern living. And because when it's too quiet people expect there to be books on shelves, and that doesn't make people want fries with that.

It sounded like one of those commercial-free satellite stations, with the focus on pop hits from the 80s, a decade I remember alarmingly well, and one apparently popular with the restaurant’s demographics. Or just the one the manager left it on by mistake. As I waited to place my order, the song playing through the speakers was "Electric Avenue" but the singer was not Eddie Grant. It sounded pretty much the same in tempo, arrangement, etc., but the song clearly had been re-recorded by someone who sounded about as reggae as Pat Boone. It wasn't muzak, but still it made Pat Boone's version of "Tutti Fruitti" seem as raucous as Little Richard's.

(I don't remember the 50s firsthand, but have listened to a reasonable amount of oldies radio. For you youngsters, there was a time when to make rock n' roll—which some called "devil music"—palatable to a conservative audience, the hits of black artists were redone by popular white singers of the day, with all the soul pretty much sucked out. Oh wait. I forgot we still have "American Idol", so you know about that. Anyway, let's get back to our story.)

I found myself wondering who would bother with such a watered-down remake (and, moreover, why any radio station would play it). Then I was enlightened: The next song was "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"—well, a version of that track that featured a vocalist who resembled Cyndi Lauper inasmuch as she too was female. By the time I got my food I'd gleaned the station's whole format revolved around pale imitations of songs that were popular during the Reagan Administration. Again befuddlement struck me: Why did these songs need to be redone in a manner that was neither muzak nor music? And why wouldn't the station just play the original versions? I suspect the royalties being charged for Eddie and Cyndi were well within the range of anyone with at least a paper route.

Part way through my meal, after I'd tuned out the sound, I was brought back into the fold when I noticed "California Girls" playing. Not the Beach Boys, of course, but in the same paltry style as the other songs. I revised my surmise of the format to be lame (as in limping) covers of pop songs from multiple decades (because why should only one ten year period be insulted?).

And then in the hollow harmony of the chorus, between the overlapping "I wish they all could be California Girls," I discerned the lead singer interject, mildly: "I love them girls… whoa." (Exclamation mark withheld on purpose.)

I took petty solace in having been right in the first place. This was a cover of the David Lee Roth cover of the Beach Boys, lacking in the sunny flavor of the original or the cheesy schmaltz of the remake. And with that I was not so much wondering why it was being played but merely curious why they couldn't get Diamond Dave himself to re-sing it. (I bet he'd work for scale.)

While it's easy to criticize an establishment that would actively use that in their attempt at ambiance, both for health concerns (that it can't be a good environment for food preparation) and out of simple respect for rock music in its myriad non-watered-down forms, I think I understand the higher purpose of the crap.

It came to me when later I saw an ad for a new a series NBC is to begin airing called "Revelations" (based roughly, I imagine, on the Biblical prophecy of the end of the world, where I'm pretty sure Satan comes to rule over the earth or something like that). Whatever your religious proclivities, I think you would have to agree: there's no way any lord of the underworld would spring forth and want to take dominion over a world with an entire station devoted to taking songs that were not that great in the first place and making them worse, with an abject lack of irony.

Rest easy, people: Surely the Devil wants no part of this "devil music".