Here’s the latest winger cause du jour:
If you’ve ever been stuck on hold with a congressional office in the past, at least you’ve been able to enjoy some good patriotic music, as opposed to the lilting tones of generic smooth jazz that have been driving elevator users insane for decades. For years, congressional offices have played patriotic anthems as the background music during hold times.
Not any more. After we were startled by the hold music when we called a House office recently, sources on Capitol Hill informed us this week that the Democratic House leadership has made a sweeping decision that congressional offices now have the options of “smooth jazz” elevator music or no music at all.
ThinkProgress explains:
Here’s what happened: Congressional offices have traditionally been able to have a choice of music or no music. The CD that had been in the congressional muzak system for “a long time” was a “patriotic tunes CD.” The CAO’s office wanted to test a program giving people a choice of multiple CDs and decided to try out a jazz CD because it’s “what a lot of companies have when you’re on hold.” However, based on the feedback they received, they simply decided to go back to the old system.
Great, so instead of songs that make good about America, Madame Speaker wanted you to listen to hopped-up hepcats be-bopping and scatting. Good thing they stopped her.
arguingwithsignposts
The CAO’s office wanted to test a program giving people a choice of multiple CDs
Why do these people hate America?
Personally, I think every congressional staffer’s office should have to have the full version of “This Land is Your Land” playing on the goddamned machines.
Fuck I hate these sanctimonious pricks.
beltane
Jimi Hendrix makes me feel good about America. “Let the Eagle Soar” makes me feel bad about life on earth in general, and America in particular.
JackieBinAZ
It’s not like jazz was made in America or anything stupid like that.
Bill E Pilgrim
Good for them. That other music has saxophones in it and once you allow that, god knows all hell breaks loose.
I think we should rename those curvy instruments “Freedom horns”. Also.
Bill E Pilgrim
@beltane: Jimi Hendrix makes me feel good about America. “Let the Eagle Soar” makes me feel bad about life on earth in general, and America in particular.
Yeah, but Hendrix’s version of Let the Eagle Soar was awesome.
El Cid
If this is to be a True Patriot Conservative America, then the hold ‘music’ and elevator background noise should clearly be an alternation between a recording of Charlton Heston reading the Pledge of Allegiance (with the volume greatly raised, electronically if need be, for “UNDER GOD”) and Ronald Reagan warning us that the Sandinistas were a mere two day’s drive from Harlingen, Texas.
If music must be necessary, then it must be the theme song to “Walker, Texas Ranger”, but not loud enough to interrupt heroes Heston and Reagan.
WereBear
Support a system that would keep people from dying? Unamerican!
Make people listen to “patriotic music”? Shows they care.
Asshats.
dmsilev
@El Cid:
Fixed.
-dms
Thomas Levenson
Can I just have this verse of the Star Spangled Banner, please:
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
shorter: stomp ’em all ’til their kidneys bleed. I can see why we always stop at one.
eric
Both suck. Howe about real jazz and real blues and real country and real rock from Americans. Mmmmm Porgy and Bess and maybe some willie nelson and then john coltrane.
noncarborundum
I do hope your description of “smooth jazz” as “hopped-up hepcats be-bopping and scatting” was facetious. Be-bopping and scatting would be real jazz.
asiangrrlMN
In response, I give to you the inimitable TBogg with the perfect riposte:
http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2009/08/31/roll-over-john-phillip-sousa/
arguingwithsignposts
@Thomas Levenson: I never got the Star-Spangled Banner as our national anthem anyway. But were someone to suggest changing it to “America the Beautiful” or something now, it would definitely bring on the wingularity.
Bill E Pilgrim
@noncarborundum: Some of what’s called “smooth jazz” may be artificial crap but some of it may be as legit as anything else, Earl Klugh or George Benson and etc etc.
It may not be your cup of tea and it’s not particularly mine, but the borders of jazz don’t stop at bebop.
I think the point here is that for the Wingnuts constantly looking for something to be hysterical about, even the blowdried stuff sounds scary and outta control to them.
Deborah
Anyone who found the time to work up outrage, or even mild ire, over Congress’s hold music needs to seriously consider what else they’re het up about. “I’m angry about hold music AND Tom DeLay’s showing on Dancing with the Stars AND my local ordinances regarding llama farming, and by gosh I’m going to let my congressman know. Or let Barney Frank know.”
Or do they get so enraged by the smooth jazz that they forget all about their thoughts on socializing medicine under our fascist/anarchic overlords and either hang up, or get diverted into a hold music rant when the staffer picks up the phone? Is it all an evil plot by Nancy Pelosi to cause all the people attempting to “Call your congressman about X” to start frothing over hold music and forget their other issues? Because if that’s it I will kick in toward the purchase of some serious Yanni.
DougJ
I do hope your description of “smooth jazz” as “hopped-up hepcats be-bopping and scatting” was facetious.
Yes, it was.
But I also agree that “smooth jazz” is a broad category. I’ve heard everything from Kenny G to certain MIles tunes played on stations that described themselves that way.
noncarborundum
@Bill E Pilgrim:
I’m guessing that the “smooth jazz” that someone decided to try because it’s “what a lot of companies have when you’re on hold” is extremely likely to be artificial crap. Because I’ve spent a lot of time on hold, and in my experience that’s exactly what you hear.
Thomas Levenson
@arguingwithsignposts: Yeah — and just imagine the implosion if we were to suggest not Irving’s saccharine but Woody’s fire: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaI5IRuS2aE
Porco Rosso
How about some good old Dock Boggs?
Thomas Levenson
Arrgh. Check before pressing publish — not Irving, but Katherine Lee Bates and Samuel Ward. And America the Beautiful is a lovely song — but Woody Guthrie’s is the anthem I really can get behind.
Crashman06
I’m pretty sure they want to hear Ashcroft’s “Let the Eagle Soar” on continuous loop. You know, reminds them of better days gone by.
arguingwithsignposts
@DougJ:
I believe Richard Thompson summed up Kenny G: I agree with Pat Metheny
Bill E Pilgrim
@noncarborundum: Entirely possible. Since I’ve lived in France for ten years I’ll defer to others on what elevators in the US play these days.
Just to be clear what I’m talking about, while Kenny G could be charitably called “smooth, jazz-flavored elevator pop” or something, from what I heard of Yanni there’s no way anyone could call that jazz of any kind, smooth or otherwise.
MikeJ
Patriotic hold music.
SpotWeld
Is the GOP honestly afraid that if Americans are not reminded in every way, at every opportunity how much they love thier country they will somehow become pot-smoking commie liberial hippie types?
gwangung
@Thomas Levenson:
Personally, I prefer the Uncle BOnsai version of the Star Spangled Banner….
Rosali
Doug, thanks for making me laugh.
I ride a lot of elevators and never hear music these days so I think elevator music disappeared in the 70s.
If there’s going to be a real jazz vs smooth jazz pie fight, I’ll be firmly planted in the real jazz camp.
Dr. Squid
@asiangrrlMN:
Yeah, I especially liked the visual he gave of conservatives calling their congresscritters and putting the hold music on speakerphone so they can march around in their underpants.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
For wingnutz, jazz = “dope-smokin’ negroes.”
Singularly un-American.
Mary Jane Leach
There are two streaming sources they should tap into, which would both feature American music. One is from the Smithsonian, and the other is DRAM (Digital Recorded American Music). They cover the gamut, from early American music to folk music to jazz to classical music. A lot of patriotic music is rehashed British music – let’s emphasize American music – there is a lot of good music out there.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
What, the audio tapes from the Nuremberg rallies weren’t available? Did somebody burn the archival print of ‘Triumph of the Will’? I’m so confused.
jetan
Seems to me Merle Haggard’s “Are The Good Times Really Over For Good?” would fit the mood of the constituents rather better than the smooth jazz.
low-tech cyclist
I look forward to doing business with any outfit that gives me the choice of what music to listen to while on hold. Or preferably none at all.
Dave
@Bill E Pilgrim:
It may not be your cup of tea and it’s not particularly mine, but the borders of jazz don’t stop at bebop.
Which is why I fully support sealing our borders to keep the undesirables out.
Who will help me build this wall?
Mr Furious
If I have to sit on hold for more than a minute, I want something unobtrusive to pipe through my speakerphone—not the pomp and circumstance of a marching band blaring patriotic anthems…
Presumably I’m calling to attend to some business (or call my Congressperson a gutless pussy) and not to remind myself what country I live in.
noncarborundum
Let me add: I hate listening to hold music even when it’s music I would pay good money to hear at a concert or on a CD. Most hold music comes through the phone with the audio fidelity of a pair of tin cans connected by a string. I vote for silence.
xochi
Man, what a bunch of philistines. We’ve come a long way from the days when Cecil Taylor (!) played in the White House. America hates its own musical heritage.
Anne Laurie
@Thomas Levenson: Or we could revive the DFH lyrics from the second through fourth verses of ‘America the Beautiful’:
“America! America! God mend thine ev’ry flaw;
Confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law!
O beautiful, for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America! May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness, and ev’ry gain divine!
O beautiful, for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years,
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!… “
Of course the flag-humpers claim they’re all in favor of confirming souls in self-control, as long as it doesn’t involve giving up their own favorite closet vices, but I want to see Orinn Hatch sing about heroes who love “mercy more than life” without choking. Or being struck by lightning.
Conrads Ghost
Am I the only one who sees this as a good thing? I have knocked on thousands of doors as a block walker (and salesman, bad memories) and I can say with confidence that there are many, many folks here in TX to whom “patriotic” muzak would be very, very soothing, even essential. It was eye opening (me being a dirty hippie bohemian and all) to encounter these folks personally, talk to them, see how they live. A whole other world, almost completely disconnected from my own experience – and I grew up in suburbia. So I can see how some (many) folks would actually be authentically upset at the loss of something they closely identify with. Such a small thing, also; if patriotic muzak provides balm to some souls, by all means let ’em have it.
I also have to see such a focus on relative minutiae as a good sign; perhaps if these kinds of complaints are respected, then might less energy be spent on half witted attempts to sabotage progressive legislation? I dunno. Yes, to me nit picking over muzak seems dim, constricted, even ridiculous; but I can’t dismiss out of hand that these concerns might to many represent more than appears, and honoring the same might have larger butterfly effects than might be expected. “Sir/madam, we would be happy to restore your preferred hold music. Thank you for expressing to us your love of your country.”
Me, however – give me Husker Du, ore give me death.
Warren Terra
Once more these Professionally Outraged people make me miss Molly Ivins, who compared similar idiots to some breed of fainting goats, falling over a dozen times a day at the slightest provocation.
gil mann
perhaps if these kinds of complaints are respected, then might less energy be spent on half witted attempts to sabotage progressive legislation?
My immediate impulse is to a) laugh in your face and b) point out the myriad examples of minor concessions being made to the jingoistic Right in hopes that their stance would soften only to see them become even more horrid and foot-stompingly demanding, but you seem like a nice enough sort and Husker Du’s pretty good so instead I’ll just say no, it probably won’t play out that way.
Tax Analyst
Next thing you know they’ll be playing Nigro Blues and it won’t be safe to be a white woman in the Capitol.
Tom Levenson
@Anne Laurie: Mercy more than life. Naah. Much to DFH-ish, as you say…or perhaps I could turn to my man Albert (Einstein) who said in his contribution to what was billed as a collection of patriotic German essays to be published in 1915 that war was the extension of the mores of schoolyard bullies…and then at the end of his three pages wrote, with vicious, delightful disdain, “why so man words whe I can say it in one sentence, one very appropriate for a Jew: Honor your master Jesus Christ not only in words and songs but rather, foremost, by your deeds.”
Jon H
“Great, so instead of songs that make good about America, Madame Speaker wanted you to listen to hopped-up hepcats be-bopping and scatting. ”
AFAIK, there’s precious little be-bopping and scatting in smooth jazz.
Think Kenny G, not Thelonious Monk or Count Basie.
People who call the offices that choose no music are definitely the winners here.
Jon H
“Some of what’s called “smooth jazz” may be artificial crap but some of it may be as legit as anything else, Earl Klugh or George Benson and etc etc.”
Sure, but I suspect a lot of what gets played as hold music is *not* by the original artists. It’s a bland cover by some cheaper anonymous studio musicians, in order to avoid paying a performance royalty to the original artist. They just pay the songwriter royalty.