Music, music everywhere... or, more often than not, non-music. Every supermarket, every bar, every elevator hits you with horrible, homogenous non-music. To the point where one can be desperate for silence.
Naively, I thought there would be silence on offer in the serious sheet-music store that I had to visit yesterday to stock up on drum-teaching material. But no, not only were we being force-fed aural pollution, but it was so loud that the helpful assistant who was ordering some books for me couldn't hear what I was saying. And I couldn't hear what she was saying.
I think we were both close to giving up when the store manager saw the problem and turned down the noise. The episode reminded me of a great book by Mat Callahan (www.matcallahan.com) called The Trouble With Music, in which he persuasively documents the rise of non-music and offers a manifesto for the future of real music. It should be stocked in all music stores...