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Doesn't Sound Right To Me

The Source

I don’t think I’m a curmudgeon. I’ve never considered myself a grouch. I tolerate rap music and the rings in the nose of the girl serving my soup. Let and let live is a pretty good way to ooze through life, and I always make a stab at going to bed thankful. But darn…when there’s something fixable and no one’s hurt, why not fix it? A former Jacksonville girl was home visiting recently and since we’d shared many hours onstage, she called me to see if I’d like to have dinner. Never wanting to pass up an evening with a beautiful lady, I agreed to meet her. She suggested that she’d never seen the “new” Jacksonville Square so traveled uptown to nosh a bit in one of our great local eateries. In a word, she was impressed. We had to stop and stare at the new arch for some time. She thought it was beautiful, and when we walked onto the square itself she nearly cried. Jess is a girl who’d always loved Jacksonville and to see the town renew itself in the midst of tough economic times was both a shock and a joy. She said, “This is the Jacksonville my grandma used to talk about. Now I get to see it.” Although Grandma’s square bustled a bit more, we both enjoyed the sight. I was hungry but Jess insisted that we first walk around the refurbished center of the town to get a better look at the storefronts and simply enjoy the ambiance. She was my guest so I asked my rumbling stomach to take a break and we took off walking. Birds….circling cars….the beauty of a late summer evening….and The Beach Boys. Beach Boys? “Why are they playing that music?” she asked. “What??” (we were standing under a speaker) “The music. That just ruins everything.” “I can’t hear you. Let’s walk over to the statue.” I couldn’t answer her question. It was indeed the Beach Boys and they were indeed drowning out every sound that nature was trying to provide us that night. Beach Boys: 6, Birds: 0. Finding myself somehow as a representative of Jacksonville I offered a few weak explanations. “Maybe they have a contract with somebody on the speakers.” She didn’t buy it. “I don’t like it,” she said. “Such a shame. All this improvement then you can’t hear anything but rock and roll.” Mind you, this was a girl who was born and bred on rock music. “I wish we could hear the birds. I wish we could hear …you know…anything.” It’s been a dream of mind to open a restaurant with a small sign out front saying, “No music is playing inside. You won’t have to shout.” This may sound strange coming from a guy who spends a great deal of his life making music and on the riverboat I often play while people are eating, but I regard live music as belonging to a different category. You can watch live music being created. If a group of guitarists had started a jam session on the sidewalk in front of Aquatic Treasures or Home Town Books, we’d have walked over to listen. Live music is…well…live. Canned music is from New Jersey or somewhere. I’m not kidding. Many years ago we were shooting a television commercial at Lincoln Square Shopping Center, but the piped in music made it impossible to get good audio out on the sidewalk. Our producer did some quick checking on how to shut off the cacophony overhead. He found that the music was controlled in New Jersey. New-by-golly-Jersey! Maybe I’m overly sensitive. I often sit through our local theatre group’s highly amplified shows with my fingers in my ears. The volume actually hurts. I have a friend who calls this The Branson Syndrome. Our entertainment audience is increasingly made up of Baby Boomers who are going deaf and the entertainment established have had to ratchet up the sound so they can hear Andy Williams croon Moon River. Another reason I’ve never been to Branson. But Andy Williams is not on the Jacksonville Square and when I go down there I want simply…as my friend Steve Warmowski so ably puts it, “Hear what’s here, not what’s not.” I used to play piano in the Pump Room restaurant under the Blackhawk. Whenever the tables were full and people were waiting to be seated, the owner would come up and whisper for me to play faster music. He’d read somewhere that people eat faster when the music is livelier. Maybe it’s because they can’t hear each other talk and there’s nothing to do but eat. Does the music on the square encourage people to shop quickly then get the heck out of Dodge? There are wonderful people who have absolutely busted their buns turning our square into a still-developing treasure, and I applaud all that they’ve done. But would it really doom our little town to perdition if we sent the Beach Boys packing? Or if the sounds of nature must be squelched completely, how about the Greatest Hits of the Byrds?