Agreed Clinton. In the modern world you need to know how to not hear. Unfortunately many on this group are musicians. For us music is a foreground activity, our brains generate our own music or play our own jukebox 24 hours a day. When your foreground is someone else's background it's not much fun.It's like having your brain scrambled.
It is seriously affecting my social life in restaurants, pubs, airports, shops etc. And I'm not alone as this thread testifies. I don't want to be a recluse, but I know I'm becoming more of one by the month.I suppose it's all about control. As music is the focal point of my life, both work and pleasure, all I ask is the right to control when and what I hear.Otherwise why should it not be possible for me to select that a shop play Stan Rogers? Or a train carriage be filled with the sound of my favourite novel being read? If I'm at the dentist why should he decide what I hear when I'm paying him? It's a problem that's affecting more and more decent people and making their simple social pleasures more of a chore. Music is like sex, it should be enjoyed in private, and if private, then everyone can enjoy whatever turns them on and no one else can object!