urban tale with music

Subject: urban tale with music
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 28 Jun 06 - 09:55 AM

Last week I was in the Quik-grease waiting room while they changed my oil and cleaned the fuel system. It was a long wait. With me in the waiting room were two other women. One, Delores, is white, about 68, and a member of my church. The other was a young black woman, very heavy.

Delores and I chatted a bit, then we turned to reading. However, I found that I couldn't read. And why? Because the Quik-grease people were piping rock music into the waiting room, and every piece had the same ugly, high-pitched jangling accompaniment. It was so tunelss and arrhythmic that it must have been computer-generated, and it was utterly relentless and invariant. No doubt the station was playing several numbers by the same band, and this irritating noise was their trademark. Either that or they flipped a switch on the synthesizer and then forgot it was still going.

Of course, this rock was going on against the background music of a noisy shock, for the Quik-grease does much more than change oil.

Well, I decided to get myself a drink of water at the water cooler, and when I approached it, I realizd that the noise was getting louder. The music, I deduced was not being piped in, there was a radio somewhere. Yes, it was inside the cabinet that holds the coffee maker that produces the acrid black sludge.

I flashed a glance towards the computer and saw that the prison guard had stepped away. Moving quickly, I figured out how to reduce the volume (they make volume controls more cryptic all the time) and pushed the minus sign 1,2,3 times! Ahh!

I would have like to turn it off, but that would have tipped Them off.

The young black woman didn't say a thing or even look at me, but an interesting thing happened. Her whole body seemed to get smaller. She had been under such tension from that loud, ugly sound that she had been pushing on, making rigid, the whole front of her body. Also, as I turned around and closed the cabinet doors, her shoulders dropped perceptibly, as she relaxed. I had guessed right - she was not into the self-pitying plaints of able-bodied white guys.

Delores didn't speak either, but the look she gave me was one of warm, pure love. I sat down, and this time I could read.
----------
From the web site of the Municipal Employees Union (AFSCME)

"Noise also affects health in other ways. [besides hearing damage]It causes stress and increased blood pressure, and may contribute to heart disease and ulcers. Working in a noisy environment for long periods of time can make workers tired, nervous, and irritable, and has also been linked to insomnia and loss of appetite."

Subject: RE: urban tale with music
From: GUEST,Bradley
Date: 29 Jun 06 - 09:58 PM

I was there when they made the track for that sound. What they did, they got 11 babies, about 8-10 mos old, gave them spoons and glass jars. They glued the jars to their feeding trays with Superglue for safetly. Then they got their moms to encourage them to bang on the jars with the spoons. The first attempt had the right amount of haphazardness to it, but it was a little thin, so we recorded the track over itself with a 17 millisecond delay a couple times. Then the sound engineer speeded it up to raise the speed and pitch, and it was done.