Wednesday, April 09, 2008

A problem Chered

I have a favourite coffee shop. I've lived there at various times over the last few years. They do very decent large mugs of coffee, a broad menu of hot food, have very decent staff and I just love the spot. It's not a multinational Starbucksy chain, another reason to like it. It has just one problem. Music.

Over the years it's varied wildly. There seems to be no official policy (a good thing I always think as it can lead to some nice surprises) and there have been varying experiences from jazz to current rock to a brief lived but great period of Chinese pop music. However the last two times I've been in over the last few weeks (I don't get to go that often these days as I've moved away) they're been playing the greatest hits album, from one end to another, of just one 20th century music giant.

Cher.

Everything from bloody Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves (which I quite like) to her awful cover of Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down), Believe, Love And Understanding, Just Like Feckin Jesse James and the painfully awful If I Could Turn Back Time

It's enough to actually put me off going there. But, let's say I do go up one morning and ask them politely to change the soundtrack, am I not going to look like the biggest arsehole in the village? Should I just put up with it? Or instead just slip away across the road to the (far less nice) Irish chain or the flashy new Starbucks down the road which I know is a Cher-free zone?

The great existential dilemmas of the 21st century.

8 comments:

  1. Last three times I've been in La Caverna in Temple Bar: Celine friggin Dion. She's Canadian! Not Italian. You'd swear the waiters were gay or something.

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  2. A knotty problem, indeed. Perhaps you could 'gift' them with a personally chosen collection.

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  3. Tough call cause yes you're gonna look like an arsehole even if it is the shitest music ever.

    But I'll go you one better HO; a certain friend on mine who you know, who teaches aerobics, has an aerobics dance version CD of Cher's greatest hits. Just when you though you've hit a new low.

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  4. That could be my ultimate nightmare.

    I thought it would be to have someone poking me with a stick and saying 'Dance, fatgirl, Dance', but aerobics to Cher must be worse.

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  5. Not sure if this will help... but me and an (irish) mate were out for drinks in Stockholm and the place was nice and all, but the music was doing our heads in. They played nothing but Eurovision Song Contest songs (or schlagers as we call them).

    So very politely (as I recall it) we asked if, by any chance, there was another record we could listen to, and the barman said: "Sure. Which year do you want to hear?" Turns out the place is a "schlager" place.

    In a café though, I think I'd probably just put my walkman on.

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  6. I was going to say that, but you can't do that if you're with other people.

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  7. I meant to say Kudos on the title by the way.

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  8. Damien - howya! Another lurker, eh? I feel your pain. Celine is definitely worse than Cher.

    Jo - Weirdly I did think of that but isn't that more presumptuous? "Lads, you have shite taste in music, I don't so here's some of mine!" As for the title I was bound to do one decent one eventually, eh? ;)

    Dolly - I would LOVE a bar like that. Sad, I know.

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