I’d suggest that the music (or Muzak) which accompanied our elevator excursions has nowadays been shunted to the recorded filler that we hear on the telephone while on hold. Every bit as annoying and prefab.
So-called elevator music, if no longer in elevators, can still be found in supermarkets everywhere, seemingly adjusted to the supposed age groups of the customers. But perhaps the best elevator music of all is Miles Davis's score for l"Ascenseur pour l'Echafaud, "Elevator to the Gallows," a New Wave film by Louis Malle.
In the 80s I worked for a company that merged with Muzak, so I got some inside intel and an amazing story I’ll have to properly tell another time. Muzak was founded and pitched on the idea that they had scientific evidence showing a gradual increase in tempo, and I believe pitch, over about 20 minutes would increase productivity of workers and shopping time. Then the cycle would start over. This is how they got in every supermarket, drugstore, and department store chain across the country. I’m not exactly sure how this ever related to elevators. They were originally in NYC but moved to Seattle and when the merger happened me and my boss (we were the audio production team) went to visit their head programmers and audio engineers. What a trip! Around that time Muzak was already pumping out unlikely titles such as Madonna’s Like A Virgin in sappy full orchestral instrumental schlock that apparently they solicited and bought from a stable of orchestras and arrangers from around the world (especially poorer countries were labor was cheaper). I kind of wish they ended up going all the way to putting out instrumentals of songs like I Wanna Be Your Dog or WAP. Just to see who’s paying attention. The company I worked for pumped music into supermarket and drugstore chains across the country first with cassettes and then satellite but the main difference was it was filled with terrible ads that we produced. We had been steadily putting Muzak and others out of contracts because we gave them instore ads as well. There’s a lot more to the Muzak visit. And creepy experiments with subliminal messaging which I’m fairly certain had no basis in science.
My last recollection of elevator music was in the The Standard Hotel over by the Highline in NYC. Pre pandemic I occasionally performed at their roof top bar and the elevator had a loop of a very trippy video with music that was something between a Circue Du Soleil nightmare and animated versions of the Santana III album cover. At least they weren’t selling anything and it was actually nice that it was really just an art piece without any obvious agenda or genre.
He shook his head and noticed the front page of his newspaper. “Oh, see the news?”
“Nope.”
“Read it. Crazies, just twisted antisocial sickos.”
I started reading. A member of a jazz band working as an elevator technician for a skyscraper in Chicago had, according to testimony, gotten sick of piping easy listening music into the elevators, so he had put in a tape of Mingus’s “Better Git It In Your Soul” right at the height of morning traffic. Three elevators had been destroyed as the dancing matched the resonance frequencies of the elevator cables and 47 people had fallen to their deaths, while in the remaining elevators a deathly silence prevailed; 586 people had been institutionalized as they stared into space and muttered about being brought face to face in a padded box with the meaninglessness of their lives before slipping into catatonia. For perpetrating such a major attack against the American business system and way of life, the jazzbo had been arrested for terrorism and the rest of his band with him for good measure. Homeland Security had issued a list of acceptable recordings for elevators and had considered exhuming Mingus’s corpse and scourging it publicly as a warning against discontents and malcontents until they learned he had been cremated.
I have not been in an elevator in decades. Personally I would not want music in any elevator that I took. When I did ride an elevator everyday in the 1980's, I had a friend with a great sense of humor. In a full elevator he would ask me questions like "How did that guy who you hit crossing the street make out?" I would give him answer like "Oh he's ok but will be on crutches for a while." Each time he would ask me a different question and I would reply in turn with a different answer.
The first elevator I took was in the 1950s and I was only 4 years old. It was in a building filled with sewing machines were my mother and her sisters worked in Chinatown. The elevator was "open." You could look over the sides and there was only a chain link that was about head high (to me). No music... just the sound of my knees shaking,
I think the definitive satire was provided on SNL in the 80s when Young Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel (played by Robert Downey, Jr. and Anthony Michael Hall) sell their souls to the Devil (Jon Lovitz) for success. Later, an elderly Paul Simon (who appears as himself) lives out his personal hell of listening to Muzak versions of his greatest hits while stuck in an elevator.
I believe that Erik Satie started the concept with his Musique d'ameublement or Furniture Music https://youtu.be/v1_iC42rsko which might have been the precursor of Philip Glass and his ilk. As a musician that type of background music drives me crazy. My first job as a box boy in a grocery store had Muzak piped in and apparently was on a loop. After working there for a short while I quickly memorized the playlist. Now the music that is piped in stores corresponds to the types of shoppers and the times of day. Sometimes it's programmed by the employees (like Trader Joe's). It's always popular music. I wonder if the Muzak company still exists? The use of popular music has superseded Muzak.
I assume music in elevators has to be licensed, so I'm curious if it is a victim of the forces of economics or business models. Otherwise, it just sometimes feels like the cheapening of American public life, as if more and more nobody feels like trying.
2) Growing up, a friend of mine in Saint Louis' father had a business which supplied all the hardware for Muzak LLP globally. He won a big contract in the early '80's: refitting the complete public address system in Medina, Saudi Arabia. The prime contractor: Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden.
Wonderful. In my world, people have always told me my choice of jazz is just "elevator music", which has made me very defensive of elevator music.
To your point, considering the historical reason for elevator music, perhaps the innovation today is that elevator music has come right into our lives - lofi, chillhop beats (10hr long yt playlists) that people keep running in the background of their days?
I wonder if there's any correlation with the decline of elevator music and the rise of the iPod, iPhones etc. Aren't people listening to their own music when they're in the elevator? Do they really want elevator music to add noise to that listening experience?
It sounds like Otis Elevator wants to stay relevant “the lighting, music or infotainment in the elevator cab will be tuned exactly to your preferences.", but I doubt folks will want to share their personal data with Otis Elevator for a personalized elevator experience. I'd vote to keep it simple, and let the elevator be the awkward moment of reflection.
Until I read this I actually hadn't noticed that elevators don't play music anymore. I guess that is a measure of how successful that insipid stuff was in REALLY being in the background.
I’d suggest that the music (or Muzak) which accompanied our elevator excursions has nowadays been shunted to the recorded filler that we hear on the telephone while on hold. Every bit as annoying and prefab.
So-called elevator music, if no longer in elevators, can still be found in supermarkets everywhere, seemingly adjusted to the supposed age groups of the customers. But perhaps the best elevator music of all is Miles Davis's score for l"Ascenseur pour l'Echafaud, "Elevator to the Gallows," a New Wave film by Louis Malle.
In the 80s I worked for a company that merged with Muzak, so I got some inside intel and an amazing story I’ll have to properly tell another time. Muzak was founded and pitched on the idea that they had scientific evidence showing a gradual increase in tempo, and I believe pitch, over about 20 minutes would increase productivity of workers and shopping time. Then the cycle would start over. This is how they got in every supermarket, drugstore, and department store chain across the country. I’m not exactly sure how this ever related to elevators. They were originally in NYC but moved to Seattle and when the merger happened me and my boss (we were the audio production team) went to visit their head programmers and audio engineers. What a trip! Around that time Muzak was already pumping out unlikely titles such as Madonna’s Like A Virgin in sappy full orchestral instrumental schlock that apparently they solicited and bought from a stable of orchestras and arrangers from around the world (especially poorer countries were labor was cheaper). I kind of wish they ended up going all the way to putting out instrumentals of songs like I Wanna Be Your Dog or WAP. Just to see who’s paying attention. The company I worked for pumped music into supermarket and drugstore chains across the country first with cassettes and then satellite but the main difference was it was filled with terrible ads that we produced. We had been steadily putting Muzak and others out of contracts because we gave them instore ads as well. There’s a lot more to the Muzak visit. And creepy experiments with subliminal messaging which I’m fairly certain had no basis in science.
My last recollection of elevator music was in the The Standard Hotel over by the Highline in NYC. Pre pandemic I occasionally performed at their roof top bar and the elevator had a loop of a very trippy video with music that was something between a Circue Du Soleil nightmare and animated versions of the Santana III album cover. At least they weren’t selling anything and it was actually nice that it was really just an art piece without any obvious agenda or genre.
From one of my satires:
He shook his head and noticed the front page of his newspaper. “Oh, see the news?”
“Nope.”
“Read it. Crazies, just twisted antisocial sickos.”
I started reading. A member of a jazz band working as an elevator technician for a skyscraper in Chicago had, according to testimony, gotten sick of piping easy listening music into the elevators, so he had put in a tape of Mingus’s “Better Git It In Your Soul” right at the height of morning traffic. Three elevators had been destroyed as the dancing matched the resonance frequencies of the elevator cables and 47 people had fallen to their deaths, while in the remaining elevators a deathly silence prevailed; 586 people had been institutionalized as they stared into space and muttered about being brought face to face in a padded box with the meaninglessness of their lives before slipping into catatonia. For perpetrating such a major attack against the American business system and way of life, the jazzbo had been arrested for terrorism and the rest of his band with him for good measure. Homeland Security had issued a list of acceptable recordings for elevators and had considered exhuming Mingus’s corpse and scourging it publicly as a warning against discontents and malcontents until they learned he had been cremated.
https://specgram.com/CLXVII.m/02.cain.real.trouble.html
I have not been in an elevator in decades. Personally I would not want music in any elevator that I took. When I did ride an elevator everyday in the 1980's, I had a friend with a great sense of humor. In a full elevator he would ask me questions like "How did that guy who you hit crossing the street make out?" I would give him answer like "Oh he's ok but will be on crutches for a while." Each time he would ask me a different question and I would reply in turn with a different answer.
The first elevator I took was in the 1950s and I was only 4 years old. It was in a building filled with sewing machines were my mother and her sisters worked in Chinatown. The elevator was "open." You could look over the sides and there was only a chain link that was about head high (to me). No music... just the sound of my knees shaking,
I think the definitive satire was provided on SNL in the 80s when Young Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel (played by Robert Downey, Jr. and Anthony Michael Hall) sell their souls to the Devil (Jon Lovitz) for success. Later, an elderly Paul Simon (who appears as himself) lives out his personal hell of listening to Muzak versions of his greatest hits while stuck in an elevator.
I believe that Erik Satie started the concept with his Musique d'ameublement or Furniture Music https://youtu.be/v1_iC42rsko which might have been the precursor of Philip Glass and his ilk. As a musician that type of background music drives me crazy. My first job as a box boy in a grocery store had Muzak piped in and apparently was on a loop. After working there for a short while I quickly memorized the playlist. Now the music that is piped in stores corresponds to the types of shoppers and the times of day. Sometimes it's programmed by the employees (like Trader Joe's). It's always popular music. I wonder if the Muzak company still exists? The use of popular music has superseded Muzak.
"the vertical transportation of the future will be able to recognize you as soon as you step onboard, "
Nice thought ... for them. They are assuming Every last human is on Social media. They are quite wrong on that count. Their idea won't work
I assume music in elevators has to be licensed, so I'm curious if it is a victim of the forces of economics or business models. Otherwise, it just sometimes feels like the cheapening of American public life, as if more and more nobody feels like trying.
1) No music/muzak in building lifts in Australia
2) Growing up, a friend of mine in Saint Louis' father had a business which supplied all the hardware for Muzak LLP globally. He won a big contract in the early '80's: refitting the complete public address system in Medina, Saudi Arabia. The prime contractor: Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden.
How about "Theme from Shaft"?
great as always...but no plug for the "13th floor elevators"..?!
(& how about a plug for lots of Eno all piled on top of each other to make it more than ambient?!:
https://soundcloud.com/bruce-greeley-1/kbfg-puget-soundz-echoes-of-eno
Wonderful. In my world, people have always told me my choice of jazz is just "elevator music", which has made me very defensive of elevator music.
To your point, considering the historical reason for elevator music, perhaps the innovation today is that elevator music has come right into our lives - lofi, chillhop beats (10hr long yt playlists) that people keep running in the background of their days?
I wonder if there's any correlation with the decline of elevator music and the rise of the iPod, iPhones etc. Aren't people listening to their own music when they're in the elevator? Do they really want elevator music to add noise to that listening experience?
It sounds like Otis Elevator wants to stay relevant “the lighting, music or infotainment in the elevator cab will be tuned exactly to your preferences.", but I doubt folks will want to share their personal data with Otis Elevator for a personalized elevator experience. I'd vote to keep it simple, and let the elevator be the awkward moment of reflection.
Until I read this I actually hadn't noticed that elevators don't play music anymore. I guess that is a measure of how successful that insipid stuff was in REALLY being in the background.