I Pity The Fool

The Chinese restaurant near my house that I like to go to is uniquely ambient.  For the past couple of years, I’ve noticed that they seem to always be playing American classic music of one variety or another, but with one common theme: it’s all glockenspiel, all the time.  Sitting there today, I realized that rather than the glockenspiel, it might also be some type of xylophone instead, but you get the idea- tink, tink, tink, brain…shutting…down…tink, tink, tink.  But whatever specific instrument it is is not the point.  The point is my fascination with this music.  Who chooses it?  Why?  Is it someone’s idea of what non-Chinese New Yorkers like to hear in a Chinese restaurant?  Or is it just the bizarre obsession of the boss, whose employees are powerless to change the stereo without risking his wrath?  Is it just one CD, or several different ones?  Is it the radio; could there actually be an All-Glockenspiel Station???

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s almost certainly not the radio, since I have heard many of the same tunes on multiple occasions.  It would not make sense for it to be just one CD, because when they first started playing it a couple of years ago, it was all weird Americana/folk song type stuff, like “Davy Crockett.”  I should point out, incidentally, that none of these recordings have any vocals at all, they’re just instrumental versions, yet thanks to my being blessed/cursed with a seemingly infinite memory for pop ephemera, I tend to recognize at least half of the songs through the riffs, and find myself mentally inserting the vocals.  Or singing along, on occasion…

So anyway, it must be different CDs, because the past few times I went there, it was all xylophone/glockenspiel versions of 80s soft rock.  Today, for instance, the first song I noticed was “It Must Have Been Love” by Roxette, followed by a Richard Marx song (maybe “Hold on to the Nights”), one or two songs I didn’t recognize, two songs by Lionel Richie (“Hello” and “Lady”), and another song by Richard Marx that I remembered hearing last time (“Right Here Waiting,” which bucks the all-glockenspiel trend and inserts an acoustic guitar solo, presumably where there was one in the original song).  So if you’re not sick of the subject yet, my conjecture is that they either have a CD of 80s Hits on the Xylophone set to play Random, or a couple of these on Shuffle. Either way, it’s not quite a love-hate relationship I’ve developed for it yet, so much as a morbid fascination.

On a totally unrelated note, there was a guy eating lunch there with his parents, who looked to be around 80 years old, easily. Most likely Jewish (though the old man appeared to have a tattoo, which is a little unusual).  Anyway, I can understand that the guy was probably frustrated in trying to be accommodating, but he was also being rude to them.  I thought it was really kind of sad.  I feel bad NOW when I’m rude to my parents.  If I still do it when they’re in their 80s, someone remember to chastise me.

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