Urge Overkill

Urge Overkill
Remember them? Their cover of Neil Diamond’s Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon appeared in Pulp Fiction. The same track is blaring from my local supermarket’s speakers at 9 am on Sunday. Neither this nor a random segue into Nickelback, The Sugababes, U2 and - I kid you not - Suzi Quatro’s Can The Can is what we ever need to hear, bleary eyed, in search of a breakfast fix. Increasingly, it seems businesses can’t resist the Urge - to inflict pointless muzak; the result? Aural Overkill. Next door at the newsagents, Kiss-FM and jingly-jangly adverts on newly appeared plasma screens are locked in cruelly cacophonous competition while at dinner in a once sedate bistro, I can’t hear my date speak over the full 12 inch remix version of Curtis Mayfield’s Move On Up played a disco-decibel level. Even the dentist is at it: is Barry Manilow’s Can’t Smile Without You an attempt at subliminal advertising? In the words of Deep Purple, ‘Hush!’

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