JOHN SMITH TEST

Don’t get me wrong: I love music. I even spent years trawling the Machiavellian cesspit of the music industry as a record company executive with an insatiable appetite for vinyl, but when it comes to muzak being played in restaurants, to paraphrase the late Amy Winehouse, “I say no, no, no”. Defined by the dictionary as ‘recorded light background music played through speakers in public places’, restaurateurs who think it good practice to soundtrack strangers’ meals with the aural equivalent of death by a thousand cuts are in need of psychiatric evaluation. Given music’s ability to overwhelm with sudden emotion, I’m regularly aghast at how carelessly it’s used. I’m sure London’s Eat Tokyo chain doesn’t realise the visceral feelings of doom its melancholic muzak evokes – might they add the Samaritans’ details to the bottom of receipts as a courtesy to traumatised customers? More upmarket, The Ritz charges a mighty £35 per diner for their house band playing “swing favourites from the Rat Pack” in their Michelin-starred restaurant. I’d happily pay double to never hear such mind-numbing schmaltz. Hell, even the CIA understands music’s potential for psychological torture, inflicting hours of excruciating pop awfulness on the hapless inmates of Abu Ghraib. Given the option of