Catshanghai

Coffee shop managers in Shanghai have terrible taste in music. Worse still, they insist on inflicting it on their paying customers. Is it a secret tactic to torture the patrons into leaving the establishment as soon as possible in order to free up valuable seating for the next aural torture victims?

I’ve had enough. It’s time to launch a one blog campaign to name and shame the biggest culprits in an effort to redirect them towards finer sounding alternatives.

The worst offender is definitely Maui Coffee on Jianguo Xi Lu near the corner of Shanxi Nan Lu. Not only they do insist on playing Celene Dion and Elton John at every available opportunity, but they pipe it out into the streets so that even non customers have to endure this torrent of sonic dissentry.

I like Vienna Café in Shaoxing Lu, but they lost countless brownie points for showing a Barbara Streisand DVD during normal business hours. I had to look at her as well as listen to her annoying nasal voice.

Norah Jones may be a talented singer song writer, but it is such a cliché to hear her in coffee shops whether it is Coffee Bean and Tealeaf or Starbucks. The latter is guilty of reducing formulaic background music into half a dozen CDs of predictable soft rock, muzak and obvious jazz that is played in constant rotation at every branch from Shanghai to Istanbul. The tracks are often inocuous in and of themselves, but the brand has reduced music into a marketing procedure, which numbs you into thinking that you’ve already died and been ressurected in order to be killed again ad infinitum.

I am not against background music per se, because I often like to hang out in coffee shops to write, read, plan or think. Nevertheless, coffee shop music does not have to lobotomise its listeners. Your latte deserves a better soundtrack and there are a few places that deserve honourable mentions for their choice of music.

Coolzey on Jianguo Xi Lu is opposite Maui Coffee on Jianguo Xi Lu and they play a mixture of ambient dance music and non obvious Euro pop. Arch on Wukang Lu, Spago in Nanjing Xi Lu and Wagas also play mellow electronic music, which is not full of cliché.

The best taste award has to go the Little Café in Shaoxing Lu whose jukebox plays the likes of Red House Painters and sparse modern classical music.

I would like a coffee shop to play Shannon Wright, Buck 65, Regina Spektor, Joanna Newsom, Boards of Canada and Will Oldham. I can not expect the establishments of Shanghai to cater to my niche tastes anytime soon, which is why the Ipod is the best thing ever. It allows me to sit in coffee shops without wanting to tear my ears off.