I
hate the music in the Four Points Sheraton, Futian, Shenzhen. It is not the
first time I have come to this realization. It would be one thing if one were accosted with this jarring
assault when one checked in and then, moving on from the lobby, one could leave
it behind. You can’t. When you check in the Four Points
Sheraton Futian, Shenzhen, and the God-awful eighties mix begins to permeate
your epidermis, you must resign myself to living out this experience for the
foreseeable.
Brian Adams or Simon Le Bon, whatever it is that
orchestrates my check in, follows me after I’ve received my room keys. This hotel is designed by an ill
tempered child with ADD and a Lego set.
To get to the wonderful, posh room they've assigned me as a la-dee-da
member of distinction, I need to hike for some time. So I go to the elevator, and ride to the fifth floor. From there I traipse across a hundred
yards to the next tower where I get into another elevator. Once in I must immediately insert my
room key or the elevator will revert to auto-pilot and take me to wherever it
thinks proper.
Whatever insufferable eighties or nineties pop music was playing
as I made my way to the other-building-tower continues uninterrupted into the
elevator. The elevator
stops, opens with a ding and the music continues as I step out into the hall. Stop! I want to escape from this music. I dart around the hall and it follows me. All speakers in all public spaces are
coordinated so that all guests feel the magic of this nostalgic punishment. Pushing my key into the door once and
then again, finally, I am free from the soundtrack.
Clearly, I am part of a demographic experiment. Someone at corporate has decided the
bargain travelers who make use this cheaper collection of Starwood properties
will like this collection of music. Someone has decided that if I have searched out this
environment, I must be comparatively 愚昧无知[1].
Who else would willfully snap their gingers to this insult? I am associated with bad taste.
Obviously, they conducted voluminous research on what
mid-level managers who have approval for Four Points prices, want to hear when
they step in to this environment.
You will be brought immediately back to the horseshit drivel that
overwhelmed you as a teen when MTV was new, and hip and you watched it in
search of some glimpse of distinction.
The aspirational tastes of, say mid-level Chinese managers who may be craving Deng Li Zhun, are
clearly not of great importance.
Rather, Corporate has decided that the Four Points experience should be
about reclaiming the youth of forty year old Americans with who grew up
listening ot whatever was served them. They must be the disproportionate demographic and the
research says that if they have to walk around inconveniently across ill
designed, multi building complexes, they will prefer doing so remembering the
faded afterglow of a popular music tradition that was absolutely and utterly
spent, even as it waxed flush, with commercial success. Furthermore, they’ll want to hear it
loud.
In the Meridien chain on the next rung or two up the
Starwood ladder, the they play a more challenging mix of global music that some
DJ who must be wearing a shit eating grin for having secured such a lucrative contract,
assembled. There are glimpses of
salsa, and West African funk and samba.
Clearly the Meriden assumes that a disproportionate number of its
patrons do not want to hear Bryan Adams or Simon Le Bon, when they go to their
rooms. Similarly they seem to know
that people with nuanced appreciation for music will get annoyed if it chases
them into every room and atmosphere they walk into.
I appreciate the Starwood chain for the membership program,
which works well in my part of the world and is easy to make use of when I
vacation elsewhere. It’s a huge
webbing of connectivity, they treat regular members well and it largely works
for me. But a chain is a
chain. And continuity across
continents means you have to run into the same noise pollution in Bangalore
that you do in Vienna that you do in Qingdao. Confronted randomly it is irrelevant. Confronted systematically it feels as
if one is being force-fed. One
dreads one’s assignation in a marketing demographic.
Now who was Fats Navarro? I’ve got his big nineteen forties confidence on a live
version of “Good Bait” which must be a romantic metaphor rather than anything
to do with fishing, in my ears as I fly up the coast of China from Shenzhen
back to Beijing. Air China
provides a WiFi service on this flight.
Cool. I have found the hot
spot but cannot get on. I fear
that it is only for show. So, much
as I would like, I can’t go through my ritual of looking up Fats Navarro’s wiki
page or his obituary in some likely city paper, until I land. I believe he may, like Al Cohn and Stan
Getz have been part of Woody Herman’s “Thundering Herd”, but I will have to
double check this when I land.
In the mean time I am fortunate enough to have an in flight
entertainment video to try to avoid.
For two and half hours now, they have shown clips of the Li River in
Guilin with drooping bamboo set below undulating karst mountains. I haven’t been there since 1994 and I
can only imagine that it is a rather wretched scene of over-saturation there
these days. In-flight forces
everyone to watch this, or as has now suddenly appeared, cat tricks. Pesky kittens are knocking balls around
and generally behaving in a cute manner that make me want to set a brace of
Alsatians loose.
Now turbulence again.
In the west or indeed in just about anywhere else in the world besides
North Korea, the pilot could adjust his flight plan based upon what other
pilots have radioed in, from the previous flight plans. In China this is forbidden by the local
air force and so, symbolically, we are required to endure. Someone to my right just let out a scream. Don’t worry darling. We’re all right. I’ve been through worse. National defense wants you to be
tough.
Late update, Fats Navarro was swirled in my mind with all those turbulence with that other bopper with the memorable name, Zoot Sims. The later did play sax with Woody Herman, the prior a trumpet player, did not, that I can see. Navarro died real young, in1950 at the age of 26 suffering from tuberculosis, heroin addiction and, as the name suggests, a weight problem. I've got a disc from Rido on now called "Goin to Minton's" that my ears can easily detect Charlie Parker's on. The song on which he is blowing brilliantly, is called "Fat Boy."
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