Elevator music : a surreal history of Muzak, easy-listening, and other moodsong
"With an arsenal of historical anecdotes and facts, Joseph Lanza sings seriously, with healthy doses of humor and wit, the praises of this misunderstood musical genre. Lanza traces mood music's mystifying presence from the mind-altering sirens who lured Odysseus to the harp David played to soothe King Saul, but the tale gets more intriguing in the early twentieth century, with Erik Satie's "furniture music" experiment, the birth of the Muzak Corporation, and various science fiction stories that featured mood music as a futuristic staple."--Jacket
Print Book, English, ©2004
Rev. and expanded ed., New ed View all formats and editions
University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, ©2004
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xii, 329 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
9780472089420, 0472089420
52876562
Probing the Jell-O
Lullabies from heaven and hell: mood music's antiquity
The "canned" avant-garde
Umbilical chords: the birth of Muzak
The push-button ballroom: mood music and early radio
Ghosts in the elevator
Emotional archives: background music in the movies
The moodiest years on record
Mermaids after midnight
Cathedralized classics
Sizzle & suds
Keyboards by candlelight
Supermarket symphonette
Gregorian cocktail
Mai-tai melodies and the world of "queasy listening"
That sex-behind-the-gauze sound
World music originals: the 101 strings and the mystic moods orchestra
Walls talk!
"Beautiful music": the rise of easy-listening FM
Violins from space
Metarock
Elevator noir
Who's hearing things?
The new sound of 1984
Channeling the phantom band
Revised, expanded, annotated, and selective discography