Yes, I'm at the store, and it's Halloween, and the usual barely-noticable bland pop-ish music is being played in the background like it always is.
Except that in honor of the holiday, someone threw the theme music from "Psycho" on!
Congrats, Bernard Hermann, your haunting and original composition is now officially as mainstream as mainstream can be.
For naturalizing/routinizing iconic, horror music nothing will ever top Russian Synchronized Swimmers using the Theme from Suspiria (1977) to win Gold at the 2012 Olympics in London:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpfpSZIi20U
Well, Halloween is now a "season" just like Christmas, and I guess Psycho has earned its Muzak tune credentials.
And we are talking about the edgy opening credit music, or the screeching violins?
Note in passing: though Psycho is famous for the screeching violins, that opening credit score is its own wonder, with its own "super-edgy, nerve-rattling mood." Its like being on caffeine.
And this: years ago in the first iteration of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," Larry David used the Psycho credit theme(not the screeching violins) to accompany part of an episode. I thought: cool...and different.
---
Speaking of Christmas music: in America, at least, now its official. On November 1 -- the day after Halloween -- Christmas music starts playing on certain channels. TWO ENTIRE MONTHS worth to the end of the year(PAST Christmas, to New Year's.)
Thanksgiving is just sort of "subsumed" into the Christmas season.
But actually I'm not mad (or as Norman said, "I don't mind it anymore.") The idea that every year now finishes off with a lengthy two-month stretch of Xmas cheer is rather soothing to me. An entire SECTION of a year -- weeks of it -- is now "seasonal."
And I don't even have to think about shopping or cards for weeks.
And of course, come December 11...its "Psycho the movie Xmas time."
"And we are talking about the edgy opening credit music, or the screeching violins?"
The edgy, melodic, string music that's played as she drives and drives to her doom, mostly. I don't remember the details because, after all, Muzak is designed to be forgettable. Even when they throw in something memorable.
hah. True..otherwise it isn't Muzak.
Reminds me of a story from Robert Redford:
He enjoyed making Butch Cassidy and REALLY enjoyed how it made him a big star.
But he didn't much like the song "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head." Thought it was kinda silly for a Western.
"Boy, was I wrong about that," he later said. "I heard it everywhere -- elevators, grocery stores."
Muzak.