Pitch Perfect
Playing music for your dining guests can be tricky - get it wrong and you risk spoiling the mood, get it right and you can make it a night to remember. Lucy Britner searches for the tunes that hit the right note
Imagine going to a tapas bar without Spanish music, an Irish bar without Irish music or an Indian restaurant without banghara. It just wouldn't be right.
So what suits pub diners? Setting the mood with music is a key ingredient of a dining experience. But what to choose?
A straw poll among pub customers seems to suggest that easy listening could be the answer. Several references were made to Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra and even indie rock and rollers the Kaiser Chiefs prefer low-level stuff. Kaiser drummer Nick Hodgson says: "I have strong views on this - music being played by a pianist at a very low level is perfect."
Although licensees say music shouldn't intrude on an evening out, they all agree it plays a part in creating ambience in the pub. Catering manager Philip Davies at the Cross Keys in Shrewsbury finds diners can feel awkward if there is no noise: "Music encourages people to talk to each other, sometimes they're a bit self-conscious if there's no background noise."
Licensees agree music is useful background sound, but that doesn't mean they'll put anything on the stereo. Most agree classical music is a little too formal for the pub dining room.
The ways to play music while avoiding repetition have also become increasingly sophisticated. Many pubs have multi-disc CD players or have set up i-Tunes playlists that reel off six hours of music at a time.
There appears to be a happy medium when it comes to dining music - nothing too
loud, intrusive or cheesy, yet nothing too formal that you can't hum along to. Dining music is a bit like gastro food - relaxed, well-made, not too formal but never tacky.
Gastro food is a solid alternative to fine dining restaurants at one end of the spectrum or chain-pub grub at the other. And licensees have placed ideal gastro music neatly in the same bracket - somewhere between Mozart and the Spice Girls.
Food music tracks (and some of their lyrics )
Brown Sugar (Rolling Stones)
Cherry O' Baby (UB40)
Mashed Potato (Dee Dee Sharp)
Banana Republic (Boomtown Rats)
The Fast Food Song (The Fast Food Rockers) (Erm. Are you sure about this one? Ed)
Food Glorious Food from the musical Oliver: "Food, glorious food, hot sausage and mustard; while we're in the mood, cold jelly and custard."
How D'ya Like Your Eggs in the Morning? from the film Young, Rich and Pretty (Dean Martin and Helen O'Connell)
That's Amore (Various): "When the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, that's amore"
Eat it (Weird Al Yankovic)
Are you licensed to play?
If you're a business playing recorded music you need a PPL (Phonographic Performance Limited) licence. PPL is a music industry organisation collecting and distributing airplay and public performance royalties in the UK on behalf of 3,500 record companies and 40,000 performers.
PPL issues licences to pubs, restaurants, bars and thousands of other music users who play recorded music, including the BBC and commercial radio and TV stations. The PPL licence enables tens of thousands of businesses to play tracks from a range of literally millions of sound recordings - from the Kaiser Chiefs to the Kinks - without having to obtain clearance for each track directly from PPL's 3,500 record company members.
All licence fees are distributed to the record companies and the performers, including featured artists as well as session musicians, orchestral players and singers. PPL acts on their behalf and does not make a profit because all income, after running costs, is distributed among member companies and performers.
To get your licence, call 0800 0646470 or visit www.ppluk.com
