How often do you leave a store because the piped-in music is unbearable?

A shoe store on Broadway broadcasts techno-y dance music at such a painful volume, shopping there makes me want to throw stilettos at sales clerks and kick over displays. I won't cross the threshold anymore, not even for a blowout sale on Adidas.

A middle-of-the-road ladies' clothing store had me running for the door yesterday, due to non-stop treacly girly pop (pap) that must have tested well with the doped-on-Valium sweater set crowd. (Sample lyrics, set to a gently strummed, mind-numblingly repetitive 1 / 4 / 5 / 4 chord sequence: "You and me, by the sea, that's where we'll be, you and me....")

A higher end clothing store featured a live DJ and compelled me to wear earplugs as I shopped. No, I didn't wear earplugs; I just left.

And yet, I will linger at the grocery store on 5th Avenue in Brooklyn to hum along to the oldies. Good, solid, old oldies. There's always a chorus of singing shoppers, voices ricocheting off aisles of overpriced cereal and mediocre produce.

I finally saw No Country For Old Men last night. I realized about halfway through the movie that there's almost no musical score. So refreshing not to be smothered or distracted by soaring strings and grandiose themes!

Ever get the urge to head bang to Deep Purple?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUn6Ool0P9w&hl=en]

I do.

My dad played organ in a band called Uncle Wiggly's Rubber Band when he was a teenager, so I grew up listening to a lot of keyboard-based heavy rock: Deep Purple (Jon Lord on Hammond), The Doors (Ray Manzarek on Fender Rhodes), Emerson, Lake & Palmer (with the inimitable, "Jimi Hendrix of the Hammond" Keith Emerson), and Procol Harum (featuring Matthew Fisher who, incidentally, was just unawarded back royalties for the organ theme in "Whiter Shade of Pale").

Most memorable, or, perhaps most fanciful to a five-year-old girl: the rip-roaring organ solo in Del Shannon's Runaway, played by Max Crook on a heavily modified Clavioline which he called the Musitron.

I remember my dad gleefully playing that solo note for note on the organ, me and my little sister dancing crazily around the living room.