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Nutcracker not Nutty Boys at Tube
Classical music played at station to ‘pacify’ Underground users, despite area’s rich pop history
CAMDEN Town: synonymous with Britpop, punk rock and “Nutty Boys”, rammed full of venues where tomorrow’s big things are honing their sounds.
But despite its reputation as home to the latest musical trends, transport bosses at the Tube station have shown they prefer a more sedate pace.
Broadcasting music for the first time over the PA system, they have opted for Mozart and Bach, rather than Madness and Blur.
Transport for London (TfL) is playing classical music throughout the day at the station in Camden High Street because officials believe it can soothe stressful journeys and ultimately cut crime.
A TfL spokesman said: “London Underground decided to trial the playing of classical music to see if it would also have a positive impact. It was found that customers and staff were quite positive about classical music being played in the ticket hall area – they found it quite calming. With this in mind a decision was made to roll out classical music facilities to other stations as a part of an overall effort to improve the ambience of stations.”
Camden Town is the first station on the Northern line to get a dose of Puccini, although there have been trials in Brixton, Vauxhall and Wood Green. The station has 40 hours of music to choose from.
One staff member said it was “too early” to tell if the music was a help or a hindrance, but said anything was worth trying to encourage customers to behave more politely towards harassed staff.
But the sounds have hit the wrong note elsewhere. Pipedown, a nationwide campaign to halt the use of piped music in public spaces, said the scheme is flawed. Nigel Rodgers, who set up the group 15 years ago after Tube bosses sought to impose tunes on users of Piccadilly Circus, said it did not matter what type of music it was, the Tube was not a suitable place for canned music.
“People will not want it tinnily reproduced in our stations,” he added. “And that is a problem with playing music like this: piped music mutilates anything it plays. They play it through a PA system designed for the human voice and it’s meant to be acoustic Prozac.
“Frankly, it always sounds horrible. The answer is to try and fix the many problems with the Underground rather than try and make people numb to them by playing music.
“It is an abuse of people’s freedom to get around without being pacified. What is wrong with having buskers?”
Get Bach! Tube playlist...
Michael (pictured), the newspaper vendor outside the station, gives his blunt verdict on the Underground playlist. It includes staples such as Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Bach’s Air on a G String and Puccini’s La Boheme.
But they could have chosen tunes with a local relevance. Maybe something by Madness, who have a number called simply ‘Camden Town’. Belle and Sebastian’s ‘Mornington Crescent’ might be confusing, while The Clash recorded ‘London Calling’ in Camden Town, and their song ‘The Prisoner’ is about the area. Even Mancunian miserabilist Morrisey got in on the act: he wrote ‘Come Back to Camden’ and stuck it on his 2004 album You Are The Quarry. |
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