(TV) (OT) Wyatting

[Keith Allison <keith@marquee.demon.co.uk>]

Robert Wyatt: the perfect way to clear a pub

Just as the best way to judge an adult is by his or her record 
collection, the best way to judge a pub is by the albums on its jukebox. 
Or it was, until the 21st-century caught up with the noisy machine in 
the corner. There are now nearly 2,000 internet-connected jukeboxes in 
the UK, each of which can access as many as 2m tracks - and with them 
has come Wyatting, which is either a fearless act of situationist 
cultural warfare or a nauseatingly snobbish prank, depending on who you 
ask.

The phenomenon was first identified in the New York Times by Wendy 
McClure. She was in a grimy rock bar when someone pulled up Brian Eno's 
Thursday Afternoon, which consists of a single distant piano phrase 
repeated for more than an hour, and found herself too mesmerised to 
leave. "Imagine replacing the brass cylinder in a music box with a 
Mvbius strip made from nerve endings," she wrote. The rest of the bar's 
patrons , however, were soon in revolt.

This wasn't to be an isolated incident. After music critic Simon 
Reynolds linked to McClure's article on his weblog, several of his 
readers wrote in to confess that this is a game they regularly play. 
Carl Neville, a 36-year-old English teacher from London, coined the term 
"Wyatting" because sticking on Dondestan, the 1991 avant-garde jazz-rock 
LP by ex-Soft Machine singer Robert Wyatt, is the perfect way to disrupt 
a busy Friday night in a high street pub. Other favourites are Evan 
Parker, who plays the soprano and tenor saxophones, and surrealist 
Japanese noise producer Merzbow. In theoretical terms, Wyatting has been 
explained as enacting the theories of Adorno, who believed that 
subverting pop music would help to bring down capitalism. Alternatively, 
if you listen to Neville, it's simply "childish, futile, but finally 
hilarious".

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1816986,00.html

I'd say any early Yoko Ono records would do it. Or Metal Machine Music.
Or...?
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