Put a Stocking in it

December 2009 Regardless of who the US, UK, Russia, Iran, China etc. are threatening this 'festive' season with their nuclear and other arsenals, peace on earth will always remain unattainable as long as every store, bar and TV/radio advert insist on belching out an endless cycle of every single pop banality ever recorded that has ever even mentioned the 'C' word.

For advertisers, it goes without saying, bland, commercial pop is the ideal medium to 'experientially enhance' the real message of (post-)modern Christmas: "Spend! spend! spend!" And whereas musoc.org naturally abhors the nauseating way people are aurally bludgeoned by any pop 'music' every time they need to buy a loaf of bread or a pair of socks (activities far from self-obviously requiring a crooning or thumping soundtrack), at Christmas the situation becomes particularly severe, as fake piety and schmaltzy pseudo-cameraderie - cast in platitudinous doggerel and bawled out over a banal beat and semi-illiterate music-making - are blasted through loudspeakers across the world to make everyone feel as profligate as possible.

Although musoc.org exists mainly to defend the cause of art music, there are many cases - Christmas topping the wishlist - where pop 'music' should, for sanity's sake, be literally silenced; replaced not with real music, but with blissful quiet. (After all, radio, CD and the internet mean music lovers, whether or not religious, need not wait till Advent to enjoy the genuine Christmas masterpieces of Monteverdi, J S Bach, Handel etc.)

Sadly however, the truth is that achieving peace on earth is far more probable through the remote likelihood of nuclear disarmament than through the cessation of the pop 'music' hostilities that underpin the advertising industries.