Sunday, August 17, 2008

Fruit Bats and BIGGBY COFFEE

We changed our music line-up recently...and it has been met with much accolade...here is a comment by Bill Chapin om MLive Plugged In...GO TO Plugged In He walked into one of our locations in Jackson that is co-located with a Roly Poly...

Imagine my delight when I walked into Roly Poly for lunch today and heard Fruit Bats. (That's Fruit Bats with a capital F and B, the Seattle-via-Chicago folk rock band, not members of the family Pteropodidae.) It was the song "Legs of Bees" off the band's 2005 Sub Pop release "Spelled In Bones," which is precisely the type of obscure pop music I would play in MY rolled sandwich shop if I had one.

If you aren't familiar with the Fruit Bats, well ... now you are:



I can't for the life of me remember the music that used to play in the Roly Poly and the neighboring Biggby Coffee that shares the building. I'm thinking it was some classy, jazzy instrumental music of some sort. I didn't hate it, but apparently the corporate folks at Biggby headquarters in Lansing decided their in-store music needed some spicing up and commissioned a new music mix.

While waiting for and eating my California Hummer wrap, I also heard "Crocodile Rock" by Elton John, some soul track I couldn't quite place but sounded like Diana Ross, and "Young Folks" by Swedish twee-rock band Peter Bjorn and John.
I spoke briefly with the barista at Biggby while she was making my after-lunch, liquid, espresso-based dessert. She said she appreciated the new music mix, too, although it contains one song she doesn't like and she is guaranteed to hear it at least once a day because the mix repeats. That would drive me nuts. Even if I put together a playlist with eight hours worth of my favorite songs of all time, I could never listen to it on repeat every day.

Why not have someone create a new playlist every day? Someone like, I don't know ... me? Come on. Please?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some Ozzy or the Beastie Boys would be sweet!!!

TD

Anonymous said...

Bill is right.
"Even if I put together a playlist with eight hours worth of my favorite songs of all time, I could never listen to it on repeat every day."
Give him a shot!

Anonymous said...

Bill...bless him...is a musical snob. I wouldn't know Ozzy Osborne from Ozzie Smith. Enjoying WHAT with his scone? I only know what I like and I could listen to Stevie Wonder doing "If You Really Love Me" every hour. But that's just me. But Bill...I'll tell you...there must be people just like you in dusty backrooms of Biggby who know a lot about music. It is really a nice playlist. Whoever you gnomes are in the Biggby backroom...put together a second list. Ten bucks says you can't do as well the second time.

JD said...

Well...I'm not particularly gnomish, but I did head up the music committee responsible for piloting the company through the recent change to the music program.

The playlist in stores now has a touch more than 19 hours worth of music on it, more than enough to at least get you through a shift without any repeats...repeats though from day to day to day--possible, and you're certainly more likely to notice the tracks you love (and the ones you hate) when they come on...that being said, it should not be every day...that sounds like there's something fishy going on and I'll drop Matt, Denise, and the rest of the Jackson crew a note to see if I can help.

As for Bill--he'll get his shot...sort of...be sure to check out that post on Mlive for my response to him!

http://blog.mlive.com/citpat-pluggedin/2008/08/i_salute_your_choice_of_muzak.html