George Orwell once likened advertising to the rattling of a stick in a swill bucket. I can think of plenty of friends of mine who might strongly disagree with him – for personal or professional reasons – but he may well have been on to something…once again. At the very least his frase invokes a powerful image, some of you might agree.

Years ago, I found myself having to wait tables for a few months at a rather swanky restaurant in Madrid; a place very much in vogue with the Smart Set at that time. The three guys who ran the place weren’t just clever and ambitious. They were also very astute businessmen. One of the things I found interesting to observe was how they managed the music to manipulate the environment. My shift started at eight pm and we generally had a good hour and a half to set the place up for dinner, if not a bit longer. People eat late in Madrid and it was a rare group of foreigners that might walk in and request a table before nine. In most cases things rarely started to get hot for us before ten. In the meantime, the place was open to punters for late-afternoon drinks to the sound of slow, jazzy grooves at low volume. By the time the tables started to be taken up, at around ten, the music had started to pick up tempo; the start of a steepish two hour crescendo that culminated with loud, dirty, thumping tracks after midnight to coincide with deserts and the first round of after-dinner drinks.  “Chumba,chumba – chumba,chumba!!!” These guys (the partners) drove us hard and liked to run a tight ship. To rehydrate, when we had a moment, us employees had to run downstairs to the basement, past the lavatories reserved for paying customers, in through the door marked “Private”, down the corridor and turn right in to our filthy toilet to gulp water, in turns, from the tap. It was interesting to note, however – by around midnight – the log jam at the entrance to the customer’s lavatories, as punters – no doubt excited by plenty of alcohol and the nervous, chunky tracks being played at top volume – rushed down to powder their noses before ordering more drinks. There was, however, no one on the decks. This was in the spring of 2002 and we are talking about stacks of CDs in the sound-system, programmed to play in a certain order. The Pied Piper of Hamelin comes to mind and I can honestly say the pattern was close to being the same every night over the four months I worked there.

Walk into any large clothing chain – Pull my Bell, No es Igual and Zorba come to mind…amongst others – and the first thing that hits you is a wall of sound. Sexy, chunky tracks are there to greet you and tell you why you are there, as fellow customers race around with their eyes rolled back. “Chumba, chumba! – chumba, chumba! Toca! Prueba! Compra! Gasta! Chumba, chumba! – chumba, chumba!…” And so on. Its desired effect is to be cocaine to the ears. They want your heart-rate up, feeling relaxed but a bit more daring and impulsive, inviting you to feel a bit sexy and excited to be there. They want you to know that this is where the fun is…and that you can be a part of it too! It is yours to buy in to. “Chumba, chumba! – chumba, chumba!…”

We are all of us rolling in the same muck.