Sprudge.com’s Official Coffee Shop Music Blacklist
As a courtesy to coffee shops everywhere (and as a follow-up to our 8 Barista No-Nos), the editors at Sprudge.com are proposing the following industry-wide music blacklist for cafes, banning the following from airing over the speakers during business hours. These artists/albums aren’t necessarily bad. They’ve just been completely bastardized and overplayed and if we go to another cafe and the following is playing, so help us God…
- Portishead
- The Shins
- The Amelie Soundtrack
- Any Wes Anderson Soundtrack
- Coldplay
- Radiohead’s “Kid A”
- Any Modest Mouse record after “The Moon and Antarctica”
- The Mountain Goats
- MGMT
- Iron and Wine
- The Decemberists
- The Arcade Fire
- Aimee Mann/Neko Case
- Any Ani DiFranco record released after 1998
- Johnny Cash
- Bob Marley “Legend”
- Death Cab For Cutie
- Jack Johnson/Jason Mraz/David Gray
- Buena Vista Social Club
Have we missed anything? Leave a comment below. Thank-you.
A quick side-note: now that cold weather is upon us (unless you’re Aussie), we recommend bumping as much music as possible from or inspired by the nation of Trinidad to heat things up indoors. For starters, try the Smithsonian Folkways compilation of early Mighty Sparrow recordings, “First Flight”, or Van Dyke Parks’ 1972 Calypso masterpiece “Discover America”.
Given that this list is…..understandable…what, then, would you like to hear more often? What is underplayed at your local establishments?
I dislike your list. Let me rephrase that, I strongly dislike your list. In that, I like, listen to, and play the music on your list frequently. I can see you point though, don’t overplay. I would view the music listed as salt, too much ruins the dish, but the right amount perfects it.
so let’s keep it hipster and play everything obscure.
You should probably ad the Gypsie Kings to the No Play list!
Schooley, you’re right. Positive. I didn’t see anyone list Fela, Can, Stereolab, or Hawkwind, so I guess that’s a good sign. Talking Heads is a big one for us, probably because it’s easy to get on vinyl, along with Brian Eno. Both overplayed in my shop, but I still seem to dig it. GO VINYL and you’ll see all the trendy overplayed tunes disappear, and have more customers come up to the counter and ask, “I’ve never heard this, what is it?” and we’ll reply with anything from Ernest Tubb to Roland Kirk.
Put a turntable in your café in a convenient location for your employees and you’ll get some interesting results. no ipods, computers, or streaming one certain genre of music. And the music that’s played is usually interesting, since, who collects vinyl other than people who love music? Plus… you need to change the music every twenty to thirty minutes, allowing the baristas to change after listening to one side. It’s worked well for us.
Air, Cat Power
I agree on the bloody emo titles but Bob Marley? we could listen to this all day. you better hope diehipster.com doesn’t get a hold of this. We have banned Kid A, Modest Mouse & Arcade Fire & started a policy that you can’t play it if has been a car commercial, this helps a lot.
Bon Iver
Queen
Michael Jackson
The Decemberists
Joanna Newsom
Any “Jazz”, no matter how “free” it is
Manu Chao
so negative, why can’t this be like a “featured cafe playlist” or something where we could say, this is what was playing here and it was rad.
but really the answer to YOUR question is ANYTHING other than the Doobie Bros. or ICE T’s Body Count.
misfits?? just kidding that never can get old!!
The Postal fucking Service.
Can’t we at least play Arcade Fire’s ‘The Suburbs’ for a little while longer?
Vampire Weekend. OMG. Vampire Weekend.
Fleet Foxes. Four Tet. Devendra Banhart. Elliot Smith. M. Ward. Explosions in the Sky. Garden State Soundtrack (duh). RJD2. Sufjan Stevens
CSS. The Knife.
I don’t care who your boyfriend is.
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=33015140
Really? This is an example of why some people won’t go into your coffee shops. How about a “Barista No-no”.. Don’t make your customers uncomfortable.
NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL.
If I ever hear Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea” while enjoying a nice cup of coffee and trying to get some work done, I will lock myself and my entire family in an attic for a year. (Too soon?)
Sufjan? As much as I love him he is definitely overplayed.
Anything/everything they play at “Sureshot”/just blacklist “sureshot”
I love this! I believe especially with Coldplay. But now that I see this list is it weird I have a odd urge to download some of these artists music?
Fleet Foxes
Animal Collective