Shhh/Peaceful

In which The Author can't hear himself think

On Tuesday afternoon I was enjoying a quick glass of a popular cola-based soft drink when a strange thing happened.

I should put this into context, and explain that I was in the Lamb and Flag in Glynneath.

Actually, when I say it's 'in Glynneath' it's pretty much on a par with the Lamb in Penderyn – just about as far as you can get from the centre of things before you find yourself in a different postal area. I think I'm right in saying that I've only been there twice. We might have gone when I was young, but it didn't make an impression if we did. I went for lunch with Mother once, and I took Stella the Mad Labrador there when we went exploring a couple of years ago. Mother was slightly easier to cope with, because she didn't knock our drinks over or steal crisps from the other customers.

But I digress …

The pub was fairly quiet, with some locals enjoying an afternoon drink and a few tourists who'd been up to Waterfall Country having a meal. It could have been any one of a thousand visitor-friendly pubs in Wales. The reason it's etched on my memory is the choice of music on the sound system. I'd assumed that, like every other pub, shop, cafe, restaurant, workplace and (as far as I can tell) ninety per cent of homes in the Valleys, they would have the radio tuned to the egregious Heart FM.

But I was wrong.

I was scrutinising Ordnance Survey – and thereby hangs a tale – map OL12 when a very familiar organ chord struck up over the speakers. I listened to it for a few seconds, thinking 'Where the hell have I heard this before?' – and then the rhythm section kicked in, shortly followed by some lovely electric piano and the abstract snatch-and-grab guitar licks of the wonderful John McLaughlin.

'Fucking hell!' I nearly said aloud. It was 'Shhh/Peaceful' by Miles Davis.

The Modern Jazz enthusiasts among you already know that In a Silent Way represents for that genre what Bob Dylan's legendary Manchester Free Trade Hall gig represented for folk music. Suddenly everything was electrified and electrifying. The purists hated it. Real music fans saw it for what it was: nothing less than a revolution. It opened the doors to a whole new movement – fusion and/or jazz-rock – and even forty-odd years on, it totally justifies Mr Davis's famous claim to have changed popular music five times in his life. I turned my old pal Paul E. – a man of taste and sophistication, and a fine musician – on to it when he was driving taxis at weekends. It was guaranteed to chill out even the most aggressive and potentially troublesome punters early on a Sunday morning. He actually had to write the title down many times for his customers, so they could buy it online. Result!

Back in the Flam and Lag, I could tell that this glorious piece of stupendously produced, multi-tracked, engineered-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life instrumental beauty had popped up without any forward planning. After about two and a half minutes – the exact point when Mr Davis blows his trumpet for the first time – the locals were growing restless.

'There aren't any words,' one of them said, by way of complaint.

Damn right. I'm a man of words, and 'Shhh/Peaceful’ leaves me speechless every time.

What he meant was, 'We can't sing along with this, because it isn't by Engelbert Humperdinck.' That's the Valleys for you, boys and girls.

Anyway, on Friday night I was in the Cambrian with my friends Philvis and Clare. They're brother and sister, both way younger than me; we met through our shared interest in music a year or so ago. Philvis idolises the King (hence the nickname) and has yet to discover anything recorded after 1959. Clare has rather broader tastes, but veers towards show tunes and heavy(ish) rock. I cover pretty much all bases, as you already know. Before he had a chance to hit the jukebox and fill it up with Elvis songs, I leapfrogged Philvis and chucked a quid in. I knew where I was going to go.

'Winter Wine' by Caravan is great – it's mellow, chilled, and it features some of the best keyboard playing of the early 1970s. When I finally get my band together – with some of the finest musicians the Cynon Valley has to offer – we'll be opening with that song.

'Save Yourself' by Soft Machine is a piece of psychedelic brilliance.

I don't really need to tell you about the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, do I?

And since I had one credit left, I selected 'Shhh/Peaceful'. It would have been rude to refuse.

Clare politely liked my music to start with, then found the Miles Davis track to be completely entrancing. (Her brother hated it, of course – Result! as the young people say these days.) However, the jokebox (not a typo) has an upper limit on songs. If it's longer than about five minutes, there's a very abrupt fade and a rapid transition to the next selection. That buggered my Caravan song (seven minutes and then some), completely fucks decent Pink Floyd or King Crimson, and you can forget about anything by Mike Oldfield apart from 'Guilty' and 'Moonlight Shadow'. (The Soft Machine track segues to the next one anyway, so there's a very nasty cut-off at the end.)

Just when Mr Davis and his Merry Men were raising a decent head of steam, the automatic guillotine kicked in and we were back to the same sort of plodding, cliched, static, hidebound 'Heavy Rock' that seems to be the default setting on Welsh jukeboxes. I've promised Clare a copy of the Miles Davis CD when I see her next. It ain't suitable for karaoke, but it’s still great.

But all of this is purely the organ chord leading into a longer solo improv on a theme.

You see, it's virtually impossible to go into a pub at any time of the day (except Thereisnospoon, of course) without being blasted by 'popular' music. And when I say 'popular' I'm using the word in its loosest sense. Trust me on this – after working in the book trade for two decades, having followed music for three and a half decades, and having seen the results of the last few elections in the UK, simply because people 'like' something it doesn’t necessarily correlate with quality.

[Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I invite you to examine Exhibit A – The Da Vinci Code – and Exhibit B – Fifty Shades of Grey – before reaching your verdict.]

Most of the time, of course, I can switch off. I get out my Netbook and do some work, or write a blog, or potch with photos, or compile a quiz, or whatever, without worrying about what's playing in the background. I used to do the cash in the shop with Radio 2 on every morning, and wouldn't get distracted by Ken Bruce's nonsense unless he said something that merited a quick text or email and/or when Popmaster was on. I can quite happily work at home with 4Extra in the background, not really paying attention unless an interesting documentary and/or a classic Round the Horne episode comes on.

It's a different matter in the library, of course. A few weeks ago I had to tell one of the Debating Society to shut his trap because I was working.

He looked very offended, and said, 'It's a public library.'

'I know,' I replied. 'And the general rule in a public library is to shut up.'

'Well, there should be signs,' he replied.

So I gave him signs. One involved two fingers; the other, just the one.

But I digress …

The problem is that almost every pub now has a jokebox and (at least) one TV permanently tuned to one of the 'music' channels.

At the same time.

A few Saturdays afternoons ago, I was in the Cambrian with my pal Neil, trying to have a conversation. The music was turned up to 11. The TV at one end was showing the horse racing. The TV at the other end was tuned to Vintage – the only half-decent music channel out of the six hundred or so on offer. It was about 4.00 p.m., and we could barely hear ourselves think, never mind each other. When I was getting the drinks in, I took Charlie the barbint to one side and asked her if she'd ever heard of the American composer Charles Ives. She hadn't. So I decided to educate her.

'When Charles Ives was a child,' I told her, 'his parents took him to an Independence Day parade in their home town. Ives later recalled that he heard two marching bands, playing different tunes, converging on the square from opposite directions.'

Charlie looked a bit lost, so I closed the circle for her.

'He said that his experiments with polyrhythms and atonality were inspired by the discordant clash of two entirely unrelated pieces of music.'

Then I pointed to the TV and the speakers.

'Ives was a genius – but I kinda know how he felt.'

The penny gathered a small amount of interest on the way down, but eventually she asked me, 'Would you like me to turn the TV off?'

'No, not necessarily,' I said. 'Just make your fucking mind up about whether we're listening to one or the other, and then stick to it.'

Silence. Not from the sound system – just from the barbint. Message received … I think.

The same is true of the Glosters, the Glandover, the Lighthouse, the Llwyncelyn, the Mountain Ash Inn, the Prince of Wales, the Lamb and Flag, the Skinny Dog (Pontypridd), the Golden Cross (Cardiff) …

In fact, it's true of just about every pub I've been into in the past six months or so, except in Penderyn – where even mains electricity is a novelty at times. You can forget any ideas you might have had about holding a conversation with anyone unless they're sitting on your lap and screaming into your ear. Even the Mount Pleasant in Trecynon, where I'm drafting this very blog at 11.30 p.m. on a Saturday night, has Magic on the TV and some meaningless bangy shit on the PA. Sorry, boys and girls, but if you want to listen to meaningless bangy shit at ear-splitting volume, then please fuck off to Judges or jump on a train and go to Cardiff. (NB I'm being polite – I did say 'please fuck off …')

If it wasn't for the fact that it's so fucking soulless – rather like an airport terminal, only with a half-decent bar, far fewer staff, and no decent bookshop – I would almost concede that Thereisnospoon presents a strong argument for not having a sound system. They take things to the opposite extreme, though; the TV is permanently tuned to BBC News but with the sound turned off completely. It gives my inner proofreading demon ample opportunity to laugh whenever I'm in there, because the subtitles are even more bizarre than my random keyboard assaults. (I still chuckle at the announcement from the Met Office that 'Today is the spring equilibrium within ox' a few years ago.) But at least you can have a chat with someone who is sitting more than nine inches away.

The crash between the sound and the vision does occasionally have unexpected consequences, mind you. Once a decade or so, there's a superb juxtaposition that makes it all worthwhile. A long time ago, I was in the Bute with my gorgeous and sexy friend Claire L. (with an i) one evening. The TV was on, showing what must have been Top of the Pops. (This was back in the day when the M in MTV still stood for 'music', after all.) New Order were doing their thang; Hooky was slinging his bass around like a weapon, as usual. While we were watching this nostalgic performance (remember, I saw New Order in 1985), the jokebox kicked in: 'One Vision' by Queen.

Claire grabbed my arm and said, 'Oh fuck, it looks like he's playing along to the record.'

And it did.

(It doesn't happen often, I grant you, but it does still happen. A few months ago my mate Joe and I were in the Lighthouse, watching Britney Spears lip-synching to Metallica. That's something that won't happen at the MOBO awards any time soon.)

On a lighter note, I made some new friends last night. I was walking to Trecynon when three teenage girls called me over by What-Used-To-Be-The-Little-Theatre. (I'm fairly sure that the new flats will have a more attractive name, but it'll do for now.) They knew me by sight – who doesn't, in this tiny town? – but instead of being cheeky, they were quite humorous and charming.

It turned out that I was in school with the uncle of one of them; another is the daughter of a friend of mine; the third one lives in my street, but we've never spoken before. Needless to say, they wanted me to go and get them a flagon or two. I refused, very politely, and explained that I couldn't afford to pay the grand fine for buying alcohol for underage kids. Besides which, all the shopkeepers know that I never buy cans. I'm a pub drinker. Everyone knows that. The alarm bells would have been ringing straight away. I also told the girls that if I set a precedent by going to the shop for them, I'd have to undertake shopping expeditions for all the kids in Aberdare who know me through family or whatever. They were very understanding and gracious in defeat, fair play.

I told them about the time a gang of teenagers approached me outside the Copper Kettle in town. One of them said, 'If we give you some money, will you buy drink?'

I said, 'Definitely.'

Then I stuck their twenty quid in my pocket, walked straight into the Conway (next door to the shop), bought myself a pint, and laughed at them through the window.

Is that a true story or not? You decide …