I'm sure bar fights are the second oldest indoor-outdoor pursuit in the world and, on some levels, they are terrible, an unfortunate epidemic in NZ. I mean they're extremely ugly. But no one has ever attributed the cause to glaringly bad pop music overheard on the sound system in the particular drinking den. (When one says, "overheard", one means the volume of these undying, beastly pop tunes is excessive, deafening even.)
When Jon Bon Jovi tipped my friend €4000 on a super yacht last year, he wasn't being magnanimous; he was apologising for being the catalyst of so many bar-fights with his more than lousy Livin' On a Prayer. For who the heck enjoys that tune, especially in an atheist society like ours? I'm mightily sure most undeniable over-drinkers, that is, young NZ people, don't believe in God, so they're not exactly going to swear by a prayer.
You've got to be out of your mind to find anything meritorious about that tune. So who can blame folks for throwing frustrated fits of fists after hearing such foul, superficial music?
Summer of '69 by Bryan Adams is even worse, but, boy, it blares in bars. Look, I loved that song when I was 8, yet that alone doesn't justify its constant rotation in clubs. When someone says, "Those were the best days of my life", in any sphere, you run a mile. This is the main refrain of this dumb song, so why wouldn't people resort to fracases out of desperation and horror upon hearing such corniness? Plus, who wants to be reminded of when they were 8? Not me, we lost the World Cup final that year.
Could we kindly put Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers under the bridge? Please? I'll admit this song probably sounded great in Sunnynook in 1991, but everyone has some sense by now we can't go back in time, and it certainly doesn't sound great now.
