What is "pipedown"

Pipedown was a hardcore punk band from Northern California with radical leftist lyrics. Starting in Grass Valley, California in 1997, their lyrics are often reminiscent of eco-anarchism, especially since they recommended readings such as the Unabomber Manifesto: Industrial Society and its Future ( Theodore Kaczynski) and Deep Ecology for the 21st Century (George Sessions) on their first album Enemies of Progress. In 2003, Pipedown released Mental Weaponry, again on A-F Records. Over the course of this group's lifetime, Pipedown took part in over five full U.S. tours and two European tours spanning 8 countries; sharing stages with the bands: Anti-Flag, thrice, The Bouncing Souls, Darkest Hour, The Lawrence Arms, Tsunami Bomb, etc. On July 13, 2005 A-F Records announced Pipedown's breakup. Currently some of the members can be found playing in various bands: Ean Elliot Clevenger - NMBRSTTN and James K. - ÆQUOREA.

The Pipedown Campaign for Freedom from Piped Music is a UK-based environmental campaign founded in 1992 by the author and environmentalist Nigel Rodgers. It has links with the sister group in Germany and other countries.

The campaign fights background music in public places such as hospitals, libraries, swimming pools, pubs, shops and restaurants. Its literature describes unwanted piped music, also often called elevator music, ‘muzak’ or canned music, as any music piped without pause through a room or building where people have gone for reasons other than to listen to it. It emphasizes that it does not distinguish between different types of music, saying that all music is debased by being used as a marketing tool or acoustic wallpaper.

Pipedown's literature accepts that music when freely chosen is one of life’s greatest pleasures. But it maintains that music when forced on people can too easily become the exact opposite. In support of this view, Pipedown makes the following additional points:

• More people have been shown to dislike inescapable piped music than like it.
• Some people find it the ‘most irritating thing in modern life’.
• 86% of people with hearing problems, about 16% of the population, hate piped background music.
• Like other noise pollution, constant piped music can be a health hazard. It can depress the immune system while raising blood pressure and levels of stress hormones such as cortisol, increasing the risks of strokes or heart attacks.
• Recent research has highlighted the special problems facing older people who have presbycusis. Presbycusis results in unwanted background noises such as piped music drowning out welcome foreground noise such as conversation.