Muzik 4 Gymz

When you step into a gym, you are inevitably entering an aural netherworld vibrant with music made exclusively by retards for retards. While thick-necked goons preen in front of full-length mirrors, the speakers emit a pounding, repetitive onslaught of violent toilet shat out by the likes of Scooter and Basshunter, as well as countless reworkings of songs that were rubbish when they came out thirty years ago, and are no better when re-recorded by some no-mark session warbler and stapled to a thudding Casio keyboard demo.

None of this, however, explains the unaccountable occasional curveball hurled in my direction by the ‘selecter’ at my local Virgin Active in Streatham. Today, for example, I was struggling as usual on the cross-trainer when I heard a pan pipe version of Eric Clapton’s ‘Tears In Heaven’. No sane person would think twice about listening to this song in any other situation than sobbing curled up in a foetal position on a cold wooden floor but Virgin’s music man somehow came to the conclusion that it was the appropriate score to gut-busting (for me) exercise. (Incidentally, of Clapton, the genuinely insane and rant-prone Anton Newcombe once said “People talk about Eric Clapton. What has he ever done except throw his baby off a fuckin' ledge and write a song about it?” - more Newcombe gold here)

It shouldn’t ever come to this (please Mr Selecter never do the pan pipes again), but it doesn’t have to be the other way either. There’s plenty of decent music that gyms could blast out that would tick the requisite boxes of upbeat and motivational, but would also be good. In 2006 James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem released the brilliant 45:33, which was actually a rather odd tie-in with Nike and trailed as a work-out soundtrack. The paunchy Murphy humorously and unsurprisingly admitted to not being a gym bunny himself. Failing that, hows about the sweaty, thrusting funk of James Brown or something equally priapic like Rick James as his crackpipe-toting best? Or perhaps something outrageously homoerotic like this, which would perfectly capture the groaning, burgeoning love-in atmosphere of the weights room.

You may (if you’re still reading) be wondering why I don’t just play my own music. The thing is, although I do have an iPod, no matter how loud I crank up the volume through my decrepit headphones, I’m consistently unable to drown out the sound of Lou Bega going “AAAAAAIGGGGGHHHHHHTTTTTTT!!!” or Eiffel 65 crying about how they’re blue and in need of a guy, abadabeebowbudai they’re in need a guy. I simply can't win unless music man sorts it out and ups his game.

A few weeks ago, a middle-aged woman let loose a voracious fart on the treadmill next to me. Any sense of perpetrative mystery or furtive second-guessing was entirely precluded by the fact that there was only two of us in the whole room. Her subsequent thousand-yard stare straight into the mirror suggested that a) she was unaware of the devilish crime she has committed against my nostrils or b) she was fiercely proud of it. That this unpleasant episode was soundtracked by a particularly vile remix of Duke Ellington's 'It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing) by some technocunts called Gabin was both strangely fitting and utterly depressing. The worst smell in history and the worst song in history combining with lethal, unforgiving force to create an enduring microcosm of the worst that gyms have to offer. Sort it the fuck out guys. At least put something decent in my ears, especially when I've got something evil in my nose. AC