Music has become a huge part of dining. When I found that a customer can have
such a great time because of a song, it flipped the script. I almost base
restaurants on the sound: do I want to have it in a boisterous atmosphere or
an elegant setting? It just kind of starts as a seed, and
then throwing ideas back and forth, and just kind of evolves. You have to kind
of fill in all those blanks and kind of take into consideration how high the ceilings are,
and how the music has to kind of fill it. The beats can't get lost in there.
Two heavy guitars, electric horns, guitar solos probably won't work in here. What
we bring to the table is a point of view and a level of taste and just knowledge.
You know, you can talk to someone about your water or your bathroom
toiletries but there's no one to call for music.
We provide playlists for restaurants, hotels, and retail. We don't have an
algorithm like Pandora, it's literally human beings looking at your playlist,
picking what makes sense, what works with other genres. Technology with the human
touch.
Sure. I think, here we are at The Clock Tower, its a very elegant restaurant. We've worked
with Stephen Starr for over 10 years.
I used to work at Morimoto actually in Chelsea. I think he has an
incredible formula for success and for nightlife and restaurants and he's
achieved that across the board. And he, having been in music himself as a
promoter in Philly years ago, always kind of comes to the table with a good
idea of what he's looking for.
Some clients are more involved than others, and some people have a better
working language and knowledge of music. Other times people are not that well
versed, looking to us to help them define what that should be, whether it's a hotel,
whether it's a restaurant, or retail. It really runs the gamut as far as who we
work with. When I came I ate and then walked into like the billiard room and I
saw was going on, some of the photos on the wall of Andy Warhol and
Grace Jones and classic kind of New York character hanging out, I took all that in.
The visual reminders are here, so now this gives me freedom to think in terms
of what people are actually seeing and reacting to that with the music. So at
The Clock Tower, what would be like the top five quintessential songs here? It kind of
starts out with jazz, there's some French in there and Coleman Hawkins,
Eartha Kitt,
and then we'll kind of go into the afternoon some
lighter rock, classics, newer stuff by like The Ah La La's, or Black Keys "Tighten Up."
You'll also hear Gloria Jones' "Tainted Love" which is the original version. It's just very hands-on,
and you had a vision when you walk through here for the first time. I think
you kind of have an idea immediately and then you feel like, okay, what does this
place need? So this building originally was the MetLife building, and this room I
think originally was the CEOs office. We have wood floors,
there's a lot of like softer material as far as the banquettes the chairs. They
did a good job installing the sound system and they have good coverage and
we also look for certain types of music that travels better in certain spaces.
A perfect example is Rolling Stones' "Sticky Fingers" is a great sounding record, regardless
of whether you think the songs are well written or not, like the way it's
recorded just sounds great and fills room really well.
You guys are actually into music.
For sure, yeah, we're all music people. He still DJs. I came up in hospitality at
Republic, Bond Street, I went to open the Soho Grand Hotel, and you know music is always
a part of that. Being a music lover and a DJ myself, I was always programming the
music in those spaces.
I mean I worked at Other Music, which is a quintessential indie rock or just
independent record store in New York and really the nation for 11 years from 1997
to 2008.
It was a tastemaker shop, it was a place where people who are really into music
went to find and get your fix. And Alex used to be there right at it and we
immediately started working together. The whole reason I started, I was making
mix playlists on CDs. Now we have all the way up to Spotify, Pandora. I use it
sometimes for 10 hours a day and I know I can tell you what song is next. Who
chooses the songs?
It really is a collaborative effort between client and us. If you want to
like get super specific, like about your aesthetic and the music and you want to
get kind of like deep and obscure with it, there's people on staff who can
kind of mine your head, come up with like a concept that works for
you. But we shoot for five days with the music without any repeats. That's what we try to
shoot for so the staff doesn't go crazy and any regulars as well. You know, it's funny
the staff goes crazy, which is actually a huge problem. I admire that, so that
staff doesn't have to
listen to the same song. It's also like a comfort level to a customer,
coming in and knowing that when they come here they're going to be a certain
sort of aesthetic, a certain song that you're gonna hear, that's kind of what they want.
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