Troy Taylor's remarks about the impact of player-piano and -organ music
on the young are interesting.

We have spells of demonstrating to the general public here, made possible
by using relatively portable 65/88-note push-up players, either on grand
pianos already installed in shopping malls or restaurants, or digital
pianos.  Experience has taught us which rolls to bother taking !

Up-tempo dance music or jazz is always popular, and brings people
thronging 'round.  Put on some blues or some good smoochy cocktail piano,
which "Southport Rolls" do here, and they'll still listen, but further
away and in an absent-minded way.  (Also, we've had stores complain
because it makes customers who can hear it dreamy and less apt to splash
out on an impulse purchase -- but we still include it, to make a
balance.)

Umperty-tumperty 1914 show music or early jazz is not liked, and classics
are a complete turn-off unless very dynamic and tuneful, like Gilbert &
Sullivan, the Chopin Op 31 Scherzo or the Rachmaninov Paganini Rhapsody.
Ragtime done in modern style -- measured and with a swing that certainly
isn't on old arranged rolls -- is another hit.  But yes, anything with a
modern tune is welcome.  There's a star QRS roll by Marian McPartland
of Beatles hits.

In one case an amateur operatic society did "The Boy Friend" at a main
theatre in Bromley (a London suburb) and asked us to play in a park area
just outside during the day while they handed out leaflets, and
specifically to stick with 1920s music.  What happened here was that all
the seats nearby filled with people over 60, who then complained we had
prevented them getting their shopping done !

I would guess that there is a familiarisation curve.  My sister gave me a
Muggsy Spanier LP one Christmas which her son (then 15) called "Noddy
music".  Two years later he was collecting revival jazz himself (and now
30, he's onto opera).

Dan Wilson