IRS's Favorite Gay Composer

[George Boutwell]

Well, it's that time of the year, when we catch up on answering IRS correspondence with our clients by listening to music on hold from IRS for half an hour or more each day.

It's not that I have anything against Tchaikovsky. He's especially appropriate, I suppose, on the day that Boris Yeltsin of (flat-tax) Russia died. But couldn't IRS come up with some new music, every three or four years? Maybe, written by someone whose personal life would not stir up controversy in circles outside the liberal Bush/Cheney Administration? I mean, after all, Swan Lake fits the image of IRS about as well as Aaron Copland fit the image of the American Beef Council.

On the other hand, you can't spell C-z-a-r-i-s-t or R-u-s-s-i-a without I-R-S . . .

[ChEAr$]

Dostatochno!

(not sure about the phonetic spelling of course), but "dostatochno" is "enough".

I, too, complain about that music along with the other piece, Eine Kleine Nachmusick.

Careful now, Putin might hear you and sic his former organization on you.
And they still play rough.

[George Boutwell]

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

They tried replacing it with some of Handel's Water Music, but they found that too many taxpayers left to use the bathroom while waiting for their call to be answered in the queue.

Besides, the Mozart is an IRS favorite because in the third act of The Simpsons episode "Margical History Tour", a parody of Eine kleine Nachtmusik is part of Mozart's (Bart) next opera, "The Musical Fruit" (parody of "The Magic Flute").

[Luis Mopeo]

I, too, have endured the seemingly endless torture of overly-familiar classical tunes while on hold with the IRS. I'm not well enough versed in composer or performer to recite the title. All I knew was that I'd heard that music over and over again from before the time I knew what music was. In elevators, in TV commercials, in any other venue where overly-familiar classical tunes were placed in one's auditory background by unmotivated background music placers.

My last visit to the IRS phone waiting line caused me to punch my button into speaker mode, which I almost never do, in an attempt to concentrate on something other than faint hope that a real person would magically appear. I asked people into my office to solicit sympathy for the angst of listening to Mozart's Contata in E Flat Major Minor over, and over, and over, and over again, "It's been over 45 minutes!" I would plead. Then to finally hear the end of the tape loop, with hope springing eternal, only to experience the horror of the lilting inspirational strains to begin again, and again, unabated.

My mind's eye pictures the U.S. Military blaring rock music at Manuel Noriega holed up in a castle for purposes of torturing him into wide-eyed appreciative submission.

I honestly believe that they do that on purpose. For the same reasons that inner-city convenience stores blare classical music outside to keep thugs at bay, the IRS feeds the mind-tensing music for purposes of sending all but the most urgent callers to seek assistance somewhere well away from the IRS phone banks.

In other words, in IRS phone communications as in life, only the strong survive.

[ED SMITH]

There is usually not much wait on the hot line. ACS is the worst, so try calling in the evening. There is usually little or no wait.

BTW, the music is Strauss and Mozart. I don't recall ever hearing Tchaikovsky.

[Bees Knees]

The IRS has chosen to use classical music for people on hold because it is not subject to BMI and ASCAP royalty provisions.

If you play the radio or a CD on your phone system while people are on hold, or even if you play it in the waiting room while people sit and wait for their tax appointment, you are in violation of the Copyright laws that protect composers of music from unlawful playing of their music in public.

The IRS in the past was in violation of these laws. Apparently, someone caught up to them and informed them that if they didn’t want some BMI thug to come and break their legs, they better follow the rules (yes, BMI is even more powerful than IRS).

[George Boutwell]

Dead Composers Society

The composer's copyright eventually expires (although "classical" takes in a lot of music, like that of Rachmaninoff, that is still under copyright). However, the recorded performance is also copyrighted, so the canned-music vendors make a deal with the Secaucus Symphony Orchestra, to buy it for a flat fee.

[ChEAr$]

suggestion

for IRS: replace with Carmina Burana.