Cacophony

Music to make your ears bleed

There are two people in the world who like the bagpipes – my partner and the person who lent him a CD probably entitled How to torture mercilessly anyone unfortunate enough to be a passenger in your car. (Or perhaps someone lent him the CD as a joke and he just hasn’t twigged yet – in which case there is only one person in the world who likes the bagpipes.)

To be frank, when presented with the option of listening to a CD of bagpipe ‘music’, I would rather listen to a) a Tassie devil screeching for a week, b) all three High School Musical DVDs - at full volume - one after another, c) a Justin Bieber song (okay, half a Justine Bieber song).

Alfred Hitchcock once said, ‘I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equalled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig.’

Personally, I think bagpipes sound more like what would happen if you ran a feline through a garbage disposal; taught a cow to yodel to Marilyn Manson and played back the soundtrack in slow mode; or recorded a hippopotamus giving birth...to a caterpillar D4.

The only time I have ever heard a song with bagpipes in it and not wanted to hack coat hanger hooks through my eardrums is in AC/DC's It's a long way to the top. This is because AC/DC’s cool-factor marginally outweighs the bagpipes’ horribleness.

Imagine if your child came home from school and said they were going to learn to play the bagpipes. Hot cross buns on the violin was excruciating. As a result of Three blind mice on the bagpipes, you'd get a doctor's certificate for a month off work. And when you impaled the music teacher's head repeatedly on a large spike, the judge would rule the homicide justifiable.

Listening to the bagpipes is worse than hearing fingernails screech down a blackboard. It also tops the whine of a dentist's drill. It has more of a shudder-factor than the squeal of polystyrene, the shriek of microphone feedback or even the relentless irritatingness of a Crazy Frog ringtone.

If a migraine were a noise, it would sound exactly like the bagpipes.

(I hear CDs make excellent clock faces, sculptures and coasters.)

See also 20 people who shouldn't have inflicted themselves on the world.