Music sets the mood. If I want to have a nice relaxing dinner at home, usually there will be nice relaxing music on the stereo. I like folks like Rosemary Clooney and Ella Fitzgerald, or Israel Kamakawiwo’ole and Antonio Carlos Jobim, or Mozart and Haydn, and—Well, just about everybody. Except maybe Meat Loaf or AC/DC, whom I also like, but who don’t exactly go well with an elegant dinner. Scientists have long ago proven beyond question that “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” is hazardous to your digestion.

Lately we’ve been hearing about more uses of music than just to set the mood for dinner. Remember when that story went around that they were playing the theme song from Barney to torture political prisoners? That may or may not have been true, but music has also been used for the opposite effect. Beautiful music, the great classics, are being used not to get people into the concert hall, but to keep them away from convenience stores! As Anne Midgette puts it in The Washington Post:

“To many people, classical music is the perfect background music: soothing, attractive, undemanding. But for some time, it’s also been used as a form of crowd control: a kind of bug spray for people you don’t want hanging around. Early attempts in this direction date to the mid-1980s, when a 7-Eleven began playing music in the parking lot as a deterrent to the crowds of teenagers congregating there.”

A sonata with your Slurpee? Does this really work? Find out in Blasting Mozart to drive criminals away.