While helping Anna pick out wedding music yesterday, we stumbled across a bizarre subculture in the music world. Take a well-known classical tune, like Pachelbel's Canon in D, and mix in ambient sound from the beach. What do you get? Pachelbel with Ocean Sounds of course!

Apparently catering to relaxing Zen yuppies is a huge market, as evidenced by the selection of albums available. I have yet to find a recording of Debussy's La Mer with Ocean Sounds, but I bet it's out there somewhere. Then again, this phenomenon could just be a new spin on really bad twentieth-century contemporary music, where Sonata for Contrabassoon and Piano by Philip Reich Cage really should have been called Piano Accompaniment with Contrabassoon Sounds.