SOMETHING of a cultural revolution - music division - took place in the new LA Cafe in The Lippo Centre (aka the broken Bond Centre), according to a newspaper report last week.
The restaurant hired a local rock band as house musicians and they started to play, well, rock. The management asked them to play something softer but they did not do anything quite as well as rock, if at all, and they refused.
For a moment, it looked as though the beef trolley would be torched and the National Guard would have to be brought out down there in LA but instead, the band turned on its heel and walked.
''The lead guitarist had an attitude problem,'' said a restaurant spokesman.
''I bet he did,'' said a long-standing freelance house musician who has tickled the ivories for the chattering masses longer than most. ''It is idiotic. Where did the management look for its music? The Yellow Pages, a catalogue? The restaurant must have known it was a rock group and you cannot play soft rock. It would come out like apple crumble. Musically, that is probably what they want.'' Last week, I wandered the better lounges and bars around the harbour, through tiffin, tea and tequilas looking at the loneliness of the long-distance house musician and listening to the worry soaking wallpaper they put up around the customers, who sit with their backs to them waiting, wasting or wiped.
Noise is a politically sensitive subject between musicians and management. Like people who like fish as long as it is not too ''fishy'', the porcelain eardrums of the Hongkong loungers like music as long as it is not too musical.
They do not want to be aware of it.