New secret weapon: Barry Manilow

[Street Angel]

I got a good laugh out of this story so I thought I'd share...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...06/ixnews.html

Trouble with gangs? Put on Manilow
By Nick Squires in Sydney
(Filed: 06/06/2006)


Australians sick of the late-night music and revving engines of gangs of boy racers have unveiled a secret weapon - Barry Manilow.

Councillors in Rockdale, a suburb of Sydney, hope that the crooners' ballads will drive away the dozens of young "hoons", as boy racers are known, who are making residents' lives a misery.

Loudspeakers will belt out hits such as Mandy, I Write the Songs and Copacabana over the car park where the youths gather nightly to drink, smoke and compare souped-up cars.

Councillors believe Manilow's music is so deeply unfashionable - "daggy" in Australian slang - that teenagers will flee the area.

"Daggy music is one way to make the hoons leave because they can't stand it," Councillor Bill Saravinovski told a local newspaper.

The idea follows an experiment a few years ago in Hobart, Tasmania, where Bing Crosby music was successfully used to drive teenage loiterers out of a shopping centre.