Day 27: April 13 - QuaranTunes: Breakfast of Champions
It was a long, serious weekend and I had a good breakfast, so some tunes about breakfast.
Reggie and the Full Effect - We Make A Breakfast
This is a very stupid song. I love it. It makes me happy.
Johann Herman Schein - Banchetto Musicale, Suite no. 18, I. Intrada (Da Venus Krantzlein)
Tafelmusik (German for ‘table music’) was music played during banquets in courts during the 17th + 18th centuries. Often, these were suites, not dissimilar to the French suites we discussed with Bach Cello Suites. Schein opens this suite with an Intrada, which is just a musical introduction. In Schein’s tafelmusik, as opposed to Telemann later on, we get some very tasty drumming and the ensemble sounds much more like a consort (Schein was writing a century before Telemann) which just goes, sort of like a wind-up music box, with more continuously flowing music. Played here by Accademia del Ricercare under Pietro Busca.
Dean Martin + Helen O’Connell - How D’Ya Like Your Eggs In The Morning
There’s something troubling about courtship in these old standards (looking at you Baby, It’s Cold Outside). Dean Martin must have woken up CHIPPER because he just can’t seem to catch the hint that Helen O’Connell is just trying to wake up and get something to eat. This is a very cute song and a lovely little duet which gets into some very cute crosstalk. Un petit deTUENer (this is a bad French pun).
Z- Trip - Breakfast Club
Z-Trip brings us some classic Saturday morning vibes. MURS and Supernatural reminisce about watching Saturday morning cartoons with some super sweet sugary cereals. Good ol silly fun with TONS of classic cartoon references.
Melvins - Breakfast on the Sly
Sludge metal group the Melvins give us that sloggy, grumpy morning attitude. The song isn’t about breakfast about all, just Buzz Osborne being angry at someone. But it’s gritty and rough and that’s how I feel.
Ray Davies - Is There Life After Breakfast?
A song that maybe takes itself either too seriously or not seriously enough for today’s playlist. An upbeat and wonky number by Godfather of Britpop Ray Davies reminding us that there is goodness after breakfast, yes, but also after agony. (Breakfast here is just a metaphor! GASP) There is something very stupid and very endearing about this type of British pop which douses itself in campiness. Davies manages to toe a nice line here, making this very silly, but very hopeful and not overly playing his hand into being to serious to take seriously. This tune is also full of little truckdriver modulations, a term for those super sudden key changes, which sort of sound like hitting the snooze button a few times this morning (if he can stretch a metaphor, I damn sure will too).
Georg Philipp Telemann - Tafelmusik Part 3 - 1. Ouverture - Suite in Bb Major, TWV 53:A2: 5. Flaterie
Telemann’s collection of suites, Tafelmusik, is not just the quintessential work of that genre, but a collection on par with Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos in scope. This 1733 work, set in three large parts, each consisting of: an overture and a quartet, concerto, trio, sonata, and conclusion. They are large works abounding with fascinating and memorable moments. A flaterie, French for flattery, is a new Baroque dance for me. It seems to be a graceful and stately dance in a slow 3/4, a bit slower than a minuet maybe. My guess is that the pauses are part of a feigned courtship gesture in the dance, but that is guesswork on my part based on how the tutti and subsets seem to be in dialogue (sounds like a man asking a woman to dance with these big, assured flourishes which are answered in delicate ornamented replies). Played here by Musica Antiqua Koln under Reinhardt Goebel