Entertainment For Lively Minds
Best Dinner party Music
Posted by BigJimBob on 9 February 2010 - 9:59am.
Quite an amusing chat between Jim Naughty, Pete Paphides and Peter York on Dinner Party Music on R4 Today this morning. Apparently Massive Attack were a bit put out that Blue Lines is a popular choice for background ambiance.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8505000/8505658.stm
Notice that York traces the devaluing of music from the point when CDs were given away free with newspapers and magazines, mmm.
I guess my choice would be the same as Paphides.
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Tim Witherspoon and Bill Drummond are right.
Good conversation commands silence, and your dinner party guests are due a degree of respect.
I sold my soul for rock n roll a long time ago, baby, but even I've grown tired of this metropolitan middle class compulsion to somehow render every aspect of your life more meaningful by overlaying it with "appropriate" music.
Like cocaine, David Cameron's airbrushed face, and the word "absolutely", self-soundtracking gets everywhere: it's taken as a given that you will be physically incapable of operating a rowing machine unless you're accompanied by the one-note samba of contemporary R&B; no funeral can reach "closure" unless the deceased is wheeled into the flames to the sound of Andrea Bocelli, Robbie Williams, Elton John or Bette Midler; and, some sixteen years later, no dinner party is complete without the undergraduate whine of Beth Gibbons.
Despite what Peter York says, it's not free music that's killing music, it's music EVERYWHERE that's killing music.
I do make one exception, however: if you come to my house and you want to talk about property prices, yummy mummies, ugg boots, how difficult it is to get anyone Polish to do your ironing any more, or whether the new Audi has finally superseded the new Merc, then I'm sorry, but you're getting "Trout Mask Replica".
Bravo!
Bravo!
I've found my enjoyment of Sigur Ros completely destroyed now they appear at the denouement of every 'journey' show.
Excellent attitude.
I agree entirely. Except with the bit about my dinner guests being due some respect. The scrounging gits.
well I like playing music when people come round
my friends never seem to have a problem yammering on whatever the situation the idea that our conversation is some sort of holy discourse would be over egging the pudding.
In terms of what to play I never try to be painfully hip or educate anyone generally just play whatever we've been listening to recently and some usually some old favourites later in the evening mainly because it's wrong to drink Islay Malt and not listen to the Blue Nile is it?
Blue Nislay...
Having a good old fashioned barber's shave and downhill skiing are both wonderful pastimes, but at the same time? Like Pop and Scotch, 't would be folly...
sorry can't help it if I can multi-task.
I hesitate to dogmatise
I don't want to impede in any way your parallel enjoyment of Islay Malt and the Blue Nile. But I may struggle under this new ruling. Given the amount of time that I spend with a glass of uisquebaugh in my hand, I would find the soundtrack of my life to be somewhat restricted if I can only listen to Paul Buchanan and his posse while doing so, fine fellows that they are.
As Burns noted, "Freedom and whisky gang thegither". I find that I enjoy Islay malts with a range of musical accompaniment, from Alice Coltrane to John Zorn, and even occasionally with peace and quiet.
What's your favourite malt? I am enjoying Bunnahabhain a lot just now, and the Peat edition of Bruichladdich.
Like Half Man Half Biscuit before me
I'm all for Prag Vec with an Ardbec.
I wasn't being dogmatic
I was merely being pixish that people where taking this so earnestly it's only playing a bit of music to their mates while you have Nigella's roast chicken.
As to whiskey at the moment I'm old school with 10 year old Laphroaig. I have a bottle Auchentoshan someone bought to try. I like Bruichladdich I even learnt how to say it in a bar in Edinburgh but I had forgoten the next morning when I sobered up.
whoops!
Sorry - wasn't accusing you of dogma, it's a half-remembered line from something funny.
I'm a big Laphroaig fan too : I'm a Friend of Laphroaig, which means I have rights to a square yard of sodden turf at the distillery and when I finally visit them again I can claim ground rent of a dram per year.
I gave a friend of mine a bottle of the Cask Strength Laphraoig to thank him for some good deeds, and even though I had explained the vital need for drinking lots and lots of water beside it, he forgot. He described his hangover as being from the school of Hieronymus Bosch
The cask strength stuff neat is a killer
I take a splash or water or ice in my whiskey normally just to loosen itup. I know you get a lot of nonsense about this but a few cc's of water does the trick and much as with high end hifi I defy anyone to say they can tell the difference between london tap and highland stream water once the phenolics in Islay have mixed with them. I really need a dram now!
I worked in the whisky industry for a while
In my experience, the Master Distillers approve of six drops of water in a pub measure, for blends. Opinion differs for malts but you generally won't be run off the island for a wee splash.
Many whiskies are improved by a little splash of water.
Cliché but
the Michael Franks Anthology double album (The Art of Love) that came out several years ago does tend to aid the digestion round mine - sure, it's inoffensive, but anything of a FatimaMansionsesque ilk doesn't go down quite as smoothly with the in-laws and assorted fellow travellers.
I couldn't listen to more than the first 30 seconds
- much as I adore Peters York & Paphides, and with all due respect to other Word luminaries who have appeared on the show, the Today programme should never, ever, ever dip into popular culture. I can't handle that much cognitive dissonance that early in the morning, and by the sounds of extreme discomfort audible during the item, neither could Messrs Naughtie and Humphrys.
I love these items because of the cognitive dissonance
I had to laugh at Jim Naughty's obvious discomfort. York's response to what he would choose also made me chuckle..."decent stuff" splutter splutter "like Roxy"
Moby's "18"
Probably the best background album ever?
Every song "sounds right" for the setting. Laid back beats. Half whispered vocals or sumptuous gospel tones. Warm audio ambience.
It's like being hugged by a record. Which is what you want when people start discussing Nietzsche's "God is dead" theory at 11pm and you want them all to go and stop pilfering your booze.
(Song is "Another Woman" by Moby off of "18" for those without the accesibility)
But it is along the Massive Attack lines, certainly.
I dread dinner parties
No choice of food
No choice of who you're sat next to
No time limit
Give me a buffet and a boozer with a jukebox any day.
Pretentious moi?
Ideal songs for a dinner party
A Taste Of Honey
American Pie
Apple Scruffs
Apples and Oranges
Blueberry Hill
Boiled Beef and Carrots
Brown Sugar
Custard Pie
Flaming Pie
Green Onions
Honey Pie
I've Got A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts
Life Is A Minestrone
Mean Mr Mustard
My Boy Lollipop
Savoy Truffle
Strawberry Fields Forever
Sugar Mountain
Tangerine
The Lemon Song
All washed down with some Red Red Wine
Groan. Sorry
Public Image Limited's...
... Metal Box on full volume.