Search - Various Artists :: Music for TV Dinners

Maddeningly memorable background music

hyperbolium | Earth, USA | 02/12/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"These sixteen production library compositions, used variously in educational shorts, commercials, television shows and feature films, constitute some of the most invisible, yet best remembered, musical melodies in American culture. Even stranger is that most of this music was produced by the British KPM company. Further examples (including EMI and Pye's contributions to the canon) can be found on UK anthologies such as "The Sound Gallery" and "The Sound Spectrum." The collected composers and arrangers construct brilliantly memorable productions whose purpose is to serve as musical beds beneath narration or to signal mood and plot shifts in films and television programs.Though not designed as firmly for the background as true Muzak [tm], there is still an unnerving contextual shift in compiling these tracks for foreground listening. Though originally used in more subliminal contexts, these tunes have been drawn on in recent years as a simple way to evoke nostalgic moods, with or without irony in mind. In addition to appearances on boomer throwbacks like Nick at Night and Ren & Stimpy, these titles also appear in films like "The Hudsucker Proxy" and "Natural Born Killers." The most recognizable tune (at least, for 1960's television viewers) will be Wilfred Burns' "Stop Gap," which served as the theme to "Truth or Consequences." You can't help but feel that Bob Barker will step out in front of the curtain at any moment.As calculated as this music may be, its composition, arrangement and performance hold tremendous charms. This is more mood music than easy listening, in that its purpose is to attract your attention and shape your experience, rather than provide any sort of sedation. Many of the musical cues will haunt you with inscrutably faint memories of products like Vaseline Intensive Care Lotion and Midol. This is an excellent volume for listening or for adding unique musical cues to your home video."

So that's what it's called.

Robin Benson | 05/20/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"What a knockout collection of all the snippets of music that you never seem to hear all the way through or know anything about. Here is some of the most popular production music produced from 1950 to 1980. Most of the tracks come from England but three are from continental Europe (Curley Shirley, Speaking Guitar and Toys for the Boys) with the orchestration just a bit more quirky and strident than English library music. Unfortunately the notes give very little information about the arrangers and orchestras. All of the tracks are beautifully performed and recorded, as one would expect from music that was produced to be sold over and over again in the commercial arena. I always found it annoying that a lot of production music is not available to the public so I was very pleased to get this CD. If you are a fan of this musical genre click over to Amazon UK and look out for the `Test Card Music' series on Apollo Records (or checkout their website) they are up to volume eight so far. Each CD has sixty minutes plus and this brings me to why I only gave `Music for TV Dinners' four stars, I would have expected a lot more than the thirty-four minutes it contains, after all there is plenty of production music available. The second volume (almost thirty-five minutes) would easily have fitted on this disc making it real value for money."

Absolutely heavenly

SpazRobot | Anaheim, CA | 11/14/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I was born in 1978, so all of this music is before my time. But man oh man, this is the kind of stuff that makes me wish I was alive in the 50s. This compilation of production music is positively stunning. It effectively captures the feel of late 50s mass consumerism in music. This CD has got it all - plucky pizzacato strings, fast, upbeat tempos, and the lure of the vibraphone.This CD is a wonderful listen, although it is a bit short clocking in at just under 35 minutes.This is an excellent album, and I would hope that we'll see more of these releases from Scamp records in the future. They've already released a "TV Dinners" album from the 60s and it was o-kay, but let's hope they crank it back a decade to give us another album of this caliber.Gotta have it!"