YMMV / P.D.Q. Bach

• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • The Concerto For Horn & Hardart is a play on the Horn & Hardart restaurant chain, which went out of business in the early 90's. Obviously, this joke is mostly lost on younger listeners.
  • Most listeners think the structure of the "Please Kind Sir" chorus, in which different singers have different parts that overlap to produce the hidden phrase "look up her dress", is another of PDQ's "innovations". However, this is an authentic Baroque form called a "catch" that allowed composers to sneak in explicit or politically subversive lyrics while allowing the sheet music, not containing the hidden phrase spelled out, to be publishable. "See the Bowl Sparkles" is a 1773 example; on the surface, its lyrics refer to the pleasures of drinking wine, but when all four parts are sung together, it delves into Country Matters.
• Genius Bonus: The music itself is very funny, but it becomes about 300% funnier if you know your classical music and recognize the sources P.D.Q. is plagiarizing.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The title of Concerto for Horn and Hardart is this, which references a long-gone restaurant chain called Horn & Hardart (the last one in New York City closed in 1991). The "hardart" used as an instrument in the piece mimics the restaurant's "automat" format, in which food was kept behind vending machine-type doors and required tokens to access.
  • The hardart is inscribed with the words "Minor Labor Matris," the Gratuitous Latin translation of "Less Work for Mother," Horn & Hardart's advertising slogan.

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