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# LIFE SOUNDTRACK: Foyer Des Arts - Die Unfähigkeit zu Früstücken
- URL: https://www.glamglare.com/music/20141113life-soundtrack-foyer-des-arts-die-unfhigkeit-zu-frstcken/
- Published: 2014-11-14T00:08:01.000Z
- Updated: 2014-11-14T00:08:01.000Z
- Author: Oliver Bouchard
- Tags: Music, #oliver-2, #wordpress, #Import 2024-07-26 07:44

![](http://static1.squarespace.com/static/4fa3199ee4b068df94b4cbaf/52a7ae2ae4b077af2713ad5e/5464fa22e4b07e0d03776f53/1415903778480/image.jpg)

This is an obscure one: Foyer Des Arts swept in to the public consciousness of Germany together with the *Neue Deutsche Welle*, a relatively short, but exciting musical movement based on kraut rock and punk. They consisted of Max Gold on vocals and Gerd Pasemann doing the instruments and had a minor chart hit in 1982 with *Wissenswertes über Erlangen* (“Interesting Trivia about Erlangen”). I discovered them later, in 1987 through their third album *Die Unfähigkeit zu Frühstücken* (“The inability to take breakfast”), which was released in 1986 after a four year hiatus because of trouble with their label. 

Foyer Des Arts were mostly a vehicle for the lyrics of Max Goldt, a brilliant writer and poet. One of his strength is using the German language’s hang to overly formal and contrived phrases on rather mundane facts, which casts a different light on them, sometimes rather funny, sometimes rather disturbing. On *Die Unfähigkeit zu Frühstücken*, the songs are personal, poetical and politcal, mostly all at the same time. The music is just like that: with guitars, synths, drum machines and other instruments they cover various musical styles, all on the weird side. It invites to sing along, but it also has a strange, nightmarish side to it. 

1987 was the year when I graduate from school and it was an important time, full of changes. Foyer Des Arts provided quite literally the soundtrack for it (together with other albums, The Cure’s *Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me* comes to mind) – when I didn’t listen to the record or cassette, I had the lyrics in my mind. 

My enthusiasm was contagious: almost everybody I played Foyer Des Arts, or Max Goldt’s even weirder solo work for, became a fan of it. I saw him two times live at a reading – by this time he was already well known as a writer for the satirical magazine Titanic.