Barguide: Bittersweet symphony

City Pulse’s Lansing Symphony reviewer offers up a few selections to load up your iPod for a kicking’ bar crawl — old school.

— “Music of the English Renaissance,” by the Baltimore Consort. The crawl’s only begun, and these old English troubadours are so drunk they can’t spell: “Goe from my window,” “Nuttmiggs and Ginger,” “Joyne hands,” etc.

— Bedrich Smetana’s comic opera “The Bartered Bride” (any recording). The second act starts with a sudsy, vociferous chorus, “It’s beer, it certainly is a gift from heaven,” and the polkas get DOWN.

— Verdi, “Falstaff” (any version). They named a beer after him for a reason. Verdi’s operatic take on Shakespeare’s lustiest lush isn’t all fun. Things deflate a bit when the “mountain of flesh” laments, “I wax too portly.” Otherwise, it’s royal merriment on a grand scale.

— “Opera’s Greatest Drinking Songs,” Robert Shaw Chorale. An all-time classic, a blur of wine, champagne, beer, Lucretia Borgia, students, sailors and worse from 20 different composers. “I gave her cakes, I gave her ale ... .”

— Any recording of Strauss waltzes. It’s time for a mid-crawl coordination test. If you can still keep “Wine, Women and Song” straight, keep up with the “Non-Stop Fast Polka” and pronounce “Plappermaulchen,” belly back up to the bar. Polka schnell!

— “Art of the Bawdy Song,” by the Baltimore Consort. There’s drink a-plenty in this lusty catalogue of vice if you don’t mind tiptoeing over some brazen dallying on the way to the bar.

— Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 (any recording). Nothing is more sublime than the choral finale, the “Ode to Joy.” What does that have to do with a bar crawl? Only everything. People forget that Beethoven chose a humble drinking song to crown his greatest symphony.

— “A Rabelais Party” (“Une Fete Chez Rabelais”), by the Ensemble Clement Janequin. This is thinking man’s drinking music, full of obscure, Monty Python-ish ditties about pickled herring and cuckolds that should make perfect sense at about 3 a.m. as you minutely examine the nap of the carpet in front of the bar.

— Sigmund Romberg, “The Student Prince.” This operetta has a terrific sinking drong, and it takes place inn an in. Hey, wait! I’m not finished with that … .

— THE HANGOVER SPECIAL: John Cage, “4’33”” A lot of people thought this totally silent piece was a pointless provocation. Now we know why the bad boy of modern music asked the pianist to sit silently at the piano for 4 minutes and 33 seconds.

Alternate choice: Bach, “The Coffee Cantata.” Features the memorable aria, “I Must Have Coffee.”