Entertainment For Lively Minds
Words that ain't rock 'n' roll
In the current issue, Jim Irvin, while reviewing The Hollies DVD, pointed out a rare use of the word 'encumber' in pop. But surely that isn't the point. The point is that 'encumber', as a word, just isn't very rock 'n' roll. It belongs in a grammar school exercise book rather than a speakeasy in New Orleans. It reminded me of other lyrics where a word sticks out like a sore thumb 'cause it has no right to be there in a popular song.
Now, of course, sometimes it's deliberately out of place - Super Furries' use of 'Juxtaposed' springs to mind - and at other times, it's arch and knowing and all part of the rich wordplay, there being no finer exhibitor than Nigel Blackwell - 'Tantamount' indeed.
But occasionally a word creeps in that really doesn't belong. On 'Your Time is Gonna Come', Robert Plant practically swallows 'Brunt' whole, though that may also be in an attempt to avoid it having to rhyme with 'want'. Clifford T Ward provides my favourite. OK, admittedly, he's not very rock 'n' roll himself but, not content with calling a song 'Wherewithal' he then manages to sneak in a 'Nonpareil' for good measure. It was probably how he spoke at home and just came naturally to him, and Bewdley, Worcestershire is definitely not the rock and roll capital of the world.
Encumber? Brunt? Nonpareil? What other lyrics have we got with words that just ain't rock 'n' roll?
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Parthenogenesis
In the chorus of Nemesis by Shriekback.
Dictation...
as in "You've been sitting on his lap / And taking his dictation" from Richard Thompson's Why Must I Plead.
Plebeian
Told me love was too plebeian.
Said that you were through with me and
It never fails to jolt me when that line comes up in Cry Me A River and I just love the rhyme of "plebeian" with "me and".
The song started life with Julie London as a jazz ballad in 1955, but has moved into rock with countless versions over the years.
Just a quick look at my iTunes shows recordings by Richard Thompson, Davy Graham (instrumental), Jeff Beck and Joe Cocker (although it's hard to pick the line in Joe's frenetic Mad Dogs & Englishmen version, it must be said).
There's even a version by Aerosmith, but that may be taking a good thing too far.
'She hit me with her spong spong spong,
It was wrongity wrong wrong...'
From Kitchen Heartbreak by the Love Trousers*
This entire post is a lie.
Smokey Robinson & the Miracles
#1 hit single Tears Of A Clown contains the line:
Just like Pagliacci did
I try to keep my sadness hid
How many 1970 singles buyers had the first idea who/what Pagliacci was? I know I didn't.
It was later revealed that Smokey had already used the line some years previously in his 1964 song My Smile Is Just a Frown (Turned Upside Down) for Motown artist Caroline Crawford.
A good example of 'not quite knowing what the word means'
'Pagliacci' means 'clowns'. The guy in the opera was called Canio, though in the 'play within the play' he is Pagliaccio ('clown').
Ying Tong Ying Tong Ying Tong
Ying Tong Ying Tong Yiddle-i-po
Awfully sorry about this
As is often the case, Depeche Mode broke the mould here when they used the word "awfully" in 1984's People are People. This song, I think, features the least rock & roll chorus known to man.
"Elenore" by The Turtles
"You're my pride and joy, etcetera"
Possibly apocryphal...
...but I remember hearing that the Turtles' record company were getting increasingly irritated by the the band's laissez-faire attitude and move toward left-field so they said something like, "look, why don't you guys just write more songs about pride and joy etc" So they did...
The story I heard
...was that having just had a hit with "Happy Together", the music execs insisted on more of the same, to the point where Howard Kaylan said "They want saccharine? I'll give them saccharine!"
BTW I have a cat called Toffee (short for Mephistopheles)
For a band often considered lightweight
The Turtles have an impressive pedigree.
Three of their number - Mark Volman, Howard Kaylan and Jim Pons - went on to work extensively with Frank Zappa while drummer John Barbata was in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's touring band and played on the great Four Way Street live album.
And let's not forget that their first hit was a cover of Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe
Volman and Kaylan
also sang backing vocals on several T Rex hits.
Get It On
or Bang A Gong (Get It On) as it was titled in America, came right at the peak of Flo & Eddie's fame with Zappa, too,
Strangely, in later years Volman and Kaylan distanced themselves from their Zappa recordings. I think they became big radio DJs in New York(?) and felt their time recording smut with Frank may come back to haunt them and scare off advertisers.
I did read recently however that they've agreed to tour with Zappa Plays Zappa in 2012, so perhaps they've done another U-turn?
Having seen that YouTube clip
a few years back about their management woes in the old days, I can't blame them for taking any gig that actually pays well.
Physiognomy
From My Dad's Face, by the 5 Chinese Brothers. Warning: country music.
White Whale
The Turtles' record label
On the face of it, "automobile" isn't a very rock n' roll word
except that Chuck Berry uses it to great effect ("Riding along in my..."). It's all about context. Anyway, if we're thinking about the meaning and use of words, what exactly is rock n' roll - as opposed to pop, prog, rap or any other style?
Evinced
From "FDR visits Trinidad" by Ry Cooder
"for this great man jubilation was evinced but the entire population".
- and 'urbanity' too
Good call on FDR in Trinidad. And not only do we get 'evinced', we also get:
"We are privileged to see the democratic president of the great republic
With his charming and genial personality and his wonderful urbanity"
"Urbanity". Marvellous.
Muscatel
In Steely dan's "Dallas sail the waterway", they use the word "Muscatel". In fact the Dan have many unusual words - piaster, oleander, etc.
See: http://www.steelydandictionary.com/
and, best of all
bodacious
Dallas/Sail The Waterway
They were two separate tracks if I recall correctly. (only UK release was on a four track EP with Haitian Divorce I thnk)
Attila The Hun
Attila The Hun (possibly not his real name) did the original:
Verandah
From The Decemberists’ We Both Go Down Together:
"Meet me on my vast verandah
My sweet untouched Miranda"
I have to say...
...that as much as I love the Decemberists, sometimes Colin's just showing us that he knows some words, isn't he? He doesn't always get the usage quite right, either. I can't think of an example right now, but give me a minute or two.
EDIT: Here we go - "A Bower Scene".
The word's inconsolable, but I'll let him have it because you know what he means. Still: get it right, eh?
Irascible, Colin? Is that really what we mean here? Margaret's sister's asking her who's knocked her up. I can just about get on board with "blackguard" (although I think you might be pronouncing it phonetically - it's hard to tell), but "irascible"? Why would Margaret's knocker-upper be quick to anger? I think he might've been looking for something along the lines of "villainous", but nothing scanned. I always trip over that line. It's a shame.
I know he's a clever chap, Colin Meloy, but he wants to stop trying so hard.
Yep
And much as I love them, pretty much every song has a clanging ever-changing-world-in-which-we-live-in moment, doesn't it? On the lam from the law indeed…
You can take your pick from "The Infanta"
I make it at least 20 in this one song. Though I'm not sure why the daughter of Spanish royalty should be riding on an elephant. Cracking song though.
Here she comes in her palanquin
on the back of an elephant
on a bed made of linen and sequins and silk
all astride on her father's line
with the king and his concubines
and her nurse with her pitchers of liquors and milk
and we'll all come praise the infanta
and we'll all come praise the infanta
Among five score pachyderm
each canopied and passengered
sit the duke and the duchess' luscious young girls
within sight of the baroness
seething spite for this lithe largesse
by her side sits the baron
her barrenness barbs her
and we'll all come praise the infanta
and we'll all come praise the infanta
A phalanx on camelback
thirty ranks on a forward tack
followed close, their shiny bright standards a-waving
while behind in their coach-and-fours
ride the wives of the king of Moors
And the veiled young virgin, the prince's betrothed
and we'll all come praise the infanta
and we'll all come praise the infanta
And as she sits upon her place
her innocence laid on her face
from all atop the parapets blow a multitude of coronets
melodies rhapsodical and fair
and all our hearts afire
the sky ablaze with cannon fire
we all raise our voices to the air
to the air...
And above all this folderol
on a bed made of chaparral
she is laid, a coronal placed on her brow
and the babe, all in slumber dreams
of a place filled with quiet streams
and the lake where her cradle was pulled from the water
and we'll all come praise the infanta
and we'll all come praise the infanta
"Oh I am just a vagabond
A drifter on the run
And ELOQUENT PROFANITY
Just rolls right off my tongue"
Roll 'Em Easy - Little Feat
Feat
You know I can't help enthusing about the Feat. So I give you a few lines from"Teenage Nervous Breakdown" which I find are actually unsingable unless you're Lowell George
"Unscrupulous operators could confuse
Exploit and deceive the reflex theories and change the probabilities
It's a crass and rockous crackas place
With pavlov on the the human race
It's a terrible illness, it's a terrible case
And it's usually permanent when it takes place"
I've often wondered why
there wasn't a karaoke version of that.
Isn't there...
...a song that makes use of the word 'antimacassar'? I'm thinking Hall and Oates or somesuch.
Is an anti-Macca Tsar
the leader of those who don't like Mr. McCartney?
Columnated Ruins Domino
(Phew, rock'n'roll, eh?)
Also:
endless lines from early 10,00 Maniacs songs. For example:
"Greta's cedar hope chest is full of pamphlets
Glass shelves of romantic vignettes
A journal laced with sedimentary prose..."
Nabakov
You know, who wrote the book about the bloke who starts to shake and cough.
I've lost the will to live all over again
Motorhead and Duke Special
An unlikely combination, granted, but Lemmy gives us several in the frankly storming track Orgasmatron.
Obsequious, clandestine, sycophant, paramount, paranoia and martyred all feature, in a song whose lyrics crackle on the page.
You can't help feeling he wrote the lyrics for a bet, much like Meatloaf's "Life is a lemon and I want my money back".
And Duke Special refers to "a distant drumlin" on "Brixton Leaves" which may delight geography teachers the world over, but is the only time this word has ever been put in some lyrics, surely?
(No subject)
Clandestine
A-ha. Good list, though 'clandestine' pops up in Joni's 'Don't Interrupt the Sorrow' as well, which means it's practically street talk.
I may have posted
this before, if so, apologies, but I remember checking after hearing this for the first time if Tom had written it himself. There are so many non standard 'rock and roll' type words in this, I thought it may have been by Cole Porter or some other such sophisticated writer (not that TW is unsophisticated, but YKWIM).
Foreign Affair by Tom Waits:
When travelling abroad in the continental style
It's my belief one must attempt to be discreet
And subsequently bear in mind your transient position
Allows you a perspective that's unique
Though you'll find your itinerary's a blessing and a curse
Your wanderlust won't let you settle down
And you'll wonder how you ever fathomed that you'd be content
To stay within the city limits of a small midwestern town
Most vagabonds i knowed don't ever want to find the culprit
That remains the object of their long relentless quest
The obsession's in the chasing and not the apprehending
The pursuit you see and never the arrest
Without fear of contradiction bon voyage is always hollered
In conjunction with a handkerchief from shore
By a girl that drives a rambler and furthermore
Is overly concerned that she won't see him anymore
Planes and trains and boats and buses
Characteristically evoke a common attitude of blue
Unless you have a suitcase and a ticket and a passport
And the cargo that they're carrying is you
A foreign affair juxtaposed with a stateside
And domestically approved romantic fancy
Is mysteriously attractive due to circumstances knowing
It will only be parlayed into a memory
'Interventionist' and 'Akimbo'
Courtesy of Mr Nick Cave (Into My Arms) and Mr Edwyn Collins (Intuition Told Me*)
Both have form in other areas as well.
*I think.
There's more
Our myxomatoid kids spraddle the streets
we've shunned them from the greasy-grind
(the poor little things) they look so sad & old
as they mount up from behind
I ask them to desist and to refrain
the we call upon the author to explain!
(rosary clutched in his hand
he died with tubes up his nose
and a cabal of angels with finger cymbals
chanted his name in code)
we shook our fists at the punishing rain
and we called upon the author to explain!
he said -- everything is messed up round here /everything is banal
and jejune / there is a planetary conspiracy / against the likes of you
and me / in this idiot
constituency of the moon -- (well, he knew exactly who to blame)
and we call upon the author to explain!
PROLIX! PROLIX! NOTHING A PAIR OF SCISSORS CAN'T FIX
Kaiser Chiefs
Didn't Kaiser Chiefs have some unlikely words on their first album? Something about plate tectonics. Probably doesn't count if you are being wilfully oblique though.
Don McLean
I remember this from being a nip - my trendy Mum was a Don McLean fan
There's a danger zone, not a stranger zone
Than the little plot I walk on that I call my home
Full of eerie sights, weird and skeery sights
Ev'ry vicious animal that creeps and crawls and bites!!
On the Amazon, the prophylactics prowl On the Amazon, the hypodermics howl On
the Amazon, you'll hear a scarab scowl and sting zodiacs on the wing
All the stalactites and vicious vertebrae
Hunt the stalagmites while laryngitis slay
All that parasites that come from Paraguay in the spring
Hmm, hmm hmmm
Snarling equinox among the rocks will seize you
And the fahrenheit comes out at night to freeze you
Wild duodenum are lurking in the trees
And the jungle swarms with green apostrophes
Oh, the Amazon is calling me
On the Amazon, the pax vobiscum bite
On the Amazon, the epiglottis fight
On the Amazon, the hemispheres at night all slink where the agnostics drink
All the hippodromes that lie concealed in mud
Hunt the metronomes that live in swamp and flood
Then the kodachromes run out and drink their blood, poor ginks
While velocipedes among the weeds will scare you
And the menopause with hungry jaws ensnares you
Frenzied adenoids infest the hills and slopes
Everyone avoids the deadly stethoscopes
Oh, the Amazon is calling
Yes, the Amazon is calling
Oh, the Amazon is calling me-ee!!
Let us pray...in Latin?
The Electric Prunes - Mass In F Minor
An expert's opinion
Parallelogram
Sorry for coming to this post so late but I was so unreasonably pleased to find it wasn't there when I looked that I just had to add it. The track is Motorhead by Motorhead and the lines go "Four day, five day marathon, Runnin' like a parallelogram" or something very like it - Lemmy's diction is not of the highest quality on this (or any other) track.
I shall now sit back and see how long it takes someone to point out that this is actually a very common rock 'n' roll word.
You mean you have never heard of...
Parallelogram of Morbidity by Megadeth
The Parallelograms of Old Brentford by Robyn Hitchcock
You're my Fourth Straight Side (Without You I'd Be a Triangle) by Billy Ray Cyrus
Parallelo(llelo-llelo-llelo)gram by Rhianna
Parallelogramm by Kraftwerk
Demetrius' Flaming Parallelogram by Jon & Vangelis
?
And that is without mentioning Mariah Carey's new single All I Want For Christmas is a Converse Quadrilateral with Two Pairs of Parallel Sides.
I believe that West Ham also have a terrace chant about them but, to be honest, I usually leave by the time they get to "give us yet another L" so I can't be 100% sure.