Alphabet of Musical Anecdotes

by perry shirley

Introduction: The following is an alphabet of thatcombines my love of words with my love of music . The base of each entry is a word that I recently discovered that I think deserves to be spreadevery letter has one entry
ABORNING (adv.) [uh-bawr-ning ] (while being born or created … Musicians have long died in tragic ways, creating chaos, confusion, sadness, anger and—for those who were still on productive highs—longing for what could have been. When I think about this, it always brings me back to Elliott Smith. At the time of his suicide by knifing, the already prolific singer-songwriter had been working on music for the soundtrack to Thumbsucker. This was a project that harkened back to Cat Stevens’ now classic musical backdrop to YEAR Harold and Maude, more than a soundtrack in that most of it was created for the movie, by one artist, with specific scenes in mind. Sure, there’s musical scores by the likes of Graeme Revel and NIGHTMARE XMAS GUY but they don’t record outside of film. Three songs into the project, Elliott took his life. Eventually, the Polyphonic Spree finished it for him, recording in between tour gigs live in churches they found along the way. That’s a good story too but it would never had been if one of this generation’s most sincere auteurs hadn’t left us hanging, pushing up roses instead of Coming Up Roses.
BELLWETHER (n.) [bel-weth-er] In the bucolic world, the bellwether was the male sheep (wether) with a bell around his neck leading the flock toward greener pastures, a creature among creatures that assumed leadership. In the world of mash-ups, Bay Area DJ Party Ben would be a bellwether. Ben Gills was among the first to indicate the trend of meshing whole parts of two or more songs to make a new piecemeal radio songs such as “Get the Party Jumpin’” (Pink vs. Rolling Stones vs. Fatboy Slim), “Boulevard of Broken Songs (Green Day vs. Oasis) or “Galvanize The Empire” (Chemical Brothers vs. John Williams). Others such as Gregg Gillis aka Girl Talk have come along and filled whole albums with the hybrid musical numbers, only he sometimes goes through ten or fifteen samples, held together by synchronized BPM, in one track. The mashup trend was even tried live by 92.7 DJ AJAX and MuseZu’s own Ryan Lendt singing and playing guitar. SEE FOOTAGE. But Party Ben, from his soapbox at Live 105.3, was the true bellwether, leading us sheep to new musical ventures.
CUDGEL (n.) [kuhj-uhl] While most bands stick disjointed lyrics swirling around one theme and maybe a scene or two (theme: girl; Scene One: girl at the store: Scene Two: girl in my pants) The Decemberists craft stories and plots into their work. For the latest, The Hazards of Love, the entire album is a mini opera. But one of my all time favorite is a 7-min fable called The Mariner’s Revenge Song. And it’s the refrain I feel the protagonist might have used a cudgel, which is a short stick used as a weapon, to exact his revenge:  ”Find him, bind him /Tie him to a pole and break / His fingers to splinters / Drag him to a hole until he / Wakes up naked / Clawing at the ceiling / Of his grave / *sigh*” (The word has also evolved wonderfully to wrap another layer of meaning: to “cudgel” one’s brain, as violent as that may seem, actually means to try to comprehend something.
DAYMARE (n.) [dey-mair] Call it Symphonic Rock or Progressive Rock or simply the bastard child of Radiohead but Muse has put out some very good music over the last decade. Absolution (2003) and Black Holes and Revelations (2006) were bombastic, grandiose, powerful and something to behold if you saw their live set (which spawned the very good concert DVD HAARP–watch it on a big screen, it may just crack the screen). It’s for these reasons that I call their latest release, the self-produced The Resistence, an absolute “daymare.” Everyone has nightmares, well, this is a nightmarish fantasy occurring while awake–a daymare. Much more frightening because it’s actually happening. It’s as if the band circled-jerked their instruments into making these tracks. If the singer was homeless and he sung this on the street the last thing you would want to do is give him a buck. The only sex anyone is going to have with this album playing is prepubescent inner fantasies. Listen to “the United States of Eurasia,” it begins like what a teenage might slit their wrists too and then opens up into… Bohemian Rhapsody Part Deux. Only intentionally funny. I tried to offer that, hey, the bandleader Matthew Bellamy is a classically trained opera singer and classically trained piano player so it’s okay for him to show off his chops. The response: “does Julliard offer classes in Classical Bad Songwriting too?” Okay, next song. Oops, “Guiding Light” is actually “We Will Rock You Pt. Two.” It’s too bad because there’s a few gems in there. The album starts off with blast the single Uprising but you’ve forggotten all about that by the time you get to the next best song, five tracks later. For the last three tracks, Muse throws away all prentention and just calls it what it is: a “symphony.” I mean that these are actually called “Exogenesis: Symphony, Pt.1: Overture” followed by “(…) Pt.2: Cross-Pollination” and “(…) Pt.3: Redemption.”  Hey at least, they seem aware they need to ask for redemption for all they’ve put my poor ears through by then.
ECOTONE (n.) [ek-uh-tohn] The plant world has a name for the transition zone between two plant communities, where the short grass of a plain reaches, lapping at the feet of a next-door forest, bursting here and there with short bushes and some advancing trees;  and it’s “ecotone.” With its 2001 album “We Love Life,” the band Pulp created its own ecotone. Normally preoccupied only with the romantic couplings, the bad seeds and the ritualistic dances of the urban jungle, the English alternative rockers  wrote songs about the life-giving powers of Nature but also the similarities between the ecosystem of the city and of the countryside. In the opener “Weeds” they compared the British working class with unwanted sprouts coming through cracks in the pavement. In “Trees” singer Jarvis Cocker extols foliage while trying to get hints from them on how to live: “Yeah the trees, those useless trees / Produce the air that I am breathing / Yeah, the trees, those useless trees / They never said that you were leaving.” Later “The Birds In Your Garden” beckon the oversexualized singer to come though the window and have sex, already. It reminds me of that scene in Trainspotting where the  drug-addled punks take a train to the countryside to spend some time in the Scottish pastures. It’s good to remind city-folk that dirt, not pavement, is what Earth is made of.

Introduction: The following is an alphabet that combines my love of words with my love of music. The base of each entry is a word that I recently discovered that I think deserves to be spread. I just thought it would be a more entertaining lesson plan to couple the word with an anecdote about music, musicians or musical things. I hope you like it. ~Perry


PART One: Letters A through E

ABORNING (adv.) [uh-bawr-ning ] Musicians have long died in tragic ways, creating chaos, confusion, sadness, anger and—for those who were still on productive highs—longing for what could have been. When I think about this, it always brings me back to Elliott Smith. At the time of his suicide by knifing, the already prolific singer-songwriter had been working on music for the soundtrack to Thumbsucker. This was a project that harkened back to Cat Stevens’ now classic musical backdrop to 1971’s Harold and Maude, more than a soundtrack in that most of it was created for the movie, by one artist, with specific scenes in mind. Sure, there’s musical scores by the likes of Graeme Revell (The Crow, Sin City) and Danny Elfman (Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride) but they don’t record outside of film. Three songs into the project, Elliott took his life. Eventually, the Polyphonic Spree finished it for him, recording in between tour gigs live in churches they found along the way. That’s a good story too but it would never had been if one of this generation’s most sincere auteurs hadn’t left us hanging, pushing up roses instead of Coming Up Roses.

BELLWETHER (n.) [bel-weth-er] In the bucolic world, the bellwether was the male sheep (wether) with a bell around his neck leading the flock toward greener pastures, a creature among creatures that assumed leadership. In the world of mash-ups, San Francisco DJ Party Ben would be a bellwether. Ben Gills was among the first to indicate the trend of meshing whole parts of two or more songs to make a new piecemeal radio songs such as “Get the Party Jumpin’” (Pink vs. Rolling Stones vs. Fatboy Slim), “Boulevard of Broken Songs (Green Day vs. Oasis vs. Travis) or “Galvanize The Empire” (Chemical Brothers vs. John Williams). Others such as Gregg Gillis aka Girl Talk have come along and filled whole albums with the hybrid musical numbers, only he sometimes goes through ten or fifteen samples, held together by synchronized BPM, in one track. Pay what you want for GT’s new album Feed the Animals. The mashup trend was even tried live by DJ AJAX (of the sadly now-defunct Energy 92.7) and MuseZu’s own Ryan Lendt singing and playing guitar. But Party Ben, who got his start at San Francisco’s Live 105.3, was the true bellwether, leading us sheep to new musical ventures.

CUDGEL (n.) [kuhj-uhl] While most bands stick disjointed lyrics swirling around one theme and maybe a scene or two (Theme: girl; Scene One: girl at the store; Scene Two: girl in my pants) The Decemberists craft stories and plots into their work. For the latest, The Hazards of Love, the entire album is a mini opera. But one of my all time favorite is a 7-min fable called “The Mariner’s Revenge Song.” It’s so good it’s spurred a half-dozen fan-made videos. And it’s the refrain I feel the protagonist might have used a cudgel, which is a short stick used as a weapon, to exact his revenge: “Find him, bind him / Tie him to a pole and break / His fingers to splinters / Drag him to a hole until he / Wakes up naked / Clawing at the ceiling / Of his grave / *sigh*” (The word has also evolved wonderfully to wrap another layer of meaning: to “cudgel” one’s brain, as violent as that may seem, actually means to try to comprehend something.)

DAYMARE (n.) [dey-mair] Call it Symphonic Rock or Progressive Rock or simply the bastard child of Radiohead but Muse has put out some very good music over the last decade. Absolution (2003) and Black Holes and Revelations (2006) were bombastic, grandiose, powerful and something to behold if you saw their live set (which spawned the very good concert DVD HAARP–watch it on a big screen, it may just crack the screen). It’s for these reasons (and I’m aware this may piss off some of the band’s overzealous fans/Musers) that I call their latest release, the self-produced The Resistance, an absolute “daymare.” Everyone has nightmares, well, this is a nightmarish fantasy occurring while awake–a daymare. Much more frightening because it’s actually happening. It’s as if the band circled-jerked their instruments into making these tracks. If the singer was homeless and he sung this on the street the last thing you would want to do is give him a buck. The only sex anyone is going to have with this album playing is inexistent sex occurring in the mind of prepubescent teens. Listen to “The United States of Eurasia,” it begins like what someone might slit their wrists to until the track morphs into… Bohemian Rhapsody, Part Deux. Only intentionally funny. I tried to offer that, hey, the bandleader Matthew Bellamy is a classically-trained opera singer and pianist so it’s okay for him to show off his chops. The response: “Does Juilliard offer classes in Classically Bad Songwriting too?” Okay, next song. Oops, “Guiding Light” is actually “We Will Rock You, Pt. Two.” It’s too bad because there are few gems in there. The album starts off with a blast with the single “Uprising” but you’ve forggotten all about that by the time you get to the next best song, five tracks later (“Unnatural Selection”). For the last three tracks, Muse throws away all prentention and just calls it what it is: a “symphony.” I mean that these are actually called “Exogenesis: Symphony, Pt.1: Overture” followed by “(…) Pt.2: Cross-Pollination” and “(…) Pt.3: Redemption.”  I mean just to read these song titles; what horse shit. Hey at least, they seem aware they need to ask for redemption for all they’ve put my poor ears through by then.

ECOTONE (n.) [ek-uh-tohn] The plant world has a name for the transition zone between two plant communities, where the short grass of a plain reaches, lapping at the feet of a next-door forest, bursting here and there with short bushes and some advancing trees; and it’s “ecotone.” The band Pulp created its own ecotone with its 2001 album “We Love Life.” Normally preoccupied only with the romantic couplings, the bad seeds and the ritualistic dances of the urban jungle, the English alternative rockers wrote songs about the life-giving powers of Nature but also the similarities between the ecosystem of the city and of the countryside. In the opener “Weeds” they compared the British working class with unwanted sprouts coming through cracks in the pavement. In “Trees” singer Jarvis Cocker extols foliage while trying to get hints from them on how to live: “Yeah the trees, those useless trees / Produce the air that I am breathing / Yeah, the trees, those useless trees / They never said that you were leaving.” Later “The Birds In Your Garden” beckon the oversexualized singer to come though the window and have sex, already. Okay, that’s probably not what Nature had in mind there but when you’ve got a sex symbol for a lead singer, it happens. The whole thing reminds me of that scene in Trainspotting where the drug-addled punks take a train to the countryside to spend some time in the Scottish pastures. It’s good to remind city-folk that dirt, not pavement, is what Earth is made of.