Idiom Savant

Please Tell Us Why You Had To Hide Away For So Long

I know.  I know!  My last, like, eighteen posts have been nothing but embedded YouTube videos.  I am becoming one of those bloggers who just regurgitates existing Internet content, while contributing nothing new to the environment in which I exist.  I am a scavenger fish, full of parasites, soon to appear in the World Wide Web equivalent of a Filet O' Fish sandwich.

However.  After considering it for the last few days, I have concluded that I really have to share this video with you:

Duchess McStewerson Von Pantsenberger started it all with her post about the Electric Light Orchestra; a comment on that post by Marianne reminded me how much I, like her, love the song "Mr. Blue Sky."  So, I went looking for it on YouTube and found the above video.  The Venn diagram in my head, showing the intersection of "ELO fans," "Decemberists fans" and "people who (for whatever reason) read this blog," was just too tempting to ignore.

I myself am only what you might call a casual Decemberists fan.  But even given my casual fandom, I can't think of any other band for whom it makes more sense to do an ELO cover. 

I also know that some day, I'd like to have the kind of job that makes me as happy as Colin Meloy, the lead singer, seems to be here.  Look at him bouncin' around!  Shit, I'd just like to be as happy, in any context, vocational or otherwise, as Colin seems to be here.  Is that too much to ask?  To paraphrase the immortal Jeff Lynne: Where did [I] go wrong?

And check out that hot Vocoder action when the countdown reaches 1:55.  Oh, mercy sakes alive, but I am a fool for those musical robot voices.  More devoted Decemberists fans than I may know the answer to this question: Do they perform any other songs that would require a robot voice?  Because if they haul the Vocoder around on tour and plug it in every night just for the sake of five seconds of "Mr. Blue Sky" -- well, there's not even any way to quantify how awesome that is.

Another thing I like about the Decemberists: Colin sure knows his way around those vowel sounds.  I'm not even sure what you would call, phonetically, what he does to vowels.  Extending?  Flattening?  Violating?  If only I knew somebody who has studied linguistics acoustic phonetics.

Who Needs To Think When Your Feet Just Go?

Tonight, as I filed my 2006 income taxes online, I thanked Fiber Optic Jesus that I earned little enough money to qualify for H&R Block's free electronic filing.  I was also thankful to Him that, for the first time in years, I'm actually getting money back from Uncle Sugar.  Mostly, I suppose, because this is the first year since 2003 that I haven't worked at both Day Job and part-time at National Chain Bookstore.  (Although I'd probably be better off fiscally, all told, had I kept the part-time job.  Plus, I'd be in better shape, since we were never allowed to sit down at National Chain Bookstore.  I'm not kidding.  Next time you're in a National Chain Bookstore, look at any area where employees are stationed -- behind the register or at the information desk, say.  See any seating there?  No.  Retail employees are supposed to be on their feet at all times, the better to be helpful to customers and facilitate Loss Prevention.  So, being on my feet all the time, running around helping customers and re-shelving shit, helped to keep me from becoming the pallid, shapeless, quivering fleshy blob I am now.)

Of course, I owe my native state a few dollars.  Because my native state is a goddamn leech, with a thirst for money that can never be slaked until it sucks the working class completely dry.

Anyway.  I usually celebrate the completion of my federal and state income tax filing obligations by playing "Tiki Torches at Twilight," by David Lindley and El Rayo-X.  Why?  Well, because it's an excellent song, certainly -- but in this case, specifically because of these lyrics:

"Put away the axes
And pay those taxes...
Let's all get normal at the luau!"

I wanted to find a video of this song to share with you on this day, but there are no videos of "Tiki Torches at Twilight" on YouTube, alas.  The best I can offer you is the lyrics (scroll down to the first comment of that post). 

But as a consolation prize, please enjoy this Tom Tom Club video, which, I must admit, is far more awesome than the David Lindley song, and also pays respect to Hermano Número Uno del Alma, which I feel this blog should go on record as extremely mourning the loss of:

I Admit This Grudgingly, #1

Lately, I have been listening, off and on, to 93.9 FM, which used to be known as "Sunny 93.9" and which also used to be pretty awful, showcasing the worst of soft rock, scraping the bottom of a barrel that was already pretty shallow.  But, as some of you who live in the greater Raleigh metroplex area may already know, the station is now known as The New 93.9 KISS FM, having switched formats (and call letters -- from WRSN to WKSL) to something called "Rhythmic AC," which I had never heard of.  (I am in equal measure fascinated and vaguely terrified by the extent to which Big Radio has managed to segment and commodify musical tastes demographically.)  And while I don't think I'm quite in the target market Clear Channel has in mind for this venture, I have to admit that it's not nearly as crap as I had automatically assumed it would be, in all of my effete Eastern intellectual ivory-tower college-radio-nurtured elitism.  It's kind of fun, lively and disposable.  If I danced, it would make me want to.  As the station IDs constantly remind us, they are providing us with "good-time music."  And who doesn't like a good time?  I mean, come on: in the past hour or so, I've heard, like, five songs that were written by Prince.  Are you going to tell me Prince isn't good music?  If you are going to tell me that, warn me before you start to tell that to me, so that I can totally ignore you.  Because you will be about to say something that is Wrong.

Anyway.  That's all background; that's not really the thrust of the gist of what I wanted to Admit Grudgingly.  (This may become a series on Idiom Savant, since a lot of the things I like I end up liking in spite of myself.)  What I want to Admit Grudgingly this evening is this:

"All 4 Love" -- by, God help me, Color Me Badd -- is actually a pretty good song.

I can't aesthetically parse why I dig it, but I remember liking it when I heard it on the radio fifteen years ago (but not telling anybody).  I know for a fact I like the bass voice going "dooo-do-dooo" at the end of each chorus.  Overall, it's kind of reminiscent of something Smokey Robinson or the Temptations might have done at Motown in the early '60s.  It's a happy, frothy, bouncy number, with nice, tight R&B-inflected harmonies.  The spoken-word interlude is kind of cheesy, but it's part of a long tradition of cheesy spoken-word interludes going back at least as far as the Ink Spots. 

The video totally gives me the hives, however:

Look at it this way: In the early '90s, bands like Color Me Badd just made Nirvana all the more necessary.  You kids like the Nirvana, don't you?  Also, the CMB video somehow makes Dick in a Box seem all the funnier.