Two sources for this posting: my recent piece on this blog on, among other things, The Mikado; and my recent piece on Language Log (“Back on top”), on my return to the top of the authors’ list there, after some time as Zwicky Arnold, at the bottom.
Archive for the ‘Language and music’ Category
Lyrics with variable slots
July 22, 2010“Oh, X the flowers of spring!”
July 20, 2010Back in June, my grand-daughter (age 6) went, with her mother, to her first adult stage production (that’s ‘stage production for adults [as opposed to children]’, not ‘stage production with sexual content or taboo language’): Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado, as done to a treat by the Lyric Theatre of San Jose, in the Montgomery Theater in San Jose (note theatre/theater ‘theatrical company’ and ‘building for theatrical productions’). We were worried that she wouldn’t be able to sit still and reasonably quiet — she is a very active, and sometimes noisy, child — out of boredom or incomprehension and expected that she would then just fall asleep as the rather long operetta continued into late hours.
But no. Opal was transfixed. Delighted, all the way through — except for Katisha’s lament, “Alone, and yet alive” in Act II, which she thought was stupid and boring and went on too long (I have to say I’m sympathetic to her view). Granted, Elizabeth had given her some prep for the event, including practice on “a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block” (which is not only lots of fun to say or sing, but also is satisfyingly gruesome). Still, it was a great success, and now Opal listens to recordings of the songs, sings some of them, has figured out that (thanks to the intentions that she and Henry, son of our friend Jason, have to get married when they grow up) she is Jason’s daughter-in-law elect, and generally bathes in a happy and spirited G&S glow.
Elizabeth and I have done our best to induce her to join us in watching at least one of the DVDs of the Mikado that I have — the second of these will bring me, eventually, to my point — but she has firmly resisted, without explanation, though I expect that for her anything other than the Lyric Theatre, live, would be like a re-make, and we all know that re-makes are almost never as good as the originals. (We’ve tried explaining that musical productions and plays aren’t like movies, that people perform — not re-make, perform — the good ones over and over again, but she’s had enough experience with re-done versions of classic children’s books to be deeply suspicious of some new version of the Mikado.)
The pig’s daughter
July 18, 2010Another cartoon for the weekend, this one another Zippy in which Bill Griffith draws on references to 20th-century poetry (on other occasions, art), especially with a pop slant:
Even without the “Beatnik Poetry Day” caption, I would have recognized this as beatnik poetry. But echt-beatnik or Griffith-style faux-beatnik? Some of it sounded familiar enough to be the genuine article, and by now I’ve come to expect Griffith’s pop-culture references to be mostly right on target and not inventions.
I leave it to someone else to work out all the references, homing in instead on the one that clanged loudest in my memory, marrying the pig’s daughter.
Country obscenicons
July 16, 2010That’s country as in “country music” and country singer Kevin Fowler, who recently released the obscenity-laced but kiddy-safe “Pound Sign #?*!”, using spoken obscenicons to achieve this effect. It’s going on a new Linguist’s Playlist, on Linguistic Examples.
On the run in 1972-74
July 15, 2010Once again, it started with something that turned up on a random iTunes playlist. This time it was the Rolling Stones’ “T**d on the Run” (as the famously modest iTunes listings put it, for fear the printing of turd would damage the minds and morals of the young), from the Exile on Main Street album, released in 1972 and re-released earlier this year. In the intervening years, I’d forgotten about the song; more about it in a moment. But I was immediately struck by its nastiness, and by the possibility that it was a slam on “Band on the Run”, the big hit by (pre-Sir) Paul McCartney and Wings, from the album of the same name. And then there’s Pink Floyd’s “On the Run”, from Dark Side of the Moon, at about the same time. (more…)
I’m all about the wordplay
July 12, 2010“Song for a Friend” by Jason Mraz came by today on an iTunes random playlist, and I recalled that Mraz was on my iTunes because of suggestions from Nassira Nicola for language-related musical items (performer names, album titles, song titles, lyrics mentioning language-related stuff), among them Mraz’s song “Wordplay”. Here’s the chorus from the song (minus the la-la-la bits):
Now listen closely to the verse I lay
It’s all about the wordplay
The wonderful thing it does
Because, because
I am the wizard of ooh’s and ah’s and fa-la-la’s
Yeah the Mister A to Z
They say I’m all about the wordplay
More from Dick Dative
July 10, 2010A footnote to my posting on Dick Dative and the Experiencers…
On dating the music: Charles Ulrich has written to say that the recordings were made in 1979 and released in 1980 — 30 years ago, sigh. Charles is able to be so sure about this because he remembers doing research the summer of 1979 in the Pomona College library on the quotations in the lyrics, and distributing the flyer below at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, in Los Angeles that December (which is where I ordered my copy):
(I’ve cropped off the order form, just in case someone might be tempted to send $1.50, plus $.50 for postage and handling, to an address that Charles hasn’t lived at for a very long time.)
Dick Dative and the Experiencers
July 6, 2010My adventures in Music with Linguist’s Names recently led me — see the comments here — back to Dick Dative and the Experiencers (Charles Ulrich and friends), from the distant past. Ned Deily has now transformed my old 45 rpm vinyl recording into sound files (and cleaned up the sound a good bit), so now you can appreciate them too.
(Ordinarily I don’t post sound files, for fear of life-destroying legal consequences, but in this case there seems to be no copyright, just two songs recorded for fun — on the ad hoc label Allophone Records — for the enjoyment of linguist friends.)
You can hear “Please Mister Postal” (all example sentences certified as genuine, lifted from Paul M. Postal’s writing) by clicking here.
And you can hear “Colorless Green Blues” (based on Chomsky’s famous invented example “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”, now over 50 years old) by clicking here.
Lame rap
February 16, 2010… in Dingburg, in this Zippy:
