Oct 092007
He sang WHAT?!?!
As suggested by 2000 Man and BigSteve, the latter who wrote:
“The other day 2k said: ‘Parvenu may be the least rock n roll word ever used in a supposed rock n roll song.’ I’ve been meaning to mention that this sounds like a ready-made thread.”
So it is written, so let it be done! In fact, this calls for a Battle Royale! Strap on your Rock Armor and proceed to the Comments section!
Did I see, in today’s News item, that the word “gavotte” is in “You’re So Vain”? What the hell does that mean, and what’s it doing in a rock ‘n roll song? I claim first fitting for the belt!
A gavotte is a kind of dance. Those suites by Bach where the individual movements are named after dance forms (gigue, sarabande, allemande, etc.) sometimes include a gavotte. Since the song is in part about pretension, I think it works, but it’s not very rock & roll. Neither was Warren Beatty.
There’s the use of “politesse” in Sympathy for the Devil.
I’ve always been annoyed by “tarmacadam” in Elvis Costello’s “Tramp the Dirt Down.”
But context is everything, don’t you think? Carly Simon, Elvis Costello, or Morrissey weren’t traditional rock figures, so it seems they might be able to get away with using words that Power and Glory types could not.
Still, though, “tarmacadam” bugs me.
I see what you guys are saying about context, but there’s a point where any line can be crossed. Oats, I would say you have possession of the belt until further challenges!
I was going to suggest “fecundity” found in the Decemberist’s song “The Legionnaire’s Lament” but then wondered if Colin and Co. should be disqualified from this thread as he is wont to use many words like this:
http://wordie.org/people/caffeinatedcows?wl=5371
Of course some folks can’t stand the Decemberists and might argue they don’t play “rock and roll” songs anyway. (For the record – I happen to like them quite a bit)
I was trying to remember a word Pete Townshend used on the Chinese Eyes album. I love Pete, but this was not his finest moment. I was misremembering “bricolage,” but it turns out it was “briolette,” and it’s on the song called Communication.
Like I say, I love Pete, but these might qualify as the worst rock lyrics ever, and they’d belong in the other thread if we had not decided to consider an entire body of work in awarding the booby prize.
COMMUNICATION
Comma comma comma comma
Commai commai commai commai
Commu commu commu commu
communi communi communicate
Selbstdarstellung
Gay Talese
Ronald Rocking
Euthanasia
Use the words like flowing river touches
Embraces parting hard steel surfaces reveling pages
Beneath the water skin broken like ice flows
Smashed by iron bows on the back of a whale
Comma comma comma comma
Commai commai commai commai
Commu commu commu commu
Communicate
Selbstarstellung
Open hearted
Soon forgotten – never parted
Com com communicate
Communicate communicate
Communicate communicate
Via satellite and solid state
Never never hesitate
Communicate communicate
Communicate communicate
Never never hesitate
Reaching leaning scratching vainly
Faces dancing locked lipped and between thigh secret
Briolette tears drip from frozen masks
As all those death row questions don’t get asked
Comma comma comma comma
Commai commai commai commai
Commu commu commu commu
communi communi communicate
Communicate communicate
Communicate communicate
Via satellite and solid state
Never never hesitate
Communicate communicate
Communicate communicate
Never never hesitate
Great thread. Here are a few of my picks:
1) Any Bad Religion song, especially between 1988 and 1990. You need a thesaurus. Here’s a sample line: “the masses are obsequious, contented in their sleep” from “1000 More Fools” (which is actually on their album Suffer). Then again, maybe they, like The Decemberists (who I also happen to like quite a bit, for the record) should be disqualified since they have so many examples of this.
2) I always thought that the physics term “centrifugal motion” showing up in Faith Hill’s “This Kiss” was weird, though kinda cool. I don’t like the song much and you could also argue that it isn’t rock and roll, but I did hear it enough to make out that line.
“Anathema” in “Every Word Means No” by Let’s Active. Though Mitch gets coolness points for mispronouncing it.
Amazing! BigSteve, just reading Pete’s lyrics I wanted to reach out and humg him. Was that a CRY FOR HELP or what?
Possibly cheating, but Innes went with “You’re so pusillanimous, oh yeah!” in Another Day, the Rutle-d Martha My Dear.
David Byrne’s lyrics to Robert Fripp’s “Under Heavy Manners.” I love the song regardless of the content, which may or may not mean anything (but packed with non-rockisms):
Trumpets
I can hear trumpets
Solipsism
Euphemism
Pessimism
Pointilism
Flagellism
Nihilism
Urizel O Urizel
Negativism
Positivism
Legalism
Asinism
Cynicism
Terrorism
Urizel O Urizel
Jurism
Tourism
Neologism
Imperialism
Cleverism
Criticism
Cataphatacism
Apophatacism
Dogmatism
Apologeticism
Schism
Schism
Baptism
Christening
Bells. I can hear bells.
Conservatism
Liberalism
Centrism
Socialism
Communalism
Leninism
Marxism
Maotseism
Communism
Trotskyism
Fidelism
Facism
Sunder Here Navy Man
Scofistism
Kenosisism
Pneumatologism
Theandricism
Synergism
Monothelitism
Nestorianism
Sacerdotalism
Theurgism
Ecclesiasticalism
Eucharisticism
Episcopalianism
Hesychasticism
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
Remain in hell, without despair
O Urizel
Remain in hell, without despair
O Urizel
Stop!
I am resplendent in divergence
I am resplendent in divergence
I am resplendent in divergence
Continue
David Byrne was on the top of my list too. Gah. Wordy.
Here’s one that I could never make heads or tails of *where* they were talking about (and “cockatoos” really?), but I also didn’t live in Australia – Midnight Oil’s Beds Are Burning:
“Four wheels scare the cockatoos
From Kintore East to Yuendemu
The Western desert lives and breathes
In forty five degrees”
these entries are all great. but “tarmacadam” in the lead? no way. it may be an arcane, early 20th century word, but it has a tough sound, and it describes pavement / concrete, materials that are man made…rock.
i think “parvenu” (and “politesse”) are two of the most effete words ever to grace rock songs. that they were issued by the same man, one who has epitomized rock and roll for many, is almost unbelievable.
what about pink floyd’s repeated use of the word “eiderdown”? pretty fluffy….
MOOT as in “but the point is probably moot”
Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl”
“Scylla and Carentis” or any of the other thousands of unrock Police lyrics
oops just saw that other Sting thread!
sorry to be redundant.
great minds…
Keep ’em coming. Great song I’d forgotten about, General Slocum. I was always cool with the lyrics until this one: hesychasticism. What do people think, is hesychasticism in the lead or eiderdown?
Eiderdown also turns up in “Mother of Pearl” so perhaps it has developed its own rock verbiage cred over the years. Mother of Pearl also throws filigree, predilection and dilettante into the mix. And Zarathustra, but I don’t know if some of these proper nouns are truly eligible.
How about tintinnabulation – submitted by Van Dyke Parks (possibly with an assist from Poe), via Brian Wilson, from “Wings of a Dove”?
VDP gets a lifetime pass-I don’t know why though.
VDP gets a flush down the toilet from me. His least-appropriate rock ‘n roll lyrics can go down the drain with him.
It’s funny you should mention “Mother of Pearl”, alexmagic, because that song is pretty much about a parvenu. In this instance, I think the lyrics are wholly appropriate to the subject matter.
If Neil Innes is allowed, a true albeit pointless story: Charity and I were in a CVS the other day, buying the sort of things you buy there, when on the face-scrubby aisle, we saw a product bearing the PhisoDerm brand name, which neither of us had seen in a good 20 years at least. Charity commented that her memory was that it was pulled from the market because they found out one of the active ingredients was toxic in large doses: “What was that stuff called? Hexachlorophine, I think.”
This immediately resulted in me, standing in the middle of a CVS somewhere south of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, belting out the verse from the Bonzo Dog Band’s “Keynsham”:
Lipstick gleam, hexachlorophine
Cling-cling the ring, clang-clang she sang
It’s tragic magic, there are no coincidences
But sometimes the pattern is more obvious
So…yeah, least rock and roll word ever used in a lyric: hexachlorophine
Do proper names count? And does Smokey fit under rock & roll? Does Pagliacci rock the house?
“Just like Pagliacci did
I try to keep my sadness hid
Smiling in the pubic I
But in my lonely room I cry”
I’d like to submit “pompatus” or “pompitous” (depending where you get the lyrics from) as in Steve Miller’s 1973 hit “The Joker”: “Some people call me the space cowboy. / Yeah! Some call me the gangster of love. / Some people call me Maurice, / Cause I speak of the Pompatus of love.”
Ah, but that’s a ripoff of a ’50s R&B single. Full details here:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_065.html