Rick Wright, 1943-2008

The BBC reported this morning that Rick Wright, founding member of Pink Floyd and that band's distinctive keyboardist, has died following a battle with cancer. He was 65. As is well known, Wright was an essential member of the early Pink Floyd, contributing his highly distinctive, psychedelic textures to the first Floyd albums. Although Wright most often sang background vocals, he occasionally sang lead vocals (“Time,” “Astronomy Domine”), while as a composer, his most well-known compositions were both from The Dark Side of the Moon: “The Great Gig in the Sky” and “Us and Them.” He briefly left the band in the early 80s as a result of irreparable tensions he and Roger Waters were then experiencing, but re-joined the band following Waters' departure.

I am saddened by this news because it may well have been because of Rick Wright that I became a Pink Floyd fan in the first place. By the time I became seriously interested in Pink Floyd, around September 1973, I was in my second year of college, and The Dark Side of the Moon had been released to great fanfare earlier that year, and was topping the album charts. That album very quickly became a staple of FM radio, and because I was an impecunious college student, I was in no hurry to buy it. However, that fall I did, in fact, purchase my first Pink Floyd album, not Dark Side of the Moon, but Ummagumma (1969); it had, by the time I first heard it, been in release for about four years. I bought it used from a fellow boarder in the rooming house where I was living at the time; he happened to have just cued up "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" when I stopped by his room to say hello. I was immediately hooked, particularly by the eerie, slightly sinister sounds being made the keyboards; it was as if I was listening to the soundtrack of an unnamed horror movie. He, on the other hand, wasn't all that crazy about the album, and I subsequently bought it from him for $2 (or more precisely, several quarters, a few dimes and nickels), a fair price in those days for a used record (or, in this case, two records). I played "Astronomy Domine," "Careful With That Axe...," and "Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun" over and over on the old J.C. Penney stereo system I then owned, and by the time Christmas rolled around later that year, I received Dark Side of the Moon, which I'd asked for, as a Christmas present.

Moments after I read of Rick Wright's death, I was prompted, in remembrance, to play Ummagumma, which I now also own on CD. But I couldn't do it, and probably won't, for a long time. Nor am I inclined to listen to any Pink Floyd, although I'm sure the FM airwaves will be filled with the band's music as a tribute to this great, innovative musician. Moreover, it will be long time before I'm prompted to watch, say, Live at Pompeii again--too much of a museum piece now, reminding me of a time when bands such as Pink Floyd defined rock music's avant-garde. Syd Barrett's death a couple of years ago marked the end of the original line-up of Pink Floyd, but with Rick Wright's death, Pink Floyd is no more, now a part of rock history--now it "belongs to the ages."

There are any number of fan sites dedicated to Rick Wright. One might well begin here, and follow the links from that point.

An Unexpected Twist

Drum roll please . . . According to the Billboard Hot 100 chart, what’s the most popular single of the past 50 years? Is it by Elvis? The Beatles? The Rolling Stones? They aren’t even in the top five. The most popular single during the past fifty years? Chubby Checker’s “The Twist.” According to Billboard,

“The Twist” is the only song in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 to enjoy two separate chart runs to No. 1: Sept. 19, 1960 (one week), and, following an October 1961 appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” Jan. 13, 1962 (two weeks). It also set a record for the most weeks (39) on the Hot 100 by a No. 1 song that held until UB40’s “Red Red Wine” lasted 40 weeks in 1988.

Billboard’s list, as many have remarked, seems counter-intuitive. As someone commented on Billboard’s website, many other songs in the history of pop have enjoyed multiple chart runs: The Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody,” Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me,” The Contours’ “Do You Love Me,” and The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout.” The real puzzler for me, though, is the absence on the Hot 100 list of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.” The song reached No. 1 on the UK singles chart in 1968 and was among the top-selling singles of the year in that country. Later the song was a Top 10 hit in 1971 in the United States as a result of being re-released after Armstrong’s death in July 1971. But the song wasn’t finished yet. It was later featured in the film Good Morning, Vietnam (1988) and again was re-released as a single in the United States and elsewhere and did very well, reaching No. 1 in Australia in June 1988.

According to an article about Billboard’s list on Yahoo! News,

Geoff Mayfield, director of charts at Billboard magazine, acknowledged that the list might not jibe with some fans’ personal thoughts of the most popular songs of the past 50 years.

“This is simply a chronicle of how each of these songs performed in their era on the Hot 100. We’re not saying these are the most memorable songs of your life. That would be something that's almost impossible to determine,” said Mayfield. “Everyone has a subjective frame of reference.”

[…]

The Billboard Hot 100 chart measures airplay and sales information (and more recently digital downloads) in determining the nation’s most popular songs. To determine the most popular song of the Hot 100 era, Billboard used a formula to determine the top song—not always relying on weeks at No. 1 since the data was reported differently in its early days.

Initially, Billboard relied on stations to report the most popular songs, and got sales surveys from record stores. But Mayfield said stations often stopped reporting on a song’s popularity if it was no longer a priority for record labels. And in 1991, Billboard began relying on sales data from Nielsen SoundScan and airplay data from Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems. So Billboard weighted certain songs from different eras to make sure all songs were on an even playing field.

“We went through each era, and we looked through the rate of turnover. The rate of turnover was very high in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, and we had to put a weight on that to make the chart runs of that era equal to the chart runs that can be accomplished since 1991,” he said.

In other words, some sort of algorithm was employed to approximate the chart runs of the past based on the pattern of runs established since 1991. Clearly, though, the data analyzed was taken only from chart runs in the United States, ignoring the rest of the world.

Apparently Chubby Checker wasn’t surprised about the popularity of “The Twist.” According to the Yahoo! News article:

“My music is less played that any performer that has been a No. 1 chart man on the planet,” said Checker, who also had hits with “Pony Time,” “The Fly” and “Let’s Twist Again,” which earned him a Grammy. “I don’t get the respect that Rod Stewart gets, or the Rolling Stones, or Frankie Valli. ... But I have to deal with it.”

While the complete list can be found here, I reproduce below the rest of the top Top 10:

2. Santana featuring Rob Thomas – Smooth
3. Bobby Darin – Mack the Knife
4. LeAnn Rimes – How Do I Live
5. Los Del Rio – The Macarena
6. Olivia Newton-John – Physical
7. Debby Boone – You Light Up My Life
8. The Beatles – Hey Jude
9. Mariah Carey – We Belong Together
10. Toni Braxton – Un-Break My Heart

Soul Stealer: Blood And Rain

Artwork courtesy of Michael Easton and Christopher Shy

With this post, I have the distinct honor of being among the first to announce the forthcoming publication of Michael Easton’s and Christopher Shy’s second collaboration, Soul Stealer: Blood And Rain (DMF Comics). Michael was kind enough to send me the teaser art, and gave me permission to post it here on my blog. This past July, I reviewed the initial book, “The Beaten And The Damned.” I wrote at the time that I found Soul Stealer to be “Dark, original, and sophisticated . . . a beautiful, marvelous book, one whose imaginative depth enchanted me in a way that I haven’t been for years.” Others agreed; a news update at Christopher Shy’s Studio Ronin website indicated that Soul Stealer exceeded half its print run during its first week of sales.

For those who have not yet read Soul Stealer, the story’s protagonist, Kalan, is a young, Etruscan warrior once cut to pieces by a brutal, hulking savage named Apis Bull, part man, part ox. Like the Frankenstein monster—whose remorseless loneliness and parentless lineage Kalan shares—Kalan is less a man than an assemblage (“there were days I wasn’t even sure who was calling the shots inside”), re-membered and restored to life by a magician named Strabo, the father of his lost beloved, Oxania. Motivated by his profound, eternal love for Oxania—taken from him by the capricious Gods—he can do nothing but wander for all eternity through time and space, searching for a sign, some way that he might re-unite with her. As compensation for his loss, the God Osiris has given him the ability to traverse between worlds: he is able to enter hell, find an individual soul, and deliver it to the land of the living—hence the title of the series, Soul Stealer.

As I wrote back in July, I found Soul Stealer to be a great imaginative accomplishment. In addition to the book's deft storytelling, I found Christopher Shy’s artwork to be distinctive for its masterful control of light, poised between functional representation and evocative (non-representational) expressionism. Meanwhile, the multi-talented Michael Easton, currently starring in the daytime soap One Life to Live, talks about Soul Stealer here. Christopher Shy’s Studio Ronin website is available here. In addition, DMF Comics has made available a very nice Soul Stealer T-Shirt. As a fan of the series, I very much look forward to the second installment.

Histoire de l’oeil

An ancient adage says, “The eyes are the window to the soul,” while in the Gospel of Mark the eyes are likened to the windows of the heart (7:20-23). Perhaps because beauty is so closely associated with the eyes, the eyes are considered highly seductive. Despite the vital role that she plays in his La Vita Nuova and The Divine Comedy, Dante’s beloved Beatrice is admired almost exclusively for her smile and shining eyes; otherwise, we know very little of her physical appearance. In the Middle Ages, gray eyes were considered a sign of nobility (class, but not necessarily character). By the time of Shakespeare, the metaphorical relation between eyes and beauty had become such a hackneyed literary stereotype that he tried to work against that tradition (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”).

But according to Georges Bataille (in his essay Eye, 1929, first published accompanied by a portrait of Joan Crawford, pictured), for the civilized person, the eye is a source of great anxiety. While the eyes of animals and men are considered extremely attractive and seductive, “extreme seductiveness is probably at the boundary of horror” (17). He writes:

. . . the eye could be related to the cutting edge, whose appearance provokes both bitter and contradictory reactions; this is what the makers of the Andalusian Dog must have hideously and obscurely experienced when, among the first images of the film, they determined the bloody loves of these two beings. That a razor would cut open the dazzling eye of a young and charming woman—this is precisely what a young man would have admired to the point of madness, a young man watched by a small cat, a young man who by chance holding in his hand a coffee spoon, suddenly wanted to take an eye in that spoon.

Obviously a singular desire on the part of a white, from whom the eyes of the cows, sheep, and pigs that he eats have always been hidden. For the eye—as Stevenson exquisitely puts it, a cannibal delicacy—is, on our part, the object of such anxiety that we will never bite into it. The eye is even ranked high in horror, since it is, among other things, the eye of conscience. (17)

Kim Carnes recorded “Bette Davis Eyes,” a song explicitly about the seductiveness of the eyes--but it is a song, if you seriously think about it, that tries to push seductiveness to the boundary of horror, that is, it articulates a strong anxiety about the eyes. Georges Bataille had a fascination with Joan Crawford's eyes, Kim Carnes with Bette Davis's. How utterly appropriate, then, that both of these actresses--linked in their professional lives through their well-publicized and bitter rivalry--would, in the latter stages of their careers, star in horror films. And how remarkable that Georges Franju, director of Les Yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face) would be linked to Georges Bataille through a mutual fascination with the abottoir--Franju would make a memorable film about a Parisian abottoir, Le Sang des bêtes, while Bataille would use the image of the abottoir in his writings as a way to explore the relationship between death, ritual, and sacrifice. None of this, of course, prevents popular songwriters from employing the standard relationship between the eyes, the heart, and the soul.

Audio Ocularity, A – Z

Abba – Angeleyes
Jackson Browne – Doctor, My Eyes
Kim Carnes – Bette Davis Eyes
Bob Dylan – Blood In My Eyes
The Eagles – Lyin’ Eyes
The Flamingos – I Only Have Eyes For You
The Guess Who – These Eyes
Hall & Oates – Private Eyes
Billy Idol – Eyes Without A Face
Judas Priest – Prisoner Of Your Eyes
Lenny Kravitz – Little Girl’s Eyes
Gary Lewis and the Playboys – Has She Got the Nicest Eyes
Van Morrison – Brown-Eyed Girl
Willie Nelson – Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain
Roy Orbison – Sad Eyes
The Platters - Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Quicksilver Messenger Service – Light Your Windows
Todd Rundgren – I Saw the Light
Sugarloaf – Green-Eyed Lady
Them – Mystic Eyes
U2 – Spanish Eyes
Bobby Vee – The Night Has a Thousand Eyes
Bobby Womack (Patti LaBelle and George Benson) – Through the Eyes of a Child
XTC – Love At First Sight
Neil Young – Tired Eyes
ZZ Top – Penthouse Eyes

Ultimate Oldies But Goodies Collection Has Arrived

Happily, Time-Life’s new Ultimate Oldies But Goodies Collection box set, graciously sent to me from the compilation’s producer, Joe Sasfy, arrived late last week. I would like to say that I am now ready to present my informed opinion of the recently-released box set, but I simply didn’t have the time this weekend to sit down and gather my thoughts on it—three days is neither time enough to fully assess the contents nor fully assess the presentation. I most certainly will offer my considered judgment as soon as I’m able, very soon. I suspect that many of those who have come across my blog as the result of a web search already have seen the amusing infomercial being hosted by former Sha Na Na member Bowzer, and want to know, frankly, if the collection is worth the money: it is currently listed on Time-Life’s website at $149.95 (with free shipping), which works out to less than $.99 a song, the current price of a download at Apple’s iTunes. I can’t say I’m ready to pronounce my final judgment on the collection at this point—whether it is worth paying $150 for (although I have seen it for sale on eBay for much less), that is to say. I can say, though, that the box consists of five jewel cases tucked within a handsome, sturdy case that imitates in miniature the old portable LP caddy with a latch and handle in which one would cart around one’s vinyl records. And like the old portable caddy, the case lid hinges at the top rear so that you merely tip the lid back to open it up. Snugly tucked inside the case are five individual jewel cases each holding two discs, the first CD in each labeled Side A and the second Side B; each disc contains 16 songs for a total of 32 songs in each individually titled unit—except for the fifth, the one titled “The Ultimate One Hit Wonders Collection,” which, for some mysterious reason, contains only 15 songs on each of the two discs (surely there were more than a mere thirty songs from this period qualifying as “One Hit Wonders”). Hence, just as the promotional advertisements claim, there are 158 songs included in the collection. Each individual jewel case has been allotted its own accompanying 8-page booklet containing liner notes on various songs and/or artists contributed by critic John Morthland.

The song selection ranges from 1954-1962, with the vast majority of them, as one might expect, from 1956-59. Nineteen of the songs date from 1960-61; only one (The Corsairs’ “Smoky Places”) dates from 1962. Rather than being organized chronologically (my own preferential form of organization), the songs are (loosely) grouped thematically. Hence each of the five 2/CD cases is given a title: the aforementioned “Ultimate One Hit Wonders Collection,” plus titles derived from the name of a song included in the individual subset: “Teen Beat,” “Rock Around the Clock,” “Raunchy,” and “Sh-Boom.” Whether a thematic (or perhaps lyrical) form of organization is optimal in this instance is debatable, as each disc contains songs from different years and consisting of different styles. For instance, “Teen Beat” intersperses instrumentals throughout the two sides—e.g., “Tequila,” “Honky Tonk (Part 2),” “Teen Beat”—but these songs are placed side-by-side with songs such as Larry Williams’ “Short Fat Fannie” and—oddly—The Kingston Trio’s “Tom Dooley.” Why not a whole disc (“side”) devoted to instrumentals? The argument might be that such as presentation imitates the format of Top 40 radio, when commercial programming would have dictated such heterogeneous presentation. Perhaps, but then why not organize the songs by year of release, and then in turn present them in order of release, when the information on the songs' chart position (available in the booklet) would make a bit more sense, contextually speaking?

At this point I’m still working my way through the selections and the way they are sequenced on the individual discs, so again, I’m not ready at this moment to present my final assessment. But I wanted those many individuals searching for information on the collection to have my initial thoughts. I’m loath to delay further, but there’s currently too much at the moment on my proverbial plate. I hope this information is useful to those considering purchasing the collection. More in a few short days.

Caravan of Prophets, Seers & Sages

Previously, in my entries of May 16, May 31, July 1, July 22, and August 18, I have discussed at length my experiment of trying to listen to all the rock and R&B albums released in the calendar year 1968 in the order in which they were released. Please refer to these earlier blog entries for the explanation for such an unusual project (and all its pitfalls). Listed below is October's listening schedule, for anyone wishing to duplicate my experiment. As I’ve reiterated many times, I cannot claim my list is infallible, but I continue to work to improve it. If you look back over the previous postings, you'll notice that I have continued to add to, and revise, them once I've received new or updated information. Here's the list I have assembled for October 1968, a rather interesting month in terms of the heterogeneity of albums released.

The Association, Greatest Hits
The Beau Brummels, Bradley's Barn
Canned Heat, Living the Blues
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, Strictly Personal
Caravan, Caravan
Cream, [Live Cream Vol. II] [3/9-10 & 10/4] [March 1972]
Jethro Tull, This Was
Jimi Hendrix, Electric Ladyland 10/14
Nazz, Nazz
Procol Harum, Shine on Brightly
Sly and the Family Stone, Life
Traffic, Traffic
Frank Zappa/Mothers of Invention, [Ahead of Their Time] [10/23] [1993]
Tyrannosaurus Rex, Prophets, Seers & Sages - The Angels of the Ages 10/14

Additions and/or emendations are, as always, welcome.

A Head With Hair

Perhaps because our society largely judges one another by appearances, clothes, weight, and hair are crucial factors contributing to what is known as “body image.” Perhaps that explains why, for as long as I can remember, hair has been so frequently referred to in lyrics to popular songs. When I was a small boy, Elvis’s hair was a topic of conversation: he used oils and creams to “grease” his hair, in imitation of black men who used oils and creams to straighten their hair in order for it to look like white men’s hair. Soon after, the Beatles’ hair became a controversial issue, and soon after that hippies and their (long) hair became a subject of controversy. In the 1970s, rock stars preferred “blow-dried” hair; subsequently, in the 1980s, hair dryers and gels contributed to the cultivated image of what are now referred to as “hair bands.” For as long as I can remember, hair has received as much attention as clothes and weight.

There are lots of songs about hair; there has even been a list compiled of songs about hair. If one is only concerned about compiling songs with the word "hair" in the title, then the list might remain rather short. But songs about hair are far more plentiful than such a narrowly defined list might suggest. Hence I have also set out to compile a list of songs about hair, but I have not felt especially compelled to limit my choices to mere titles, but to crucial references to hair in the lyrical content. To the aforementioned list, I add the list below, not exhaustive by any means, but a good indication of the extent to which hair is frequently invoked more than titles alone might indicate, and in ways that might be surprising. Hair isn’t simply eroticized or fetishized in these songs: it is a sign of individuality, non-conformity, but also a form of sexual innuendo.

America – Sister Golden Hair
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band – Hair Pie: Bake 1 and Hair Pie: Bake 2
Johnny Burnette – You’re Sixteen
Rodney Carrington – The Pubic Hair Song
The Cowsills – The Rain, The Park & Other Things
Elvis (Presley) – Treat Me Nice
Five Man Electrical Band – Signs
Stephen Foster – Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair
Hall & Oates – Sara Smile
Don Henley – Dirty Laundry
Waylon Jennings – Amanda
George Jones – Would They Love Him Down in Shreveport
Willie Nelson – Red Headed Stranger
Nazareth – Hair of the Dog
Dolly Parton – Jolene
Gene Pitney – She Lets Her Hair Down
Jimmie Rodgers – Honeycomb
Kenny Rogers and The First Edition – Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town
Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band – Night Moves
Sammi Smith – Help Me Make It Through the Night
Sonny and Cher – I Got You Babe
Conway Twitty – I’d Love to Lay You Down
Leroy Van Dyke – I Fell In Love With a Pony Tail
Warren Zevon – Werewolves of London

Vestis Verum Reddit

In last night’s blog on the subject of “sleaze,” I said that, considered as a matter of fashion or style, sleaze does not immediately invoke glamor—indeed, it seems resolutely anti-glamorous, a fashion statement which is firmly anti-fashion. Since the adjective "sleazy" originally was used as “a slur on cheap products from Silesia,” primarily cheap or inexpensive cloths and fabrics, I woke up this morning, for rather obvious reasons, thinking about clothing. Vestis verum reddit Quintilianus observed, “Clothes make the man,” and that ancient adage seems to be true at least far as popular music is concerned.

Here’s roughly two dozen pop songs exploring the old adage vestis verum reddit:

The Beatles – Baby’s in Black
Clarence Carter – Patches
Bob Dylan – Boots of Spanish Leather
Bob Dylan – Man in the Long Black Coat
The Eagles – Those Shoes
John Fred and His Playboy Band – Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)
The Hard-Ons – Girl in a Sweater
The Hollies – Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress)
Brian Hyland – Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini
Dickey Lee – Patches
The Steve Miller Band – Abracadabra
Dolly Parton – Coat of Many Colors
Buzz Rabin – Angels in Red
Otis Redding – Try A Little Tenderness
Diane Renay – Navy Blue
Marty Robbins – A White Sport Coat (And a Pink Carnation)
The Rolling Stones – Factory Girl
The Royal Teens – Short Shorts
Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels – Devil With A Blue Dress
Sonny and Cher – Baby Don’t Go
Rod Stewart – You Wear It Well
Traffic – The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys
The Velvet Underground with Nico – Venus in Furs
Bobby Vinton – Blue Velvet
Stevie Wonder – The Woman in Red
ZZ Top – Sharp Dressed Man

Sleazy

My previous blog entry discussed the word “raunchy,” in which I concluded by saying there was a rather significant difference between the meanings of raunchy and sleazy, insisting that the words are in no way synonymous, and indeed they are not. Raunchy is a term derived originally from the operation of the olfactory organ: the word raunchy was most likely derived from the Latin rancidus, meaning “rank” or “stinky.” In contrast, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the adjective sleazy dates from around 1644 and was used, according to William Safire, as “a slur on cheap products from Silesia,” particularly fabrics:

1644, “hairy, fuzzy,” later “flimsy, unsubstantial” (1670), of unknown origin; one theory traces it somehow to Silesian “of the eastern German province of Silesia” (Ger. Schleisen), where fine linen or cotton fabric was made (Silesia in ref. to cloth is attested in Eng. from 1674; and Sleazy as an abbreviated form is attested from 1670, but OED is against this). Sense of “sordid” is from 1941; sleaze (n.) “condition of squalor” is a 1967 back-formation; meaning “person of low moral standards,” and the adj. form, are attested from 1976.

The word sleaze encompasses the worlds of music, art and fashion in the same way the words “Punk” and “Grunge” do, but whereas the latter two movements (strongly associated with a particular form of popular music, rock) had exemplary figures or “stars” (e.g., Johnny Rotten, Kurt Cobain) whose striking singularity attracted the interest of outsiders, sleaze does not. Sleaze is not organized around any glamorous key figures, and while it resolutely lacks glamor, it most certainly expresses an “attitude” – an adopted form of behavior and a preferred set of values. To understand sleazy (understood as a form of cheap, or poorly made clothing) as sordid is to invoke the latter word’s etymology: sordid is from the Latin sordidus “dirty,” from sordere “be dirty, be shabby” (as in attire), sordere related to sordes, “dirt.” But to be sleazy can also mean to be morally corrupt, a meaning also derived from sordid by the process of metaphorical elaboration, meaning “festering” (as in corrupted, or infected), but also “foul, low, [and] mean [common, without distinction].”

A Sampling of Sleazy Songs:
[In some instances, the featured artist may not be the composer of the song]

The Doors – The End
Tommy James & the Shondells – Hanky Panky
Mary MacGregor – Torn Between Two Lovers
Meatloaf – Paradise By the Dashboard Light
Nine Inch Nails – Closer
Prince – Darling Nikki
John Prine – Let’s Invite Them Over
Gary Puckett and the Union Gap – Young Girl
The Rolling Stones – When the Whip Comes Down
Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs – Li’l Red Riding Hood
Millie Small – My Boy Lollipop
Soft Cell – Seedy Films
Starland Vocal Band – Afternoon Delight
Rod Stewart – Maggie May
Rod Stewart – Tonight’s the Night
Conway Twitty – Tight Fittin’ Jeans

Raunchy

The word raunch is to raunchy as the word sleaze is to sleazy—or the word grunge is to grungy: by the process known as back-formation, a new noun is created by omitting the -y from an adjective. Raunchy, of course, is a word used by those who disapprove of bawdiness, smuttiness, licentiousness, and various other manifestations of blatant sexual arousal. Rock music in its Dionysian mode—Elvis 1954-58—has frequently been called raunchy, no surprise since the collocation “rock and roll” is, as almost everyone knows, a euphemism for sexual intercourse in Black English Vernacular (BEV). How did the word raunchy get its start? According to William Safire:

There may be a connection to the Latin rancidus, “rank, stinking,” and its English offshoot, with a more general sense of “odious, nasty.” The O.E.D. has a 1903 citation of ranchy, about a “flea-ranchy” old monkey. An early sexual connotation was in a 1959 British book that described a wedding at which the bridegroom spoke of his intent to worship his bride’s body. “There was an embarrassed pause at this; and then one of the bridesmaids remarked, ‘A bit ranchy, that.’”
[…]
Along the way, users of the adjective clipped the last letter, turning it into a noun. “Presley made his pelvis central to his act,” wrote Time in 1964, “and the screams of his admirers were straight from the raunch.”

Hence the pelvis is to raunch what sweat is to Funk, and smell, in the sense of body odor, is common to both. Raunchy is etymologically linked to the Latin rancidus (“stinking”), and “bad body odor” is also, according to Michael Jarrett, one of the meanings of Funk as derived from “the African concept of lu-fuki” (33). Raunchy and funky are therefore roughly synonymous, both invoking the body in all its rank, pungent fecundity. But neither raunch nor funk is synonymous with sleazy.

Sleazy songs are a subject for a future blog.

A Few Raunchy Tunes:

James Brown – Cold Sweat
Tim Buckley – Get On Top
The Commodores – Brick House
Confederate Railroad – Trashy Women
Elvis (Presley) – Hound Dog
Exile – Kiss You All Over
Johnny Horton – Sugar Coated Baby
The Isley Brothers – Between the Sheets
Bill Justis – Raunchy
Led Zeppelin – The Lemon Song
Jerry Lee Lewis – Great Balls of Fire
Montrose – Rock Candy
Little Richard – Tutti Frutti
The Rolling Stones – Honky Tonk Women
Joe Tex – Aint’ Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman)
Johnny Winter And – Rock And Roll Hoochie Koo

MiniMoog

I received an interesting email from David Borden, Director, Retired, of the Digital Music Program, Department of Music, at Cornell University, containing information that adds yet another piece of knowledge to our understanding of the Moog synthesizer in the context of the late 1960s and early 1970s rock culture. Mr. Borden wrote in response to an entry I posted back in early May about the particular modular Moog that was featured in Donald Cammell and Nic Roeg’s Performance (1970). I encourage readers to refer to, or to re-read, the complete text here, but for purposes of convenience I reproduce below the relevant excerpt from my earlier blog:

The special virtue of the Moog was its durability; there was no “right” or “wrong” way to use it—no particular grouping of patches, or combination of knob settings, could damage it. On the other hand, some patch combinations and knob settings would not yield any sound, so while there may have been no right or wrong way to play around with it, if you didn’t know what you were doing, nothing would happen. At the time, therefore, someone who knew how to use it—such as Jon Weiss, "the man from Moog”—was quite valuable.

However, based on his considerable experience with early versions of the Moog synthesizer, David Borden offered a correction to this passage, saying that I was not quite right about the durability of early Moog synthesizers. He writes:

Actually, there was a way to mess up the Moog modules by patching. I did it many times—in 1967. By the time Jon [Weiss] got there (to the Moog Co.) Bob had redesigned the modules so that (mostly) nothing could ruin a module due to strange patching.

I would encourage those interested to visit David Borden’s website, where one can find lots of information on his very interesting career. For instance, in 1969 he formed one of the first live performance synthesizer ensembles, called Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company, with Steve Drews and Linda Fisher. His work Easter was performed live on Easter Sunday, 1970 featuring the first live performance of a MiniMoog (pictured above; the official debut of which was still months away). At the time, no one else was performing with Moog synthesizers except for Wendy Carlos and Richard Teitelbaum, but Wendy Carlos performed live infrequently (in part due to the patching difficulties of early modular synthesizers--the MiniMoog would change that) and Richard Teitelbaum was still in Europe. Later, director William Friedkin commissioned Borden to write the score for The Exorcist, but as is well known Friedkin opted for Mike Oldfield’s minimalist derivation on his work Tubular Bells, and only about 45 seconds of Borden's material was used in the completed film.

I wish to thank Mr. Borden for writing in and sharing his knowledge about the early period of the Moog synthesizer. We can now better approximate the adoption of the Moog (that is, the MiniMoog) by rock musicians beginning in the early 1970s.

A Few LPs On Which the MiniMoog Appears:

Devo – Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! (1978)
Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Pictures at an Exhibition (1971)
Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company – S/T (1973) [Reissued as 1970-1973 with previously unissued recordings (1999)]
Gary Numan/Tubeway Army – Replicas (1979)
Rush – A Farewell to Kings (1977)
Synergy [Larry Fast] – Electronic Realizations for Rock Orchestra (1975)
Rick Wakeman – Six Wives of Henry VIII (1973)
Yes - Close To The Edge (1972)

Chill, Baby

The word “cool” emerged out of 1940s American jazz culture known as bebop. Bob Yurochko observes: “[One] phenomenon that rose from bebop [of the 1940s] was a new language or slang used by musicians called “bop talk.” Musicians communicated with each other with words like “hip,” “cool,” “man,” “cat,” or “dig” to form their own lexicon, which became part of the jazz musician’s heritage” (A Short History of Jazz, p. 103). “Cool” became a word used to describe an entire way of behaving and managing the self, in short, a behavioral style. Robert S. Gold, in A Jazz Lexicon, calls the word the “most protean of jazz slang terms” and meant, among other things, “convenient . . . off dope . . . on dope, comfortable, respectable, perceptive, shrewd—virtually anything favorably regarded by the speaker” (65). In other words, anything the speaker regarded as Good was “cool.” The approbation, “That’s cool,” first used by the members of the jazz culture, was later enthusiastically adopted by rock culture.

For Beat figure Jack Kerouac—he himself an exemplary figure of cool as both attitude and behavior—bebop was the music that represented modern, that is, hip, America.

At this time, 1947, bop was going like mad all over America, but it hadn’t developed into what it is now. The fellows at the Loop [in Chicago] blew, but with a tired air, because bop was somewhere between its Charley Parker Ornithology period and another period that really began with Miles Davis. (On the Road: The Original Scroll, p. 117).

The form of cool associated with Miles Davis is what Michael Jarrett calls prophetic cool, a form of cool “characterized by barely harnessed rage” (19). Exemplary figures of prophetic cool are the young Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, and Ice-T. But Kerouac himself epitomized what Jarrett calls “philosophical cool,” which might also be called existential cool—the self as an effect of performance. Besides Kerouac, exemplary figures epitomizing existential cool are Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Keith Richards, Nico, Snoop Doggy Dogg—and the old Bob Dylan.

Addendum: 1 September 2008, 11:43:43 a.m. CDT: See Bent Sørensen's article on Kerouac's language titled "An On & Off Beat: Kerouac's Beat Etymologies" available on-line here. Thanks, Bent, for providing the link.