Mondegreen No. 1 & 2

A Mondegreen is the mis-hearing of a lyric resulting in the meaning being rendered in a more comic fashion.

The phrase was coined by writer Sylvia Wright in 1954, writing in Harper’s Magazine. As a child she had listened to her mother recite the old Scottish ballad The Bonnie Earl o’ Moray. Part of which deals with the bloody end of the titular noble – particularly the aftermath of the slaying, at which point they, “Laid him on the green.”

La Wright, however, heard that not only was the Earl o’ Moray dead, but so too was “Lady Mondegreen.”

And so the Mondegreen was born.

My pal Sandra was, for a long time, under the common misapprehension that Jimi Hendrix had come out as bisexual in his song Purple Haze. The evidence? The line:

“’Scuse me while I kiss this guy”

Very polite, these bisexuals. ‘Scuse me. You’re excused I’m sure, don't mind me.

My mother is as adroit a mondegreener as she is a malapropist.

The scene: Top of the Pops, some time in the Autumn of 1983. Boy George croons on a Mississippi Riverboat (actually a stretch of river somewhere near Weybridge in Surrey).

My mother laughs and tuts, and says:

“He’s a comedian, right enough.”

“Huh?”

“That’s what he’s singing: I’m a I’m a I’m a I’m a I’m a comedian…”

Stories Behind The Music

SCENE: A Living Room.

MUSIC: Florida Suite (1887) by Frederick Delius

ME: “Did you know that Delius was buried at night time?”

LSP*: “No I did not know that. Did you know that I can’t hear Delius’s lovely music because you keep telling me stuff such as ‘Did you know Delius was buried at night time?’”

(*LSP stands for Long Suffering Partner, referring to my wife Karen. It will elsewhere on this blog stand for Long Suffering Pal. Both will refer to people who have been greatly tolerant of my music anorak-ism down through the years. Those who could not stand it will be abbreviated as XLSP.)

I have always been fascinated by the stories behind the music and the musicians. It was perhaps inevitable, therefore, that I would end up spending at least a part of my professional life writing reviews and criticism as a journalist.

I recently found myself wondering where this interest – obsession? – came from. And whether or not I’d have a greater appreciation of the music if I forgot all about the backstory and just listened.

Frankly, I didn’t fancy the prospect.

Rather than change the habits of a lifetime, I tried instead to trace back up the tracks of my trainspotterish proclivity for musical biography. And the line led, as it so often does, to my father.

My old man had an eclectic taste in music.  For the purposes of the tale at hand I’ll set the gamut as being everything from Souza to Johnny Cash.

Johnny Cash, my old dad was fond of saying, could sing heartfelt songs of life behind bars because he had himself been a hardened jailbird.

My dad (top pic) and me

This last is a PR man’s dream. Cash served several one-night-stands in the pokey for various minor misdemeanours (including the daft flower-picking incident that featured in the song Starkville City Jail). Down through the years, however, these incidents have, in the retelling, become a tale to rival anything out of Dumas. Such a Past, of course, does no harm to The Image.

John Phillip Sousa, my dad told me, also had a backstory.

Sousa, according to my dad, was a man obsessed with precision. Evidence? Well that was plain in the marches so beloved of my father. Martial music. March time. Brisk. Not a hair out of place.

Sousa’s obsession was such, so my dad told me, that his quest for precision in all things eventually drove him stark staring MAD.

I have always LOVED that story.

But I’d never sought to question it. Until, that is, I decided to trace back up the tracks, etc, etc (see above)…

It turns out, thanks to just the most cursory glance at Google, that J.P Sousa lived to the ripe old age of 77, was happily married and had three kids. The maddest thing he ever did was that he once considered joining a circus band, but soon thought better of it. He was fond of wearing his Marines uniform when performing, even long after he left the military – eccentric, rather than barking, I would have thought.

Does it make me think any less of Sousa? Well, he was never going to feature on my Desert Island Discs at the best of times. Does it diminish my dad, somehow? Not at all. The fact that my old man was a bit of – ‘ow you say? – a Romancer, was one of things I loved most about him.

I just wonder where the story came from? Did my dad just assume that the slightly unhinged undertone of marching music would surely drive you to the booby hatch over time? Was it a paternal cautionary tale to take Sousa in small doses?

And, frankly, who could take large doses of Sousa? For most listeners, a march spends most of its time either approaching and/or receding – based on the reasonable assumption that the listener is standing watching a parade. Thus the music never outstays its welcome. The only folks exposed to the music for protracted periods of time are the band members themselves. Or people who like following parades. Those band members are often soldiers with training to toughen them up for horrors almost as bad as martial music. Those who jig along in their wake, however, would need to be judged in another court.

So is this another tale of parental let downs and disappointments then? Far from it. Especially not on Fathers’ Day some seven years after his death. It’s a thanks-giving tale. My father’s love of music and a good yarn both – regardless of how tall that yarn may be – are the greatest gifts he bestowed upon me. They are central to my every living day.

Besides, it instilled in me the central principal of British journalism, which, as any fule kno, is… why let the truth get in the way of a good story?

Here’s the U.S Marines giving it large on Sousa’s most famous piece…

The Monday Shuffle

The Monday Shuffle – the first five songs to come up on my iTunes/iPod this morning…

1. Punky’s Dilemma – Simon and Garfunkel (1968)

Pulled out a plum, here, in terms of a good way to start a freezing cold Monday.

Wistful, hippy-dippy, sunny, with a whistling coda, Punky’s Dilemma is from side two of 1968’s Bookends album. It’s a great song to use as a litmus test on Paul Simon. If you weren’t sure as to whether you can stick him or not, give this a go. Its writerly squibs – boysenberry jam rhymes with ordinary, for example – will either have you smiling all day, or throwing your iPod across the room.

For the record, I’m in the former camp.

2. Watching the Wheels – John Lennon (1980)

Truth be told, if this didn’t pop up on shuffle from time to time, I probably wouldn’t listen to it. The geek in me has to have it to complete the collection. But I always have to ask – is Double Fantasy, Lennon’s last album, really any good?

In the context of a comeback, sure, it’s great news: here’s a finally happy man making a nice but bland record. Nothing wrong with that, of course. But is it a great record?

Is it a tragedy that it was his last record? No doubt about it. And there’s the rub: it’s just too tough to judge this album on its own merits, standing alone.

Great sentiment in the lyric of this UK No.1 single, though: I’m out, I’m done, I’m not competing any more, and do you know what? I feel happy. Lovely stuff.

The voice – a voice that Lennon was always unsure of – sails here, as he’s right behind the sentiment of the lyric. It’s one of the best recordings of his voice left to us – nasal, raggedy, still raw and plaintive. It remains one of my favourite voices.

And the Proustian effect of music to bring back December 1980 is vivid indeed. From the Bush wireless over which I heard the news, to my granny giving me my breakfast, to the spiral wallpaper on my bedroom wall to playing that day the only Beatles album I had at the time – Beatles For Sale.

Nothing like a song to bring it all flooding back.

3. Can’t You Find Another Way of Doing It – Same & Dave (1968)

From 1968, tight and funky in the face of all that flabby psychedelia, this Atlantic single only made number 54 on the Billboard Hot 100. Viewed in the context of previous singles – Hold On I’m Comin’ and Soul Man among them – I suppose it could seem something of a potboiler. There’s the requisite brass jabbing like Cassius Clay, the loose-wristed snare drumming, the cat-on-hot-bricks bass… maybe in 1968 it all seemed a bit same-old-same old.

It’s a case of pearls before swine, if you ask me.

Writers Homer Banks and Raymond Jackson bring quite a pedigree to the table. Both born in Memphis, Banks is responsible for (among many others) I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down with Jackson’s CV boasting (If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don't Want to Be Right and, in the best tradition of these things, many, many more.

As time goes on Sam and Dave seem to have become the unsung heroes of soul. Their relationship was a famously stormy one, with Sam Moore once claiming that he and Dave didn’t speak offstage for a period of 13 years.

A girl at college introduced me to Sam and Dave back in the 80s. She was a big Otis Redding nut, too, and she once made me an outstanding mix tape (more of that another day).

4. Things Are Going to Get Better – Small Faces (1967)

Hard on the heels of Sam and Dave, a disciple: Steve Marriott. And it’s his great vocal performance that keeps the interest here – despite the best (or worst?) efforts – of Ian MacLagen’s harpsichord, an instrument as well-suited to the Small Faces bluesy sound as a Telephone is to Bach’s Matthew Passion.

An album track from side one of 1967’s Small Faces album, their debut for Andrew Loog Oldham’s Immediate label. Marriot and Ronnie Lane composed all the tracks on the album, and perhaps the strain is showing here on this filler.

Of Andrew Loog Oldham as a producers, the aforementioned Ian MacLagen once observed” “Produce records? He couldn’t produce a burp after a pint of beer.”

5. White Lightening – George Jones (1959)

It’s by George Jones so it’s either about a bad woman or booze… and this time it’s the latter.

A 1959 US Country No.1, it’s a paean to the delights of homemade hooch. Legend has it – and the phrase “legend has it” is seldom very far from any tale about George Jones – that Jones took 80 takes to get the vocal right, having “warmed up” for the recording in a bar.

The song’s rockabilly flavour is no coincidence. It was written by J.P Richardson, who is of course more famous by his stage name The Big Bopper. The tune was recorded six days after the Big Bopper perished in the same aircrash that took Buddy Holly.

My earliest memory of this one is in my grandfather’s car, listening to it on the eight-track stereo, and everyone laughing at the cod basso profundo vocal on the title line, “Oooh! White Lightning”.

I laughed all over again this morning. Have a great week. Here’s George in action.