music

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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@sinesalvatorem

The previous thread was getting a bit long and topic-drifty, so I’m putting this here.

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The band “Shame and Scandal” borrowed some instruments from. (Wikipedia says this is not technically prog rock, but more the stuff that prog rock evolved out of. *shrug* Prog rock’s not my area. I liked Genesis a lot better after they sold out.)

(Naming genres in general is not really my area. I’m used to the kind of mishmash of pop, rock, and maybe occasional dips into electronica like you hear played in the background in grocery stores*, in which the primary thing that distinguishes one type of music from another is age rather than genre. That’s why I included decades in my categorisations.)

(That’s also why it’s possible for a song from the 1980′s to sound late 50′s/early 60′s, or a song from the 2010′s to sound late 70′s/early 80′s. Both of those songs were deliberately trying to sound earlier than they were, and it works.)

—

God, I know I’ve heard songs so much like “Obeah Wedding”, but I’m having a hard time thinking of any. I don’t specifically seek them out, and they aren’t distinctive the way “Light My Fire” is.

Hmm. They mostly phased out 50′s stuff from the radio rotations in the late 00′s**, and since I don’t seek it out, I haven’t heard it much in quite a while.

I’m going to play the opening instrumental of “Obeah Wedding” to my mother and ask her what songs it reminds her of. That might help.

[…]

…well, she said her first associations were cruises and Mexico and Florida, so in other words she’s too close to the mark to be helpful. She did suggest big-band stuff from the 40′s, though, and–once I told her what the song was–pointed out that I would be familiar with this calypso song. That one sounds very different to me, though (and not fitting into any established category in my head, I think).

While I can’t seem to find anything suitable, I can tell you that I think a lot of what my brain is going off of here is “slower-paced song with lots of horns”. Although I suspect there’s some more subtle stuff going on too.

—

“Rally Round the West Indies”: again, I swear I’ve heard similar stuff, but I’m not sure what. Some part of me is insisting “The Same Moon”, but when I put them side-by-side it doesn’t seem right. (They have kind of similar minor background instruments, I think, and that’s probably what that part of me is latching on to.) Another part says “Dance into the Light”***, which is kind of similar in the horns but not quite right overall (and might be cheating, because I suspect he might be trying to sound vaguely tropical in that one).

—

Overall, this was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Recognition-vs-recall issues, maybe. I’ll try to keep an ear out when listening to radio, see if I can spot something suitable.

—

*Well, probably not your grocery stores. But I know you’ve been in Canadian grocery stores, and probably American ones too. That stuff.

**Which is a suspicious timing. It may actually be that America just plays more 50′s stuff than Canada does, and it only seems like late 00′s because that’s when I moved.

*** /sees some of the music video while getting a Youtube version to link/ …god, Phil Collins is such a dork. I love him, but he’s a dork.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #(close enough) #this probably could be more coherent than it is #but I’m not sure how to do it #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #music #in which Brin has no musical training

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A Guide To Caribbean Memes – Pt 1

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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sinesalvatorem:

Well, actually, just to the memes that were popular around me while I was in college. Most of these come from songs. I am tired of memeing around my American friends and having them be like “wut???”, so I am educating you all now.

I. [X] does give me me powers

The origin of this meme is the song Phenomenal by Benjai. It come from the line “Soca does gi’ me me powas; ey-ay”. ie: “[Caribbean music genre] makes me powerful; [sound of enthusiasm]”. The specific way this is used varies a lot.

Most commonly, it’ll be a comment on how something has given you the ability to do stupid things faster with more energy. “coffee”, “ganja”, “cocaine”, “manga”, and “pumpum” (ie: vagina) are all things I heard people say gave them powers (it has to be two syllables to fit the song). Alternatively, if your friend has just done something stupid, you can comment on it this way – usually attributing their sudden energy to something silly as a form of ribbing.

Alternatively, you can use it as an image macro, as we often do on WhatsApp (yes, we’re whatsappers). The general format here is a call-and-response macro. The first image is of the thing giving the powers, with the caption “[thing] does give me me powers”. The second image shows someone doing something silly, with either the caption “Ey Ay”/”Eh I” or the caption “See me deh/dey/there”.

Example from WhatsApp:

Soca Powers 1

However, the punning potential is great and terrible

Soca Powers 2

(I’m a horrible person, I know)

And, thus, you have been educated! Which is great, because I am constantly tempted to use this meme, and then have to refrain from it to avoid confusion. But no more! Go forth and meme like a true rudeboy

 

thetransintransgenic:

How does “[X] does give me me powers“ parse syntactically?

Specifically, what is each “me” doing? Do they both mean the same thing, and were just repeated for the meter to work? (Or for emphasis? Does [Redacted]-dialect repeat nouns for emphasis?)

Or are they doing different things? Are they both ~something about the speaker~ (with some grammatical effects), or is one of them totally unrelated?

 

sinesalvatorem:

“me” is the first person singular pronoun.

Yes, there aren’t first person singular pronouns. There is only one. It does the work of English I, me, and my.

So, replacing the ‘me’s with their equivalents, we get “Soca does give me my powers”.

But wait! What’s the “does” doing here?

It puts the sentence in the present tense, because “Soca give me my powers” would be past tense. The unmarked form of a verb in my dialect generally is.

So the sentence parses as “Soca gives me my powers” in standard English.

 

brin-bellway:

Ah, so that’s what the “does” was for.

(The doubled “me” didn’t confuse me, personally: my language-parsing module saw the second one, said “ah, it’s the cockney ‘me’”, and continued on. Apparently I’ve consumed enough British media for “’me’ can be used as a possessive” to be an available thought.)

—

On an unrelated note: is it just me*, or does that song–especially the chorus–sound very…itself? Like, a song they would play over a location-establishing shot. “HAVE WE MENTIONED YET THAT WE’RE IN THE CARIBBEAN??”

Not in a bad way, just…intensely Caribbean.

*It might just be me and my lack of experience with the genre.

 

sinesalvatorem:

It is very much a quintessentially Caribbean song! Other songs that feel very strongly Caribbean to me include:

Notably, all of these songs are Trinidadian (the meme song included), because the quintessential Caribbean genres to me are Calypso and Soca. These are both Eastern Caribbean genres specifically (so, not popular in Jamaica), and Trinidad is by far the largest Eastern Caribbean country.

This may be a little provincial to be the “quintessential Caribbean genres”, but I’m from the Eastern Caribbean, and these are the songs I was raised on, so *shrug*

Huh, interesting. None of those feel like a faceful of Caribbean to me the way the meme one does.

When I try to intuitively categorise these songs, I get:

“Shame and Scandal”: 1960′s comedian who borrowed some instruments from a prog rock band, but isn’t using them in quite the same way. The narrative is one I previously heard in this song, which is presented as Irish folk but might have been written by a Canadian and from what I can tell it’s a bit of a confusing mess. (As soon as the protagonist in this one went to his father, before the father even said anything, I suspected what was going to happen and what the final punchline was going to be.)

“Obeah Wedding”: 1950′s proto-rock.

“Sweet Sweet Tnt”: Okay, kind of a faceful of Caribbean on re-listen, but the first thing it reminded me of was being at the community college recently during some kind of diversity fair, and waiting by the Mexico table for my ride to show up.

“Rally Round the West Indies”: circa-1980′s pop with some Caribbean influence.

—

I think the lesson here is that the way one intuitively categorises music depends strongly on what music one is already familiar with. I’m tempted to throw some stuff from the Pop/Rock Hits of the Late 20th Century radio playlists at you and see what happens. Have you had enough exposure to that music for categorisation attempts to stop giving weird results?

Tags:

#music #reply via reblog #North Americans are exotic creatures #long post

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A Guide To Caribbean Memes – Pt 1

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

sinesalvatorem:

thetransintransgenic:

sinesalvatorem:

Well, actually, just to the memes that were popular around me while I was in college. Most of these come from songs. I am tired of memeing around my American friends and having them be like “wut???”, so I am educating you all now.

I. [X] does give me me powers

The origin of this meme is the song Phenomenal by Benjai. It come from the line “Soca does gi’ me me powas; ey-ay”. ie: “[Caribbean music genre] makes me powerful; [sound of enthusiasm]”. The specific way this is used varies a lot.

Most commonly, it’ll be a comment on how something has given you the ability to do stupid things faster with more energy. “coffee”, “ganja”, “cocaine”, “manga”, and “pumpum” (ie: vagina) are all things I heard people say gave them powers (it has to be two syllables to fit the song). Alternatively, if your friend has just done something stupid, you can comment on it this way – usually attributing their sudden energy to something silly as a form of ribbing.

Alternatively, you can use it as an image macro, as we often do on WhatsApp (yes, we’re whatsappers). The general format here is a call-and-response macro. The first image is of the thing giving the powers, with the caption “[thing] does give me me powers”. The second image shows someone doing something silly, with either the caption “Ey Ay”/”Eh I” or the caption “See me deh/dey/there”.

Example from WhatsApp:

Soca Powers 1

However, the punning potential is great and terrible

Soca Powers 2

(I’m a horrible person, I know)

And, thus, you have been educated! Which is great, because I am constantly tempted to use this meme, and then have to refrain from it to avoid confusion. But no more! Go forth and meme like a true rudeboy

How does “[X] does give me me powers“ parse syntactically?

Specifically, what is each “me” doing? Do they both mean the same thing, and were just repeated for the meter to work? (Or for emphasis? Does [Redacted]-dialect repeat nouns for emphasis?)

Or are they doing different things? Are they both ~something about the speaker~ (with some grammatical effects), or is one of them totally unrelated?

“me” is the first person singular pronoun.

Yes, there aren’t first person singular pronouns. There is only one. It does the work of English I, me, and my.

So, replacing the ‘me’s with their equivalents, we get “Soca does give me my powers”.

But wait! What’s the “does” doing here?

It puts the sentence in the present tense, because “Soca give me my powers” would be past tense. The unmarked form of a verb in my dialect generally is.

So the sentence parses as “Soca gives me my powers” in standard English.

Ah, so that’s what the “does” was for.

(The doubled “me” didn’t confuse me, personally: my language-parsing module saw the second one, said “ah, it’s the cockney ‘me’”, and continued on. Apparently I’ve consumed enough British media for “’me’ can be used as a possessive” to be an available thought.)

—

On an unrelated note: is it just me*, or does that song–especially the chorus–sound very…itself? Like, a song they would play over a location-establishing shot. “HAVE WE MENTIONED YET THAT WE’RE IN THE CARIBBEAN??”

Not in a bad way, just…intensely Caribbean.

*It might just be me and my lack of experience with the genre.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #language #the more you know #music #also #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #because that was indeed a great and terrible pun

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~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

For anyone betrayed by that post going around that claimed to be “Weightless” by Marconi Union (aka “the most relaxing song ever”), but was actually (spoilers) n inevnag bs “Pbggba Rlr Wbr”: here is an actual recording of “Weightless”.

Tags:

#(I believed that post at first) #(and I *did* consider reblogging it without listening to it because I’d already heard it on Youtube) #(but I decided to look at TagViewer first) #(this was the correct decision) #oh look an original post #music #I was disappointed but not surprised to learn that this song makes my chest hurt #and to a lesser extent my head #it’s the opposite of relaxing #look brain #I love you and I know you love me #I know you’re just trying to protect me #but also you’re a paranoid wreck #and as if that weren’t bad enough you were given some very fucked up sex ed as a kid #(I don’t mean that in the usual sense) #(I don’t necessarily think there’s a whole lot anyone could’ve done to make my upbringing less toxic in that regard) #(it just happened to be an incredibly bad match) #I’m glad you’re a *little* less panicky now that you have some decent models for what consensual sex can look like #I hope we can heal more in the future #((um)) #((for anyone who found this in the Marconi Union tracked tag or something)) #((I swear these tags make sense in context)) #tag rambles #(I specifically left them in the tags) #(in order to leave it up to the individual whether to include them when reblogging) #(so you can just have the PSA part if you want) #sexuality and lack thereof #people who can distinguish between their drive for sleep and drive for sex fascinate me

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

orbispelagium:

orbispelagium:

If pop music is determined to keep the compulsory heterosexuality from top to bottom, the least they could do is have guys sing about, I dunno, their desire to have a fifty-foot-tall chubby dragon woman sit on their face or something.

Where’s my dismal, by-the-numbers EDM track about vore?

Tags:

#music #sexuality and lack thereof #I’d listen to it #(or give it a shot anyway)

Video ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

galpaladins:

Daniel Kahn (of Daniel Kahn & the Painted Bird) performing a Yiddish translation of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”.

Tags:

#music #interesting #Leonard Cohen #so I went and looked up Hallelujah on Youtube #like you do #and…look #my parents had a set of three mix CDs they played a zillion times in the car when I was growing up #one of the tracks was ”Hallelujah” #and that track is How Hallelujah Sounds as far as my brain is concerned #I’m beginning to suspect it was a cover #because the two Leonard Cohen versions I tried were so Wrong I couldn’t bear to finish them #it may have been from the Shrek soundtrack #apparently there were two versions involved with the Shrek soundtrack #and I listened to both of them and they both sound Correct in a way that the Leonard Cohen versions very much did not #I don’t know #I get the impression from looking around that Leonard Cohen did a lot of versions of Hallelujah #was there a Correct one at some point and it’s just not what comes up first on Youtube? #because it’s kind of awkward to see all these people mourning Cohen and gradually realise you may have never actually heard a Cohen song #and your brain is in fact rebelling at having to listen to a Cohen version of the archetypical Cohen song? #anyway this one is neat as long as I don’t think of it in terms of Correctness #tag rambles

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

cockenblog:

This is. so good.

 

an-actual-sunflower:

All the Phony People
Where do they all come from?
All the Phony People
Where do they all belong?

Henry the intern
Looks at the dog and the children and takes off his coat
He is a goat.

Young secretary
Secretly hoping that nobody working can see
She’s made of bees.

All the Phony People
Where do they all come from?
All the Phony People
Where do they all belong?

 

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

If someone doesn’t turn this into an audio post I will be so dissapointed O.O

 

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

Michael from HR

Typing a memo to people he knows are not real

He is a seal

Dog out of trenchcoat

Happily sharing the news of his raise on the phone

Chewing a bone

All the Phony People

Where Do they all come from

All the Phony People

Working with no thumbs

 

drfitzmonster:

oh god i can’t stop laughing

 

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

Next time me and my sweetie go out for karaoke, we’re singing this version :D

It has been decided :D

 

dagny-hashtaggart:

You know, thinking this over further, there’s something charming about how thoroughly it inverts the themes of the original song. I mean, ‘Eleanor Rigby’ is all about loneliness and alienation, and yet look at all the bonding we are seeing between people who are not actually people (or at least not the humans they appear to be) upon the revelation that none of them are actually what they seem.

Tags:

#music

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

ilzolende:

goddamnshinyrock:

please take a moment to imagine the Federation version of Eurovision as @swordfern and I have envisioned it, in a post-DS9 peaceful future:
-Bajor does something very soothing with hand percussion and like…. background eurythmy dancing but the lyrics are utterly heart-wrenching.
-Betazed is always a fan favorite- they really get into the pop ballads and impressive choreography, and of course always cause ~feelings~
-Romulans do the super intimidating acts like that one song about Moskau.
-Klingons just do fucking opera every time.
-Andorians do… whatever the andorian version of death metal is. imagine andorian headbanging. just imagine it.
-the new Cardassian Republic, when it finally gains admittance, is intensely earnest and a bit disco. No one really knows how to react to this.
-Vulcan sends one person with a Vulcan lute and they play an extremely logical arrangement extremely well, with no dancers or any illogical frippery… and they repeat this each year. No one ever votes for Vulcan.

  • Okay, but what we really want to know is “who sings the equivalent to ‘Irlande Douze Pointe’?”.
  • “We are Bajorans, so why is our song almost completely in Reduced-Ambiguity Simplified Vulcan every. single. year?”
  • “Who invited the Ferengi, this is the Federation Video Media Association Song Contest, and are they in the Federation? I sure don’t think so.”
  • Ganymede separatists getting upset that they can’t bring their flag because it’s political, and why are they stuck being treated as just “part of the set of human habitations around Jupiter” anyway, why must people take “United Federation of Planets” so literally these days, ugh.
  • Actually, is this by species or by planet or what?

Tags:

#Star Trek #story ideas I will never write #Eurovision

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

lizardywizard:

academicianzex:

stanford-pines:

In retrospect, I’m pretty sure the reason every American kid my age knows the song “Kids in America” is because of the jimmy neutron movie

Bitch, digimon the movie soundtrack

Get on my level

i don’t know it from any movie i just love kim wilde okay

i’m old

Tags:

#…oh my god #I have to go with the OP on this one #(although I think I have heard it places other than the Jimmy Neutron movie?) #(but only around the same time period) #music #Jimmy Neutron

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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(*digs post out of drafts, finishes writing it*)

Can anyone think of a social-justice anthem (generalised anti-bigotry preferred; failing that, feminism-focused) with a line involving the word “home”? Where “home” refers to, like, the post-bigotry utopia the songwriter wants to bring about*, or the community of universal sisterhood, or something like that, rather than the dystopic kyriarchy of one’s presumed birth.

I want a category tag for talking about social justice as a culture (rather than an ideology), and I’d like it to match my other homeland tags.

*However, the specific “home” line should not refer to it as not currently existing.

Tags:

#oh look an original post #I tried Seanan McGuire’s ”Wicked Girls” and every SJ-y Phil Collins song in my collection #none of them had anything suitable #(though if I can’t find a home line I might consider ”our roads may be golden or broken or lost”) #(although you’d need to imagine ”or broken or lost” said in a much more bitter tone) #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #our roads may be golden or broken or lost #(spoilers)

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