ITT we explain to each other song lyrics
Sorry if there was already a thread for this, I looked briefly and couldn't spot one.
The JoCo Thing-a-week songs each have a blurb explaining them. But that's not the case with every song.
I have two questions:
1. What is Overhead about? I enjoy the song, and have tried to understand, but it seems like there's a crucial element that ties it together (like the giant Squid in I Crush Everything that makes the whole song make way more sense but is not entirely obvious) that I wish I weren't missing.
2. Over There contains a lot of common jokes/truths about the Europeans (clogs, bad teeth, mayonnaise with frites). But the last verse sings about French men chewing their really cheap underwear (which, shouldn't it cost a Euro.92 instead of a Dollar.92?). I have never heard of anything remotely resembling this. What's the deal with that, is this actually a myth/joke about the French?
The JoCo Thing-a-week songs each have a blurb explaining them. But that's not the case with every song.
I have two questions:
1. What is Overhead about? I enjoy the song, and have tried to understand, but it seems like there's a crucial element that ties it together (like the giant Squid in I Crush Everything that makes the whole song make way more sense but is not entirely obvious) that I wish I weren't missing.
2. Over There contains a lot of common jokes/truths about the Europeans (clogs, bad teeth, mayonnaise with frites). But the last verse sings about French men chewing their really cheap underwear (which, shouldn't it cost a Euro.92 instead of a Dollar.92?). I have never heard of anything remotely resembling this. What's the deal with that, is this actually a myth/joke about the French?
Comments
1) That's a great question. There are a couple of songs where fairly important information isn't stated in the song ("I Crush Everything" is, as you say, the best example; I'd add "Under the Pines"), but I don't believe such an element has been identified in "Overhead." I love it for its moodiness, but it's definitely out of the ordinary for a JoCo song to need this kind of interpretation. This Might Be a Wiki (the They Might Be Giants wiki) has an "interpretations" section for each song, so people can try and decipher the layers of images in TMBG songs, but JoCo songs -- usually they're, if not straightforward, at least meant to convey a single narrative thread. I don't know if that's the case for "Overhead."
Awryone posted a little bit of the song's history in the "Overhead" chords thread, but I think that's the best clarification we've gotten.
2) I've never heard of those specific myths, but they sound like a brilliant exaggeration of the kind of things that the stereotypical American would get into his head about the stereotypical Frenchman (and with the dollar strong at the time the song was written, the cheapness of the underwear may just be an "everything's dirt-cheap in Europe" joke). I've mentioned this before, but I think the cleverest thing about "Over There" is that it punctures national stereotypes in both directions.
Where the naked ladies dance
You can find it if you ask around
And theres a hole there in the wall
Where the men can see it all
But the men dont care
Because they chew their underwear
And the underwear they chew costs a dollar ninety-two
That whole phrase is one of the variations of a song alot of people sing when they're kids. Its goes to the tune of 'The Streets of Cairo". Theres a bunch of variations.
Linky: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streets_of_Cairo#Lyrics
We're gonna need it
1 - in Our culture we are strong on helping each other
- in Their culture nepotism is rife
2 - in Our culture we value initiative, ambition and reaching for our dreams
- in Their culture they'd sell their grandma if it gave them a leg up
3 - in Our culture we are sensible with money and don't squander it
- in Their culture, everything revolves around hoarding material wealth
The "us" and "them" in cases like these can be completely arbitrary, but the patterns seem to emerge best when there are elements of colonialism or the fear of the Immigrant Hordes at stake.
One:
There goes [insert name]
Going down the Delaware
Chewing on [his/her] underwear
Couldn't find another pair
Ten days later got bit by a polar bear
Poor little polar bear died.
[Alternate last line: Ain't no bear no more.]
Two:
McDonald's is the kind of place
They serve you rattlesnakes
Put french fries up your nose
And hamburgers between your toes
The last time I was there
They stole my underwear
But I really didn't care
Because it was a dirty pair
McDonald's is that kind of place
Three:
Tra la la boom dee-yay
They took my pants away
They threw me in the air
Without my underwear
All the girls in France do the hootchy cootchy (or hula hula) dance
And the way they shake is enough to kill a snake
When the snake is dead they put diamonds in its head
when the diamonds break it is nineteen-ninety-eight
Seeing as this was sung in the late 1960's 1998 seemed like forever away.
The McDonalds one was based on one fo their tv jingles- our version went
McDonalds is my kind of place, throw burgers in your face
Stuff french fries up your nose
Pour milk shakes on your toes
The other time when I was there
they fried my under wear
McDonalds is my kind of place.
From PopSci, Sep 2005:
Contrary to that, Kenesaw Mountain Landis was known as a cranky, nasty, closed minded individual. He was brought in to clean up the corruption in baseball, which he did, but he also ruled with an iron fist, heavy handing his way through a bunch of questionable bans. He's also considered to be single handedly the reason that the color barrier in baseball was not broken until after a year after his death.
Actually, a lot of the stuff that's being answered in this thread would fit very nicely into JoCopedia, come to think.
If you are interested in hearing more in-depth descriptions of what Jonathan was thinking and what inspired the songs, try listening to the Jawbone Radio podcast for the time matching the last 6 months of Thing a Week. Jonathan used to phone in an intro every week. He started phoning in on or shortly after show 105.
I like how he just keeps segueing into different things, like Elvis Costello and "Is She Really Going Out With Him?"
Apropos of nothing but Colleen's point, I'd really like to do something with the interviews on JoCopedia -- there was an early, abortive effort to categorize them, but it's kinda stalled. I'll add it to the To do list, I guess (it's a WikiProject already, but let's face it, I don't even check the WikiProjects so much).
Le Guin and L'Engle were contemporaries, publishing most from the 60s through the 80s. L'Engle did mostly young adult fiction, while Le Guin does both youth and adult fiction. If you like scifi, and haven't read Le Guin, there are some great books out there for you.
@Angel -- you're thinking of L'Engle's "A Swiftly Tilting Planet" . This is her 3rd book in the series started with "A Wrinkle in Time". I didn't understand this book as a girl, but appreciated it more as an adult. I loved "A Wrinkle in Time" at both ages.
any more of this, and we should move to the book thread....