Speaking of the Human League, can we acknowledge the massively overlooked potential for peace involved in re-releasing "The Lebanon"?
Hanging out in the commode
listening to Depatch Mode
you look like some kind of toad
why are you a moron?
Shit, I had no idea one of them had died.
There is some serious guitar face going on in the Zeppelin picture. I'm counting it as more embarrassing for that reason.
Tie, my ass. Any band that is half formed by shopgirls from Tesco's can only aspire to the genius that permits the bass player to have this haircut.
Could be worse, Abu. I was "rocking" out to this guy.
Look, seriously, the correct answer is that Depeche Mode and the Human League are objectively more embarrassing than Zeppelin. Zeppelin could swing, DM and HL could not.
Don't be an ass, slol. I still listen to DM occassionally. And there simply is something appealing about HL. OTOH, Zeppelin is at least half-responsible for my early adoption of Republican politics.
Wrong. Zeppelin is way more embarrassing, largely because it's such a high school stoner boy cliche.
Depeche Mode is in every way embarrassing. Led Zeppelin is objectively good and innovative but still fucking embarrassing, and would have been a million times better if Robert Plant had been replaced by Lemmy. Human League is kind of fun, and 2/3 of them look reasonable. Plus they were on an early label with Gang of Four and the Mekons. I call DM averaged with HL less embarrassing on points.
Plus rocking out to Led Zeppelin now, I mean, do you have a graying ponytail?
Zeppelin's a good band, with a lot of objectively good songs. And the woman in the red polka-dots is hot. I think you're ok, either way. It was all Doors all the time for me in the teenage years, though.
And I resent you muslimizing Gibson's name in light of his anti-semitism. I'll be over to cut off your fingers later.
Weiner and I both call Zeppelin "objectively good." I find this odd and disturbing.
And slol, what does "could swing" have to do with rock bands? If you want "could swing" listen to Basie.
Dear god, I'm hanging out with men who listen to the Doors and Led Zeppelin. It's like high school all over again. I'm going to go put on some Prince or New Order and paint the goddamn bedroom.
BTW, congratulations to Senator Lamont.
It was all Doors all the time for me in the teenage years, though.
You must have been a barrel of laughs. I find distortion disturbing (sincerely), and blame Zepplin for the amount of it you used to find around.
what does "could swing" have to do with rock bands
My dear child, rock-n-roll requires swing, as in, playing ahead or behind the count, so that you don't get that INCREDIBLY ANNOYING dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun that you hear through the wall when some coke-addled doofus is listening to Depeche Mode in the dorm room next door.
Anyway, I don't listen to Zeppelin anymore because they're too reactionary to be on iTunes. And I'm an iTunes addict.
Is the claim that the Ramones could swing? I feel this is a non-standard definition of 'swing'.
And, you're not helping your case on the "I am not a hippie" question.
what bitch said in 9, plus Led Zepplin has a lot more to answer for (as an influence). so i stay with what i said-- a tie.
and what is this "rock bands swing" stuff? in the sense of sledgehammers swinging? when little richard and earl palmer and others were "inventing" rock and roll it was all about hitting those beats dead on and hard.
(swinging is more about playing triplets and other units of three against quarter and eighth notes and other units of four, both providing and implying complex meter. It gets even more complex (5 beats against 4, etc). Playing just before or just behind the beat might simulate swing but no better than that)
oh, well. i still say 'tie'
I'd forgotten I ever claimed not to be a hippie. But I'm pretty sure I'm not. I never really had a Zeppelin phase, though there's some Zeppelin I like. In the 1980s, I listened to the Police, Blondie, Tom Petty, the Housemartins, and the Violent Femmes, as well as some slightly weird R&B choices.
you could possibly redeem yourself with the "slightly weird R&B choices", slolernr
Waves of derisive laughter, Bruce.
"Trampled under foot". Greatest Zep song.
Dude, I made no claim of particular taste in music. I have probably got the squarest tastes here. And as for "weird", I meant only for white suburban persons. So, Wilson Pickett, Booker T & the MGs, and some Stax miscellany.
Also, I probably don't mean "swing". I probably mean, "any rhythm more complex than dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun". I hated that guy.
Oh, and also, for some reason, I did like Lou Reed, and played New Sensations constantly.
by weird r&b, i thought maybe you meant something like Esquerita
I have probably got the squarest tastes here.
Doubt it.
Actually, I based that suggestion on the long-ago pop-music thread, which I'm not going to bother to google up, since google seems not to work very well anymore with this site.
You need to talk to the site's resident gearheads about getting google to reindex those archived threads. In the meanwhile, Yahoo's site search seems to be pretty good.
Huh. I started reading that thread, and didn't even recognize my own comments. I don't even recognize the references I was making. I may not be a hippie, but I'm old, man.
I think that there is a Hebrew or Arabic word that sounds like "hareth," and means something like "foresworn, because it is unclean." But I've never been able to figure out if the word exists, or is a figment of my fevered imagination. In any case, assuming there is such a word, Yahoo is it.
I do not understand this strange definition of 'swing' which is applied to rock music. I don't think Benny, Artie or Glenn would approve.
Cripes. I still don't understand ogged's point from that earlier pop thread. I think he and w-lfs-n have "authenticity" issues and authenticity issues; it's probably why they work as a couple.
SCMT: Haram? Anyway, Yahoo doesn't work great either, or I would've looked for this. Of course, once I tried Yahoo it worked.
Oh, well, in that context, I am definitely not a hippie.
36: Yeah! You rule, Weiner. I've wondered about that for years.
I saw LZ once, mid-70s. I'm not sure 'swing' is a term I'd use, but the acoustic set was definitely better and spacier than I'd expected.
Page's black silk pajama outfit was objectively cool, as was Jones' futuristic looking stand-up bass for the acoustic set.
I can see, though, that anyone who could ever find any of that 80s crap appealing might be embarrassed by association with 70s stuff . . .
My god, you people are older than I am.
Ogged, I should have known that a man whose adolescence was characterized by a deep emotional attachment to Epictetus would
(a) like the Doors, that godawful nonrocking also-ran in the poetry slam that was the late sixties;
(b) fail to realize that it's Gibson's beard, not his anti-semitism, that earned him a remixed name.
Also, slol,
Look, seriously, the correct answer is that Depeche Mode and the Human League are objectively more embarrassing than Zeppelin. Zeppelin could swing, DM and HL could not.
Weirdly, I just had an hour-long conversation with a rhythm theorist [sic] about this-- playing in the pocket is impossible with the kinds of electronics that DM were using throughout the 80s, so everything was totally square. That's a lot of what gives the music its kind of jarring anti-groove, esp. compared to the Big Rock it was competing with.
I should also say, and I'm completely serious about this, that Depeche Mode is much, much better than The Human League. My case rests on the excellence of Black Celebration, Music for the Masses, and possibly Violator. Seriously, listen to the orchestration on Black Celebration-- that's some complicated (and interesting) stuff. Does The Human League have anything to say? Oh, what's that, a song in funny dialogue form? Thanks for showing up, guys, but there's no contest here.
Also, Ogged, the stars fall from the sky, for you and I. Love ya, dawg.
The Gibson story is just plain weird. How many bigots do you know - even very drunk bigots - who just start randomly spouting off about "those damn Jews" apropos of nothing? Don't even raving antisemites need a segue?
Labs, you just cited "complicated and interesting" orchestration as a reason for thinking that Depeche Mode is a better rock band than the Human League.
WANKER.
FL, what is "playing in the pocket"? is that another way of saying "swinging"? Also, are the Human League the perpetrators of "Don't You Want Me Baby"?
Labs, you ignorant wanker, if you're going to make fun of the Doors, you need to pick something other than one of the few songs not written by Morrison.
The Lizard King pwns!
Clown,
"Playing in the pocket" is what Ogged is doing while I'm busy enjoying w-lfs-n's mom.
Ogged,
I'm so sorry, I didn't realize that making fun of the Doors requires making fun of some proper subset of their songs. Really, though, I don't think you want to defend many of those lyrics, so I'll focus instead on that gay-ass keyboard playing. WTF? Father, I want to kill you! Mother, I want to play you this little calypso number I just wrote!
More seriously, Clownae,
(a) the Human League did indeed give us "Don't you want me," and
(b) "playing in the pocket" has a couple of meanings. Narrowly, it's playing the 2nd and 4th beats a little later than the metronome says. (A lot of what feels and sounds natural and right is not exactly in time, and being exactly on the beat can feel kind of weird.)
The earlier-mentioned theorist claimed that Bruce Hornsby's sound is really distinct because he's always right on the beat, instead of behind it.
I would like everyone to notice that Labs, who actually knows something about music, essentially vindicated my ignorant and arbitrary comment. Thank you.
The great Doors song: "Horse Latitudes" (aka "Mut Nostril Agony" or "Sullen and Aborted Currents" or "Conspires in Armor.")
Matt, people are people, so why should it be/ that you and I should get along so aw-ful-y?
Wow, they really are lame sometimes.
He promises me I'm as safe as houses, as long as I remember who's wearing the trousers.
42 -- Depends on what the meaning of is is.
I'm not embarrassed to have seen LZ. Can't say the same about the other acts on the same bill: Judas Priest & Rick Derringer. Ugh. Found a picture from the show, but you can't see how cool Page's outfit is.
I've seen the Big Sky Mudflaps a bunch more than Zep: that's swing.
I think I am getting Depeche Mode mixed up with Tears for Fears.
If you want embarrassing, try being a Smashing Pumpkins fan.
Butthead: "Depeche Mode is French for 'we're wussies'." True dat.
Human League: "While we were apart I was human too." Game, set, suck.
Led Zeppelin was ruined for me by their endless rotation on FM rock radio, which left me feeling bludgeoned. I can still listen to Presence though, because the album contains no radio hits.
The Doors are summed up by FL: "that gay-ass keyboard playing." Take out Morrison's Rimbaud posing and you're left with the soundtrack to The Brady Bunch.
Jeez, a thread about which bands are good and which bands suck (with a dash of "what's the Arabic word for x?") and here I was, busy all day.
Human League: essentially a one-hit wonder with a mildly catchy pop song.
Depeche Mode: some songs are cringe-inducingly embarrassing ("People are People"), but others are very good ("Personal Jesus"). And I like that their songs have cool sounds in them.
Doors: mostly sucky. What can you expect from a band with no bass player?
Led Zeppelin: objectively kickass. "Whole Lotta Love," people? "The Lemon Song"? I refuse any and all attempts to shame me for liking Zeppelin.
Led Zeppelin has a lot of kickass, da, but it's mitigated by an unfortunate amount of this and this.
Oh, yeah, "Battle of Evermore." I had forgotten about that.
But it's balanced out by "When the Levee Breaks"!
I refuse any and all attempts to shame me for liking Zeppelin.
Why do Led Zeppelin fans never feel the hobbit-shame?
The hobbit shit was only, like, 2% of what Zeppelin is about.
Jethro Tull, on the other hand.
Jethro Tull rocked hard.
Do we need a Mel Gibson-specific thread?
I've had the great luck of never having heard any Jethro Tull songs about hobbits.
Best moment in "Anchorman": when the jazz flute solo is interrupted by the shout of "Aqualung!"
Do we need a Mel Gibson-specific thread?
That is one seriously strange story. Not that I didn't suspect he felt that way, I'm just trying to imagine how drunk he'd have to be to actually say it out loud with witnesses.
I don't even know if they ever sing about hobbits. But just from listening to the music I sense a hobbity-ness about them.
Have you seen Josh Marshall's mysterious guest-blogger pick up on the Gibson story?
I sense a hobbity-ness about your mom, apostropher. Don't fuck with Songs from the Wood.
OK, you can fuck with "Solstice Bells".
73: Yup. I was starting to wonder whether I had them confused with some other band.
Does anyone remember that Sesame Street animated bit called "We All Live in a Capital I"? What band was that spoofing? Was that Jethro Tull?
Hey, I own Songs from the Wood and still listen to it. Ain't no denying the hobbity-ness, though. Not like it was unintentional.
There's a difference between using elements of British folk music and, you know, singing about the "Dark Lord".
Hey, I love Steeleye Span's recording of The Return of the King.
If there is a difference, it's negligible.
I shouldn't have wasted "your mom" on apostropher.
I shouldn't have wasted your mom.
Your mom is so wasted, it's as though her talents aren't fully realized.
Not Jethro Tull, I don't think.
The Gibson thing is truly bizarre. Unlike Apo, I'm pretty surprised. The beard is not helping things. And what does it mean to be a famous star on the downside of your career and to be widely known as an anti-semite? In Hollywood. I mean, the World Wide Organization of Jewish Masters has been pretty good to him. (Teo, please don't freeze the bank accounts.)
Very bizarre.
Youtube has a video of Jethro Tull with Fela Kuti. That was a bad idea.
The use of the human league in the third comment here is pretty funny.
Sometimes I have trouble falling asleep, but it's not so bad…
How anyone who saw Passion of the Christ can be surprised is a surprise to me.
That movie, for the people who weren't into the trainwreck enough to go and see it, featured Jewish children as demons who tormented Judas into killing himself, among other things which made it clear that the makers weren't concerned with bothering to stick anywhere near the storyline. Any of the four different storylines, in fact.
Yeah, it'd be nice if everyone who called the people who were talking about The Passion as ant-Semitic paranoid would admit that, okay, maybe it really was.
I was just rocking out to the 1994 video here. Last time Ken Vandermark had fun? And when did Weasel Walter stop wearing the makeup?
Oh wait, he still does that, but without the cool hair dealies.
I do not understand this strange definition of 'swing' which is applied to rock music.
King Crimson's "Cat Food", piano courtesy Keith Tippett, swings.
Also, just so you know, Led Zeppelin rocks, and I maintain that it isn't completely lame to like Thick as a Brick
Also, someone tell Weiner, who will probably call me a wanker for that last link, that I just ate a red-colored apple that was sweet and delicious as the warm desert air.
Although really this is the true wanking (same drummer, though). Also it's the true fucking awesome.
"We all live in a (blank)"? Goofy animation? Could it be... The Beatles? Definitely not Tull, it has much more of a late-sixties rock feel to it anyway. I'd say the music sounds more like Jefferson Airplane than the Beatles (or definitely Tull).
w-lfs-n, you're not a wanker for the Hella link, which was pretty cool. You're a wanker for bringing up distortionless Greg Lake-era King Crimson (that is, not "Schizoid Man") in a discussion of rocking. I mean, so does "Formentera Lady" swing, but what does that prove?
ps I am aware that "Formentera Lady" isn't with Lake.
97: Kinda hard to dance to, though.
A law enforcement source says Gibson then noticed another female sergeant and yelled, "What do you think you're looking at, sugar tits?"
Yes, we do need a Gibson thread, I think.
Ttam, 87 does not sound at all Beatles-like to me.
No, but sounding like the Beatles is hard. It must at least have been inspired by the Beatles. I think it sounds more like the Beatles than like Tull, and more like Airplane than either, though there's probably a band it sounds even more like.
(ps The point of occasionally signing messages "Ttam R." is to make it require a little effort to figure out who's made the comment. The idea being that casual observers might be offended, but anyone who puts enough effort into it to figure it out needs to be enough into the spirit of the place to get the joke. Accordingly, I politely request not to be called "Ttam" unless I've already started commenting as "Ttam R.")
I just skimmed Hewitt's post, but what was crazy about it? I didn't see any calls for genocidal armageddon.
It seemed like he was saying we should check out people like the Muslim who shot up a Jewish community center recently to see if they have any ties to Islamic terror groups, instead of automatically writing them off as "mentally ill" lone gunmen. Is that such a bad idea?
Hewitt seems to be trying to erase the line between mentally ill and terrorist. He also claims that certain stories are being covered up, even though I've read a lot about them. He's also angry, though he doesn't express it that way, that no one is taking the Miami terrorist cell very seriously since they seem to have had no real organization or resources, no capacity for violence, and little or no Islamic connection, and furthermore to be whackos. He speculates that for each of the actual terrorists there are many more in hiding, even though the Miami case makes it look as though the police are scraping the bottom of the barrel in order to find any terrorists at all.
Or perhaps he's just trying to create a baseline assumption that any Arab criminal is a terrorist until proven otherwise. I just wish these guys would leave the coasts and move to South Carolina or Mississipi or Argentina.
Miller does raise a very real question of incitement. If the "mental illness" meme is expanded upon, "fire in a crowded theater" also enters the picture.
This sounds to me as though Hewitt is suggesting that the Seattle Times' mention of mental illness (in the third paragraph, after leading with "a Muslim-American man angry at Israel") verges on incitement of violence. Which is crazy. Just before that paragraph, Hewitt said that no responsible commentator would question a newspaper's freedom of speech; nevertheless, he brings up, out of the blue, the paradigm cases in which freedom of speech can be abridged.
[SCMT: Muslim, not Arab, the guy was Pakistani-American; and South Carolina is on the coast.]
Bill Wang was all over "Capital I" two years ago.
South Carolina is on the coast
... and ...
... "leave the coasts and move to South Carolina" is inaptly phrased.
103 -- Aha! My brain was not working properly this morning or something. Sorry and I will make efforts to mend my ways.
Yeah, yeah. It was a stupid thing to write, for many reasons. Mississippi is misspelt, and has a coastline. I just want the states to be ideologically uniform, so that we know which ones to crush when we regain power. Is that so wrong?
And I herewith substitute Oklahoma for Mississippi and South Carolina. Why should we have to give up coastline?
Weiner is on drugs today. First of all, it is not hard to sound like the Beatles. There's in fact a word for the phenomenon -- "Beatlesesque" -- that is used quite frequently. Tears for Fears had an incredibly Beatlesesque album a while back. There's also Klaatu. And there was a Canadian band that was really popular in the early 90s (whose name I can't remember and it's driving me nuts) who sounded exactly like the Beatles.
Secondly, the "Capital I" sound doesn't sound late-sixties at all. It sounds like the summer of 1972. And I should know, because I was one and a half years old then.
first "sound" s/b "song" in the second paragraph.
Can we agree that all terrorists have some degree of mental illness?
No.
Any crime of violence done to avenge a political grievance is an act of terrorism.
No.
How frustrating and dangerous. Hewitt's basically collapsing important distinctions between "hate crime" "political act" and "crazy." So now, if I'm schizophrenic and think that Mexicans are plotting to take over the U.S., and I shoot up a taqueria, I'm a terrorist? So we should use security resources to investigate the crazed fantasies of every nutter out there? And we should consider craziness that manifests itself through culturally-provided racist categories as no different from active, intentional racism? By that logic, if I imagine myself to be the long lost Russian Tsar, I am an expert in Russian history.
It's interesting, though, that here it seems Hewitt is ignoring the importance of intent; the argument seems to be that b/c the people being shot at can't tell if the shooter is a racist, a crazy person, or a terrorist, they're all the same thing. I often tend to think that effect-based arguments like this are useful (e.g., when thinking about rape), but this seems so clearly fucked up to me that it makes me have to rethink that habit.
105:What Tim said about creating the baseline assumption. (Also a large resource waste if every Muslim criminal must be pursued vigorously as a possible terrorist connection.) Plus, it's unclear that Hewitt would be satisfied by a normal investigation unless it turned up a definitive terrorist connection; I think this because it's already standard procedure for some crimes (like vandalizing a synagogue) to investigate whether there's a connection with a hate group.
I listen to that song and I can almost hear Grace Slick singing backup. And, just so you know, "The Lemon Song" is Howlin' Wolf's excellent "Killing Floor" played at half speed and marinated in suck.
119 to 114. Your other choices for objectively good Zep songs are sound, though.
114: I like to imagine Weiner, blissed out and staring up at the sky, asking, "Dude, what if 'dog' were spelled 'c-a-t.'"
111: I meant that both Argentina and Mississippi also have coastlines, in addition to SC. Which is what Tim picked up on, himself. Carry on. Just don't bogart that, and remember to pick the arm up when it gets to the end of "The Crunge" or you'll ruin the needle, and I don't know where to get another one of those these days.
You're a wanker for bringing up distortionless Greg Lake-era King Crimson (that is, not "Schizoid Man") in a discussion of rocking. [...] ps I am aware that "Formentera Lady" isn't with Lake.
"Cat Food" isn't with Lake either, jeez.
"The Lemon Song" is Howlin' Wolf's excellent "Killing Floor" played at half speed and marinated in suck.
With an assist from Ro-Jo's "Traveling Riverside Blues".
"Cat Food" isn't with Lake either, jeez.
So now, if I'm schizophrenic and think that Mexicans are plotting to take over the U.S., and I shoot up a taqueria, I'm a terrorist?
That, and everything else we know about you.
The fundamental fallacy here is that I am mocking others as wankers while rattling off discographical details of Greg Lake-era KC and remembering the existence of "Formentera Lady."
Blast! However it was interesting to learn that Jamie Muir was the first person to join the Larks' Tongues lineup. (When I read Derek Bailey's Improvisation, I thought it was really weird that the British rock guitarist he chose to interview was, IIRC, Steve Howe, when there seemed a more obvious choice with the same sort of spirit.)
126: I wasn't going to say it.
And I kind of like "Formentera Lady".
Collins, Wallace and Burrell left King Crimson to form a band called Snape
Is this time-travelling hobbit influence, or is there a common cause? Or is that Rowling person a fan of KC arcana? Or coincidence?
Once, after I'd been into free improv for years, I heard an interesting far-out improvisation in a store. It sounded a little too close to rock to be AMM or any of those guys, but it was cool. Eventually I realized it was "Providence."
Ah, great. w-lfs-n is back in the fray, so the thread can get even more esoteric. What's the most embarrassing song you members of the music cognoscenti will own up to still enjoying? I didn't grow up listening to music, and I remain stuck largely in the 80's and 90's. I have built built-in excuses. Still, I admit this is shameful: "Lady in Red." My excuse is that I associate it with my biggest adolescent crush, and it brings back memories of that time. And I only get a craving once every couple years. And, dammit, it's not like I've killed someone. Yet.
117: No, there's another Beatlesesque Canadian band I'm thinking of.
119: The part that is stolen from "Killing Floor" is indeed marinated in suck (and extra bad because it's stolen, yet the credits on the LP label say "Page/Plant"), but that part only lasts 30 seconds. The rest of the song rawks.
59 -- My mistake. I'm pretty sure the band I was mixing up with Tears for Fears was The Cure.
(It remains a possibility that I was confusing Depeche Mode with The Cure simpliciter, and just threw Tears for Fears into the mix out of perversity.)
But did you know that there's a longer version of "Providence" in the Great Deceiver box set? Or would it take someone with 35 discrete King Crimson albums to know that?
131: Are you thinking of "Bring It On Home"? That's the song where the stolen blues part is only 30 seconds; I'm pretty sure that the rip-off of "Killing Floor" takes up most of "The Lemon Song."
I enjoy "Don't You Want Me?," you bastards.
35 discrete CDs. I don't have 35 discrete albums.
I think I did know that. I've seen the track listing to Great Deceiver but hadn't heard it much, though I suspect I'd like it.
Are the post-94 albums any good?
It's a wonder you have a discrete anything.
136: As opposed to 35 continuous CDs?
Best stoner lyrics: not Zep or Hendrix, but Arthur Lee (Love) and Stevie Nicks (Fleetwood Mac). The Nirvana guy has been disqualified for the shotgun in the mouth thing.
I don't know if your dating is meant to include VROOOM in the suspected-to-be-bad set, but it's good. And I liked THRaKaTTaK (though found naming conventions from this period kinda dumb). There was some decent stuff on The Power to Believe, and the EP whose name I can't remember that came out after they toured with Tool had a really great version of The Deception of the Thrush.
Reviewing lyrics and my memories, maybe the "Killing Floor" part of "The Lemon Song" doesn't last as long as I thought. I maintain, however, that "Bring It on Home" is the only one of these two with a rawkin' central section, as "The Lemon Song" is just goofy. And Wikipedia saith that "Bring It on Home" was credited to Page/Plant, while TLS was credited to Page/Plant/Jones/Bonham. dagger aleph, I leave it up to you which you meant.
In any case, Robert Plant needs kicked.
135: Ah yes, I was confused, because I thought only the sped-up part in the middle was taken from "Killing Floor". But now I've listened to the Howlin' Wolf and see that you are right on the particulars; you are still wrong, however, in your aesthetic assessment, because "The Lemon Song" is great.
SCMT: "The Lady in Red"? Oh dear. And I was feeling solidarity with you on the Smiths question.
A friend of mine had a visceral hatred for "The Lady in Red" because she danced with some guy at a school dance and he put his hands on her ass during it.
A friend of mine had a visceral hatred for "The Lady in Red" because she danced with some guy at a school dance and he put his hands on her ass during it.
My excuse is that I associate it with my biggest adolescent crush, and it brings back memories of that time.
142: Yeah, I meant "The Lemon Song", which is basically "Killing Floor" played slowly, but then played at normal speed in the middle. As for the Page/Plant credit, I was just making the point that they claim credit for themselves. I was going from memory, and didn't remember Bonham being credited. Must be all those drugs I didn't do in high school.
SCMT: you scarred my friend Joanne for life.
What can I say? She had a nice ass. (In real life, I think it was a while after that when I first "slow danced" with a girl.)
Joanne was already a scarred, Tim, don't let her Munchausening make you feel guilty.
I don't care for the Lady in Red song or the Wonderful Tonight song mostly because of creep guys singing along and changing the words to suit the girl's appearance. Also, it's the sort of sixth-grade Two-Step Rock Back and Forth dancing that we'd best all forget.
My first slow dance was Foreigner's "Waiting for a Girl Like You". I have not retained any sentimental fondness for the song.
You know what rocks? Judas Priest on the banjo.
So what's the song, Apo? The unjustifiable song?
I'm not sure what you're asking me, Tim.
Duh -- he's asking you to name the unjustifiable song. (I'd be careful though, as that song's name has never been spoken without severe consequences to the speaker and his children, and his children's children, yea even to the fifth generation.)
Hmm. I've lost no affection for KISS over the years, despite the terminally high cheese factor. Does that count?
43b: That's more a Saddam al-Gibson look.
In any case, Robert Plant needs kicked.
It's the missing Pittsburgh infinitive!
The missing "to be" is an infinitive. Though I'm not sure that a sentence denigrating Robert Plant can count as Pittsburghese; have you ever listened to Pittsburgh radio?
Oh, I see, you're interpreting it as missing an infinitive. Is that the usual analysis?
Looking up my old entry on this, the American Dialect Society people say that it's 'want/need' + past participle, but most Pittsburghers think of it as a missing 'to be'. So, depends on your comparison class for 'usual'.
It's sort of like dropped g's in my opinion; the Language Log folks like to rant about how speakin' of dropped g's is phonologically inaccurate, but people without linguistic training will understand you. Ditto if you talk about the missing Pittsburgh infinitive.
Also, the ADS people seem to predict wrongly that Kotsko and Ogged won't use positive 'anymore', so I don't trust them implicitly.
If it had a 'to be', it would be correct English. Therefore, it is missing a 'to be'.
Hey, how does Hamlet's famous speech begin?
"Or not."
have you ever listened to Pittsburgh radio?
*Shudder* Thanks for the reminder of painful memories. (I remember hearing Alanis Morissette's "Ironic" for the first time... on what passed for the indie station in Pittsburgh.) There are many things to like about Pittsburgh; the radio scene (at least in the early- to mid-'90s) is not one of them.
I've always thought of it as using a past participle in place of a present participle. Historically I doubt there was ever an infinitive in there.
Ogged and Kotsko are posing.
Wait, Kotsko isn't even from Chicago, is he?
Kotsko is from Kalamazoo, Kankakee, or Ypsilanti.
That's why I said "Chicago or Michigan" in the linked thread.
This article says 'copula deletion', but I can't find many other references to copula deletion in relation to Pittsburghese. OTOH "wants traded" seems to be used fairly often in a relevant way, and I just can't hear that as developing out of "wants trading"; dig.
[Update now that comments are back up: I searched on "wants trading" + sports and not a single example is relevant. It seems that "wants traded" has to be derived from "wants to be traded" rather than "wants trading." But I can't think of another example where verb + present participle is nonexistent. Why could this be?]
A Gopogle war proves that it is Kankakee, though there are significant Kalamazoo and Ypsilanti commenctions.
silvana, are you claiming you have some method that's better than counting Google hits? I doubt that. Google hits yield nice quantitative results.
(Um, Michigan, I should've linked that in 162 or 168.)
A mythical place called Bourbonnais gets a few more hits than Kankakee, but come on, guys. He's not from there, and he's not from Endor or Lemuria or Mu either.
Okay, so, what are dropped g's really? Is it something to do with the way British writers render them as -en instead of -in'?
A long discussion of dropped g's by Mark Liberman.
He wasn't as harsh on the expression 'dropped g' as I remember, but I still think his criticism of Wieseltier is somewhat misguided; "land very hard on that 'g'" does an effective job of conveying what it actually sounds like, even if the sound isn't 'g' as in 'gum'.
I don't have a great deal of fondness for Leon Wieseltier.
The Chicago locution that seemed most strange to me when I arrived thirty years ago was ending sentences with prepositions that had implied objects.
"Are you coming with?"
Dipthongs don't sound at all distinct in Chicagoese. St. Ignatius' surname is rendered locally as Lie-oh-la. Mostly dipthongs resolve, or sound to me like they do, into their first vowel. So ruin=rune, and theater=theeter.
Lie-oh-la sounds like a political scandal, as covered by the Daily News.
I thought about that when I typed it, but then I thought: "Too generic." How could you tell that scandal from any other?
It could be generic, as payola is generic. "politician x involved in another lie-oh-la scandal.
I'm not saying the past participle construction developed from the present participle construction, just that they're parallel in structure and there's no a priori reason to assume that one one and not the other developed from loss of a copula.
The language log folks can be weirdly strident in denouncing misconceptions about language. I don't care for their tone a lot of the time.
I like the weird stridency. It makes me happy knowing that there's someone out there who is really, really steamed that people think The Elements Of Style gives good advice.
"Stay where you're at, I'll come where you're to."
-- reported Newfoundlandism.
"Are you coming with?"
I'm familiar with this construction from Minnesotans. I always thought it was from the German: kommst du mit?
"Are you coming with?"
I hear that in North Carolina.
Many of these structures have resulted from German influence.
The "So.....then" and "So then......." patterns are also borrowed from German.
"So then, are we going to the movie?"
"So, are we going to the movie then?"
This pattern was featured in the movie "Fargo". The daughter of a firend of mine mimicked it.
Also in German, the same word "mit" means both "with" and "along" -- so "kommst du mit?" = "are you coming with?" = "are you coming along?"
he was saying we should check out people like the Muslim who shot up a Jewish community center
Interestingly, he was actually a convert to Christianity.
33: Maybe you're thinking of "Hadath-- unclean things which require Niyyat for cleaning"? --Arabic Dictionary at http://www.stanford.edu/~jamila/dictionary.html
