The popular Car Arm Alarm is a duplet of flat B’s that bend upwards. Within this short mechanical musical phrase, one can hear the ten thousand voices of nature crying out for an audience. Like the quick stridulation of an insect or the glissando of a bird, the Car Arm Alarm is followed by long […]
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Manly Cadences
Real men know how to end a song. They don’t play chicken at the chorus, so why wimp out in the final bars? Real men kill their songs with their bare hands, like babies crying in their cribs far past bed time. Songs are the sons of men—prodigal, oedipal—and they’ll kill their composer daddies unless […]
Mockingjays
Spring has sung, and the birds are back. And not just the songbirds either, but naughty little fuckbirds1 too. Black-Capped-Fuckadees that go fuck-a-dee-dee-dee2. Songless Woodfuckers3 who can only drum out their love. Bluefucks and yellow-tailed whippoorfucks. Perhaps they are speaking the divine dirty ‘language of the birds’. Or just letting their harmonic throats do the […]
Occupy Melodies
New York New Yorkers have been singing lots of fresh new songs over the past couple of months. They sing on the street, and in the park, and on the bridge. They even engage in what George Orwell once called “group-sing”. They sing syncopated 4/4 call-and-answer crowd-pleasers, sung with the People’s Microphone, at plus 120 […]
Mmmm Mmmm Mm Mm Mmmm
The postprandial song is the perfect compliment to a meal eaten in silence. After all, it ain’t polite to sing with your mouth full, but you’d never know that from looking at my mic. Who knows from whence this song came? It’s the kind of thing that just ain’t on the internet. My guess is […]
Major Laugh Made Ya Laugh
People in the 40’s used to laugh in major keys. Man’s guffaws and woman’s’ cackles were tuned to each other―an octave apart―and the glee of their sons and daughters lol’d like a pop choir. But those were jazzier times then, when it was okay for boys to laugh like birds, and girls to cry like […]
