Ask A Guy Who Catalogs Inept References to Neon in Rock Music

Dear Guy Who Catalogs Inept References to Neon in Rock Music,

In all the years you’ve written this column, you have never pointed out the most common error songwriters make regarding neon, which is to describe it as being some other color than orange-red. One example that comes immediately to mind is Blondie’s song “Fade Away and Radiate,” with the line, “Wrapped like candy in a blue, blue neon glow.” How have you not called this out before?

Bill S, Arvada, CO

Dear Bill,

If you really want to get pedantic about it, neon itself is colorless. But that’s beside the point. While it’s true the first neon signs were orange-red, it’s a well established practice to mix gases, such as argon, in the tubes to produce other colors. Note that this doesn’t lead to anybody calling them “argon signs”—that’s just not a thing. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect rock lyricists to hew to the physical properties of a noble gas and the history of its use in signs.

Dear Guy Who Catalogs Inept References to Neon in Rock Music,

I’ve always suspected there’s something wrong with the line “Neon lights, Nobel Prize/ When a mirror speaks, the reflection lies” in the Living Colour song “Cult of Personality.” Am I missing something? I just don’t get the connection here.

Sandra A, Council Bluffs, IA

Dear Sandra,

To understand this line, it’s helpful to consult genius.com, which provides this explanation:

Neon lights highlight how celebrities in entertainment are similar to leaders with cults of personality in it that the purpose of the cult of personality and an entertainer are to amuse and distract from the substance of the person.

Does that help? Of course not. It’s pure malarkey. How does a neon light highlight anything? This is a typical stretch, by the bozos at genius.com, to sound knowledgeable and profound when there’s really nothing profound about the line at all. If Living Colour sang, “Tomato ketchup, Nobel Prize,” the genius.com gloss would say, “Tomato ketchup is like the sweet blandishments spread over a message to make it palatable to the unsophisticated masses.” Such BS. You’re right, neon signs really have nothing to do with the celebrity surrounding the Nobel Prize. I think the core of the issue is that neon isn’t used for lights, per se. It’s used for signs. And the purpose of a neon sign isn’t to light anything up; it’s just to be visible and draw attention to itself and its message, which is typically something really basic like “Open” or “Budweiser,” as opposed to anything abstract like celebrity. A spotlight would have been a much more fitting trope, or stage lights.

Dear Guy Who Catalogs Inept References to Neon in Rock Music,

Here’s one. In his song “Neon,” John Mayer sings, “She’s always buzzing just like neon, neon, neon, neon.” Think about this for a second: have you ever actually heard neon buzz? I haven’t. It just kind of hums, and not very loudly at that. Oops!

Scott T, Naples, FL

Dear Scott,

Not so fast. While neon signs aren’t supposed to buzz (except in movies, as suggested in this article), there are various reasons that they can. Compared to other signs, neon ones are fairly high-voltage, and require a transformer which can act up. Poor grounding can also cause buzzing. It’s entirely possible that John Mayer has plenty of real life experience with buzzing neon signs, especially when you consider this article in talkbass.com where musicians compare notes on the problem. One bass player writes, “Yes, [neon signs] do cause buzz and some are worse than others!” Another replies, “Yep. Definitely a buzz there. We had to get rid of some neon we had (back in the day) for that exact reason. Of course, that was before I knew about differential preamps and active drivers and all that.” So let’s give Mayer the benefit of the doubt, especially since he employs this buzzing neon metaphor to describe a woman who misbehaves a lot. (Oh, and one more thing: Mayer is in good company; Tom Waits also sings about buzzing neon lights.)

Dear Guy Who Catalogs Inept References to Neon in Rock Music,

To your mind, what’s the most disappointing example of a neon-related gaff in a rock song?

Robert B, West Milford, NJ

Dear Robert,

Wow, that is really a tough one. It’s a toss-up between “Airbag” by Radiohead and “The Sound of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel.

Regarding “Airbag,” I’m referring to the line, “In the neon sign/ Scrolling up and down/ I am born again.” Needless to say, neon signs—being made of carefully shaped glass tubing—cannot scroll up and down. I suspect Thom Yorke was thinking of one of those digital signs, perhaps an early LED one, that did scroll. So why did he say neon? Who knows. Maybe he fell for its perennial allure … after all, neon is a popular word in rock songs, featuring in over 300 of them, by lyrics.com’s count. It’s too bad Yorke stumbled here; I expect more from Radiohead. Why haven’t they done a song, along the lines of “Fake Plastic Trees,” mocking those “Open” signs that are supposed to look like neon but are just plastic? I’m not just talking about the so-called “LED neon” signs (that honestly look pretty good), but the cheesy ones that are just pure plastic.

Okay, on to Simon & Garfunkel. “The Sound of Silence,” the breakout hit for this duo, is centered around a neon sign, so it deserves our close attention. Early in the song, the singer’s “eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light,” and in the “naked light” he “saw ten thousand people, maybe more,” who “bowed and prayed to the neon god they’d made.” Just picture this: ten thousand people gathered around this sign. It must be huge. Moreover, “the sign said, ‘The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls, and whispered in the sounds of silence.’” That’s a pretty verbose sign. The image here is pretty absurd. Over the decades I’ve been listening to this song, I generally assumed this sign could say various things to those bowing down before it, until it hit me that this is a neon sign, so it can only say one thing. So picture the scene: there’s this absolutely ginormous neon sign with this incredibly long message, that 10,000 people worked together to fabricate, presumably in the middle of a vast open space. And then you consider that the singer also sees these 10,000 people “writing songs that voices never share.” Really? That many people? In the middle of the night, with only a neon sign for lighting, are all writing songs? Like, in little notebooks? Oh, but this was a really bright neon light—it “stabbed” the singer’s eyes and “split the night.” Who know neon could be that bright? As I’ve said before, neon isn’t used in lights, per se. It’s not “naked light” at all and is not supposed to illuminate anything. But here it’s lighting up 10,000 people, like fricking stadium lighting? Please. Now, this being a famous (and excellent) song, I went the extra mile and consulted Paul Simon’s liner notes just to make sure I’m not missing anything. Simon explains that the neon sign represents “the superficial and ‘commercial’ level” of communication.” Q: How is the sign’s message, “the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls/ And tenement halls/ And whispered in the sounds of silence,” commercial? A: Don’t overthink it.

Dear Guy Who Catalogs Inept References to Neon in Rock Music,

You accused a reader of being pedantic when he questioned the idea of blue neon, but at another time you called out the Ramones, in their song “Strength to Endure,” for asserting that neon glows hot, not knowing that neon signs actually run fairly cool. Hypocrite much?

Suzie L, Queens, NY

Dear Suzie,

Where you do think musicians get their ideas? Among other things, I imagine they notice things when they’re out in the world, such as when they’re hanging out in bars. Who hasn’t seen a neon sign that was a color other than orange-red? So I will continue to defend Debbie Harry on this one. But who ever felt heat coming off a neon light? Nobody ever. And it’s not just that the Ramones didn’t know neon runs cool, it’s that they sang “neon lights always glow hot” in the chorus. Within their song, the temperature of neon is a central metaphor, based on the mere assumption that neon lights glow hot. Always. That’s fairly emphatic for a statement the songwriter pulled pretty much out of his ass without bothering to fact-check. Plus, this is a pretty lame song to begin with so the Ramones don’t deserve any wiggle room. My column, my rules.

A Guy Who Catalogs Inept References to Neon in Rock Music is a syndicated journalist whose advice column, “Ask a Guy Who Catalogs Inept References to Neon in Rock Music,” appears in over 0 blogs worldwide.

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From the Archives - Love Poem from a Coward

NOTE: This post is rated R for mild strong language.

Introduction

It’s a slow news day so here’s another old poem from my archives, with all-new footnotes and commentary. Enjoy please enjoy.

 Sonnet 17 - October 1, 1990

I see you in the classroom every day,

But hide my bashful face behind a book;                            2

At quite a cautious distance I must stay,

To satisfy myself with frequent looks.

I know it’s creepy, watching from afar

Instead of walking up and saying hi.                                   6

Alas, my social skills aren’t up to par;

I just can’t be that smooth and social guy.

A little voice says, “What is there to lose?

If you don’t try, you’re never gonna learn.”                       10

But I know better than to try to schmooze:

A louder voice says, “You will crash and burn.”

    Although approaching you makes perfect sense,

    I simply do not have the confidence.                              14

Footnotes & commentary

Title - 17

I named this “17” in a pompous attempt to seem Shakespearean. Giving a poem a number instead of a title was standard in Shakespeare’s oeuvre, just as using fancy words like “oeuvre” was standard among English majors in my day. This title was also intended as a pun because the speaker is 17 years old. (Did I reckon that would be obvious? I can’t remember.)

I originally wrote this for my high school creative writing class, and at that time it was indeed the 17th sonnet I’d written. But back then I named it “My Serious Love Sonnet,” to differentiate it from this one. Four years later, I extensively revised the poem for a college Shakespeare class. The professor had given us a choice: either take the midterm exam, or write a sonnet. That would have been a no-brainer even if I hadn’t already had a sonnet I could recycle. But I had to make tons of revisions because the original was embarrassingly bad.

Line 1 – in the classroom

The original high school version started, “I see you walking home ‘most every day/ And always want to help you with your books.” This was total garbage, of course. The idea of a teenage boy carrying a girl’s books for her was antiquated and schmaltzy even then. In retrospect, “classroom” doesn’t work that well either, because in a relatively small high school class no student should be forgiven for looking over at a girl 24x7 without ever talking to her. The notion would play better with a college-sized lecture hall … and yet that would make the speaker even more stunted, for surely a college kid should have put such abject shyness behind him. (I wasn’t exactly Big Man on Campus, but I was at least capable of striking up a conversation.)

Line 3 – quite

Using a word like “quite” here, just to pad out the line in service of the iambic pentameter, was a lame trick I leaned on excessively in my benighted youth. The original line was, “But always at a distance I will stay,” which avoids this pitfall but also sounds a bit off; in normal speech we usually put the verb first and then the prepositional phrase (i.e., “I will always stay at a distance”). So even the original line warped the language to force-fit the meter.

Line 4 – satisfy myself with frequent looks

The word “satisfy” here is totally wrong. The whole point is that the speaker isn’t satisfied by just looking. If he were, his anguish—which is the theme of the poem—wouldn’t exist and there would be no need for a poem at all (other than as a school assignment). Something like “stoke my appetite with frequent looks” would better capture the reality of a teenage boy who is all desire, and whose cravings are never gratified.

The professor circled “book” and “looks” in red and noted the imperfect rhyme. Sure, I could have put “books” instead, but that would suggest a stack of books that I’m peering out from behind, rather than a single open book that I’m peering over. I thought rhyming “book” with “looks” would be a totally permissible instance of poetic license so I was a bit annoyed at the red ink. That said, I got an A on the sonnet, so I couldn’t really complain.

Line 5 – creepy

I was, and am, just a bit uncomfortable with “creepy” here because it’s a pretty serious accusation, and the reader is naturally inclined to conflate the speaker with the poet. For that reason, I didn’t want to imply that these frequent looks were insufficiently discreet. For the speaker to be merely shy is kind of endearing; for him to be a stalker—not so much. And yet, “creepy” is also kind of perfect, because doesn’t every shy teenager with a crush feel like a bit of a creep? Needless to say this was years before Radiohead wrote “Creep,” but the sentiment is rather similar: “You’re so fucking special/ But I’m a creep/ I’m a weirdo/ What the hell am I doing here?”

Line 6 – walking up

Here, “walking up” seems like another throwaway phrase. I mean, what else is the guy gonna do? Yell “hi” from across the room? Obviously, “stepping up” would work better, but perhaps this expression wasn’t available to me. (Did people say “stepping up” in 1990?)

Line 7 – social skills

There’s something kind of clinical and dopey about the phrase “social skills” in the context of an angst-y poem in the voice of a tortured teen. (You think Radiohead would use the phrase “social skills,” other than ironically?)

To the extent that this poem is autobiographical, “social skills” doesn’t even cover it. My family culture growing up was socially … problematic. As a grade school kid I simultaneously believed that I was a) somehow intrinsically inferior to others and thus undeserving of their positive regard, and b) nevertheless above them, because they did stupid stuff like watching football on TV. So I was both terribly shy and slightly arrogant, which needless to say was the perfect recipe for social suicide and irrevocable pariah status.

By high school, though, I was more comfortable in my skin. I actually did have conversations with gorgeous girls, though I was far from smooth. For example, I was chatting with a total knockout named Audrey and she asked if I was going to register for the draft. I was too insecure to answer the question honestly—was I supposed to say no, so I’d seem like a rebel?—so I replied, “Yeah, I dunno … I haven’t really decided yet. How about you?” She laughed, “I don’t have to … I’m a girl!” I felt my face burning with embarrassment and that conversation was over.

Line 9 – little voice

Is it clear that the little voice is in the speaker’s head? I hope so, as that was my intent. This isn’t to say there weren’t actual voices weighing in on the matter when I grappled with my own real-life social foibles. There was this one girl in high school I was kind of into, who I was pretty confident would go out with me, but I just wasn’t sure that I wanted her to. For one thing, we were friends, and if I’d guessed wrong about there being a romantic opportunity, that friendship was sure to end or at least become awkward. Plus, dating in general seemed like a lot of hassle. So I did nothing, and after a while she must have told a friend to tell a friend, etc. and my pal David started hinting around that I should ask her out. I played dumb, until he grew impatient and said, “Look, here’s the thing. I have it on good authority if you ask her out, she’ll say yes. It’s like a slam-dunk.” I stared at him for a few seconds before finally replying, “So?” Exasperated, he fired back, “Let us not forget that our main objective here is to get laid!” He was half-serious, but also mocking me, and himself, and dating in general I suppose. His line became an instant classic.

Line 12: crash and burn

Look, it’s easy enough for you, the reader, to sit back and say, “What is this dude’s problem? He should just go talk to her! She’s probably perfectly nice.” Well, you didn’t go to my high school, and (maybe) you weren’t a nerd. Nowadays, nerds are kind of cool, but back then, in the Boulder Valley Public Schools, nerds and geeks and dorks were all basically the same thing and we were treated like vermin. Anybody who ran the risk of being cool to us was vulnerable to secondhand nerdiness. Moreover, any female who was cool to a nerd was in danger of being called “the geek-whore.” Not a geek-whore, but the geek-whore, like there was always one of them, though the process of selecting her was never clear.

How widespread was this geek-whore risk? I couldn’t really say. It’s true that a really gorgeous girl like Audrey was too far removed from nerdiness to ever run the risk of being called the geek-whore, but any girl that a nerd thought he might have a chance with was automatically in danger. A nerd hanging out with such a girl might hear about it from his nerdy friend later: “Dude, I saw you hanging out with the geek-whore at lunch!” If anybody overheard, and bothered to figure out whom the nerd was referring to, the poor girl was in great peril. These were dark times.

Line 13: you

There’s an obvious problem here with “you,” which originally meant the girl of his dreams, but then became a reference to the speaker himself, in the voice of his conscience. And now all of a sudden it’s back to the girl, whom the reader has probably all but forgotten about.

Interesting, isn’t it, how this poem has almost nothing to do with the girl being admired? That flaw came about through the revision. The original poem talked about the girl’s silky hair and pure skin, which was worse. It read a bit like a print ad for some fancy shampoo or skin cream. These details also increased the creepy factor somehow, even though love poems have traditionally fetishized the subject to some degree. My revised version, utterly bereft of information about the desired girl, has an air of “It’s not you … it’s me.” In that regard, it’s almost the opposite of an ode. At least I had the good sense never to show it to a girl, such as this one I was into at the time...

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Workout Megamix Liner Notes - Part I

NOTE:  This post is rated R for mild strong language.

Update

Hear my entire Megamix (200+ songs) on Spotify - click here!

Introduction

A couple friends asked me for recommendations for music to listen to while riding the stationary bike or indoor trainer.  I’ve been crafting the all-time #1 ultimate Workout Megamix for about two decades.  My quest began back in the mid-‘90s when I tried to ride the trainer while listening to The Cranberries.  Nothing against them, but it wasn’t helping me get that heart rate up.

Around this time I e-mailed all my friends for recommendations and was shocked at the dearth of fast, hard, rockin’ good stuff.  People were suggesting albums like “Buena Vista Social Club” and Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue.”  As you can see, I really needed to find some cool friends, but that’s hard to do, so I started experimenting with different music and I think that’s gone pretty well.

So in compiling my Workout Megamix, I thought to myself, Why stop at a mere list when I could be describing the song and/or the band and/or the reason I think it belongs in the list?  And so my Liner Notes idea was born.  Because this is a lot of work, I’m extending the distribution of these notes from 2 persons to 3.17 billion (the number of souls on this planet with Internet access).

The full list comprises 165 tracks, which at roughly 4 minutes per track gives about 11 hours of music, which should last for about 15 indoor workouts.  If you do 3 workouts a week this will last you 5 weeks before you get your first rerun.  That ain’t so bad.  These tracks are in alphabetical order by title because that’s the order they play on my MP3 player.  This post covers A-G and I’ll get to the rest in subsequent posts.

Before I begin, a quick caveat:  I’m not saying I know anything about music.  Whenever I find myself in the position of expounding in detail on a thorny subject (i.e., most of the time), I find myself winging it.  I hope that’s good enough for you.

One last thing:  particularly if your trainer is on the loud side (or even your rollers—mine have aluminum drums that tend to “sing” at high speed), please do yourself a favor and spring for noise-canceling headphones.  Indoor cycling is supposed to be good for you—don’t slowly deafen yourself in the process!

Liner Notes – Dana’s Ultimate Superfly Workout Megamix

'Till I Collapse – Eminem

            This is a perfect one for the trainer, thematically.  It even talks about your legs getting tired:  “Till the roof comes off, till the lights go out, Till my legs give out, can’t shut my mouth.”  And you can’t ride the trainer with your mouth shut, either.  How true that is.

8 Miles & Runnin' - Freeway/Jay-Z

            This is from the soundtrack to “8 Mile,” which was the movie that got me back into rap after more than a decade of nothing … the wilderness years, if you will.  “The New Yorker” gave “8 Mile”  a good review, which I hadn’t expected.  When that movie came out I knew almost nothing about Eminem, other than what I’d gleaned from an outraged editorial quoting some of his crude lyrics.  I remember thinking, “Man, this guy is really foul ... for him to be popular, he must have talent or something.”  The movie convinced me.  Go see it if you haven’t, or even if you have.

911 Is a Joke - Public Enemy

            Public Enemy was one of the first rap groups I ever got into.  I kind of burned out on them eventually, but that’s not their fault.  Chuck D is the main guy, with Flavor Flav kind of his court jester.  Nice combo.

A Punchup at a Wedding – Radiohead

            This is the only song I know of that’s about a fistfight breaking out at a wedding.  Fortunately, my wedding was free of fisticuffs, though I did consider beating down an attendee.  It was an outdoor wedding in an amphitheater, and some douchebag college kid took the liberty of sitting down to watch.  It would be one thing if it were a giant wedding, but I only had like 12 or 13 guests—plus him.  Meanwhile, the guy’s dog was getting a bit too close to the wedding cake.  Lucky for him I didn’t want to fight while wearing my nice suit.

A.K.A. I-D-I-O-T - The Hives

            The Hives is a band I discovered through the music review section of “The New Yorker.”  They hail from the Swedish industrial city of Fagersta.  As the magazine described it, “The Hives quickly became huge in Sweden, which is sort of like being the strongest person in your house.”  They have a fast, angry sound perfect for the indoor trainer.

Adrenaline Rush - Obie Trice

            I was introduced to Obie Trice by the “8 Mile” soundtrack.  Like Eminem, he’s from Detroit.  Here’s a crazy biographical detail:  he was shot in the head back in 2005 and is still carrying around the bullet in his skull.  This doesn’t seem to affect his brain—his rap is kickass.  “Adrenaline Rush” is not actually one of his best songs, but it’s a good one for the trainer.  I call it as “the motherfucka song” because he says “motherfucka” about 3 dozen times.  It’ll grow on you, trust me.

Airbag – Radiohead

            This song was inspired by a British insurance company magazine (like what you might get from AAA here) and the headline, “An airbag saved my life.”  The lead singer gave this commentary on the song:  “Has an airbag saved my life? Nah…but I tell you something, every time you have a near accident, instead of just sighing and carrying on, you should pull over, get out of the car and run down the street screaming, ‘I’m BACK! I’m ALIVE! My life has started again today!’  In fact, you should do that every time you get out of a car.”  Awesome guitar on this track.  Actually I think it’s two dueling guitars, but as I said I’m not very knowledgeable about music.

Ass Like That – Eminem

            This song has an unfortunate chorus:  “I ain't never seen an ass like that/ The way you move it, you make my pee pee go / Doing, doing, doing.”  (The “doing” rhymes with “boing,” not with the gerund form of “to do.”  I have just realized this is a heteronym I never noticed before ... but I digress.)  This song is from the weakest of Eminem’s albums, “Encore,” and I really had to ask myself, “Can I listen to, much less enjoy, a song that includes “make my pee pee go doing, doing, doing?”  After much deliberation, the answer is yes, I can and do.  If you can get past this bit, it’s really a great track ... very funny.  It has held up well.  Listen for Eminem’s impersonation of Triumph, the puppet dog, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Average Man - Obie Trice

            This one is badass.  Lots of gun-related sounds, which can so often be embarrassing, like in action flicks where cocking the gun is almost as loud as shooting it.  But Obie Trice pulls it off. 

Bad Girls - M.I.A.

            I stumbled on M.I.A. quite by accident.  M.I.A. stands for “Missing In Acton” (not “Action” as Wikipedia erroneously reports).  Acton is a part of London I know about from taking the Underground.  M.I.A. (full name Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam) is British/Sri Lankan and I’d say her genre is a hybrid of dance, grime, hip-hop, and world music.  I first learned of her through a magazine I randomly started getting in the mail called “Complex.”  I never did gather whether this was COM-plex, like the psychological conflict, or com-PLEX, as in complicated.  (Another heteronym!)  It was a weird magazine.  Not quite white, not quite black, not quite about music, just a hodgepodge.  I kind of liked it because it was so random, and featured babes.  “Complex” did a profile of M.I.A., and I bought a disc on a whim, and it turns out she’s tot’ly wicked.  This song has become one of my favorites, though I didn’t much like it at first.  Be sure to check out the YouTube video too.

Bad Guy – Eminem

            This song is fricking brilliant.  But you have to listen to “Stan” first or it won’t make much sense.  If Shakespeare were alive today, he’d be a rapper, and he’d envy Eminem.  I know that sounds crazy but trust me on this ... I was an English major.

Be Somebody - Kings of Leon

            Way back in like 2002, a friend randomly sent me a Kings of Leon a disc in the hope that I’d like it.  I did, and do.  I like their newer stuff better; originally the lead singer kind of mumbled because he was afraid his mom would hear the lyrics and be offended.  Nowadays I hear Kings of Leon on the radio, which makes me think I’m cool because I knew [of] them back in the day, man.

Beautiful – Eminem

            This song, though quite good, is admittedly just a little cheesy.  But, as the father of daughters, I can’t help but admire it, and hope that if anybody ever insults my daughter’s looks, she can remember this song and say, “You can go get f*cked.”

Beautiful Pain - Eminem w/ Sia

            This song follows what’s becoming a pretty established motif for Eminem:  he does the rapping, but the chorus is sung by some popular female singer with a great voice.  I guess there are purists who don’t like the obvious commercial motivation behind this format, but why the hell would I care?  Is it really a problem if Eminem or someone like him has more money than some robber baron or advertising exec?  I think the snarling rapper and great singer go well together.

Best Rapper Alive - Lil Wayne

            I’m not very familiar with all the hip-hop acts out there, much less pop, but at some point I became vaguely aware there was a rapper called Lil Wayne, so on a lark I bought a CD of his at Target.  Turns out he’s rather good and occasionally brilliant.  This isn’t his best song but it’s got the driving beat, and sometimes you gotta bulk out the megamix or those crème-de-la-crème tracks will get old.

Black Hole Sun – Soundgarden

            I thought the video for this was mind-blowing back in 1994.  I watched it more recently and it hasn’t aged well.  The song, though, is still great.  These guys are from Seattle which means they probably drink a lot of coffee and like to take the elevator up inside the Space Needle.  (Can you tell I did extensive research for these liner notes?)

Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos - Public Enemy

            One of the best PE tracks they is.  Sing along!  Perform it for your kids!

Blow Up the Outside World – Soundgarden

            This is the best song Soundgarden ever recorded.  I’ll confess it seemed pointless at first, but at some point its brilliance dawned on me, and I’ve now adopted it as my credo, my mantra, and my mission statement.  If you’re riding hard enough on the trainer or the rollers, and the music is doing its job, you’ll feel something kind of like excitement, kind of like fight-or-flight, and kind of like anger, as you thrash away, ensconced in your headphones and your private pain cave.  In this state it seems completely reasonable to blow up the outside world.

Born Free - M.I.A

            A workout megamix needs to include either this song or the John Barry song  written for the 1966 movie, about lions, called “Born Free.”  In the end this one won out, because a) the other one sucks, and b) if I get the other one in my head, I always substitute my brother’s lyrics, which went, “Born dead/ The baby had no head.”

Brain Stew - Green Day

            I saw these guys in concert at one of those music festivals in Golden Gate Park (WOMAD, I think) and didn’t think they were that good.  Over the next two decades my wife kept asking me to get her an album by these guys and finally I relented.  Turns out plenty of the songs I’d enjoyed on our local alternative (i.e., mainstream) rock station are by Green Day.  (I didn’t realize this because modern deejays are far too cool to ever provide the name of a song or whom it’s by, and they never use the word “whom” either.)  Green Day is not a great band—one song sounds too much like another IMHO—but the two guys who started it are from Rodeo, a godforsaken little cow town I have to ride through on some bike rides, and I applaud them for transcending such humble roots.  Plus they got their start playing at a little punk club that’s walking distance from my house (though I’m not cool enough to go there).  “Brain Stew” has a very simple but thrashable guitar line.  Can I say “guitar line”?  Does that even mean anything?

Bucky Done Gun - M.I.A.

            “Done” and “Gun” don’t look like they should rhyme, but they do.  I don’t really know what (if anything) this song is “about,” and I don’t care.

Burden in My Hand – Soundgarden

            “Burden in my hand” is just one of those phrases that sound cool.  Don’t overthink it.  That’s my advice for lots of this music.  Riding the trainer isn’t like going to a poetry reading, okay?

Cash Money Millionaires - Lil Wayne

            This song is pretty dumb, in the best possible way.  Go Weezy!

Cha Ching (Cheq 1-2 Remix) - Lady Sovereign

            This is off “Run the Road,” a grime compilation.  Grime is kind of like hip-hop, but British, and maybe a bit faster.  Lady Sovereign is a very short person and has one of those ponytails that sticks out of the side of her head like the girl in “Napoleon Dynamite.”  I wish Lady Sovereign would come to a party at my house.  If she turned out to be a smoker, I’d even let her smoke in the house—that’s how cool she is.  I hope she doesn’t smoke, though.  It’s gross and bad for you.

Charmer - Kings of Leon

            Everyone I know hates this song.  What’s wrong with everybody?  If you hate it, I don’t want to hear about it.  I like it.  Obviously.

Cheers - Obie Trice

            This is a great track.  I sometimes sing along, though that gets awkward because he uses the n-word.  He’s allowed to, of course.  It’s okay because I’m usually too out of breath to sing anyway.

Closer - Kings of Leon

            You know how with some bands all the songs sound alike?  Not so with Kings of Leon.  This one is way cool and a good track to hammer to as you fight to become a King of Lean.

Come As You Are – Nirvana

            I’m not actually sure Nirvana is a good band for working out to … the tempo might be a bit wrong.  But you can set your brakes to drag and stand up.  I kind of feel like supporting this band since as everybody knows their lead singer killed himself.  It would be such a shame if he were forgotten, like Men At Work.  At least those guys are still alive and kicking, as far as I know.

Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd

            Clearly this song needs no introduction.  By the way, I’m sick of people saying “Dark Side of the Moon” is Pink Floyd’s best album.  Of course that’s a great album but “The Wall” is better.  This Roman Meal bakery thought you’d like to know.

Cool Cats - Obie Trice

            My favorite part?  When Obie says “blaow!”

Creep – Radiohead

            Of course you heard this on the radio all the time back in the ‘90s.  This isn’t quite as strong as the other stuff on this list, but you might as well re-familiarize yourself with it so you can sing it in the shower.

Cry Now - Obie Trice

Desperation - Eminem

Diamonds From Sierra Leone - Kanye West

            I don’t know what to make of Kanye West.  On the one hand, several of his songs, such as this one, seem pretty cool.  On the other hand, somebody showed me the video of “Bound 2” and I almost vomited into my soup.  And I wasn’t even eating soup!  That video would be a crime against humanity even without Kim Kardashian in it.  But I liked “Diamonds From Sierra Leone” before I saw the “Bound 2” video; why should that change?  

Don't Shoot (I'm a Man) - Devo

            It was a little frightening buying Devo’s first album in two decades.  I really liked Devo back in the day and didn’t want to hear them embarrass themselves.  But this album, “Something for Everybody,” is great!  As is this song!

Drive Slow - Kanye West

I like this song a lot.  More than it deserves, probably.  It always reminds me of a “New Yorker” story from July 10, 2000 called “The Saturday Morning Car Wash Club” by James Ellis Thomas.  Somehow I get the pleasure of that story just by hearing this song … all while training indoors!  It’s like alchemy or something!

Déjà Vu – Eminem deja

            This song is about overdosing in front of your kids.  Pretty heavy.  But it’s a kickass song and the only rap song I know with two different French accent marks in its title.

Easy to Crash – Cake

            Cake is from Sacramento and used to play the coffeehouse circuit there.  Did you know Sacramento had a coffeehouse circuit?   Me neither.  This song is not about crashing while riding rollers, but I did do that the other day.  I was riding out of the saddle and made the mistake of shifting up and accelerating.  I rode right off the front of the rollers, hit the carpet, went flying (surfing my bike at this point), hit the fan, knocked it ass-over-teakettle right into my main road bike (which was leaning against the wall), tipping it over.  I managed to dismount my rain bike and catch my other bike by the handlebar just before it would have hit the floor.  Alexa saw the whole thing and was duly impressed.

Enter Sandman – Metallica

            I became aware of Metallica all the way back in high school when this stoner kid used to talk about them.  He had super long fluffy white hair and puffy red eyes and was oddly chummy with me.  “Dude, it’s my birthday and my dad’s throwin’ me a party.  I’m not talkin’ no birthday cake and candles either … we’re gonna get drunk!”  This dialogue didn’t involve Metallica per se, but I always associated them with that kid.  Anyhow, fast forward a few decades to when I watched “Some Kind of Monster,” a documentary about Metallica hiring a consultant to help them get along while cutting an album.  Fascinated, and dimly aware that Metallica had made music with the SF symphony, I bought their eponymous album and guess what?  It R4WKs!  It’s kind of silly as well, I have to say.  These guys are a bit on the earnest side, but heavy metal shouldn’t be tongue in cheek or ironic.  Just roll with it.  Belt out “We’re off to never never land” in front of your kids and watch them cringe.

Fell In Love With a Girl - The White Stripes

            I didn’t expect to like the White Stripes because so many people bagged on them.  But oddly, the biggest complaint I heard was that they’re overrated.  How can they be overrated when everybody bags on them?  And anyway, who cares?  They’re quite good, if a bit sloppy.  This song has a video with cats playing guitars, which I showed to my kids when they were tiny, and to this day they love this song.  Since I love them, it’s just a big love-in whenever I hear this.

Fell On Black Days - Soundgarden

Fight the Power - Public Enemy

Follow My Life - Obie Trice

Fresh - Devo

Galang - M.I.A.

Girls LGBNAF - Ice-T

            You absolutely mustn’t play this song on the hi-fi when your kids are around.  The lyrics are filthy, at least by ‘80s standards.  Also, don’t play it on your boom box out in the driveway unless you’re ready to silence it very quickly.  I was working on my bike, playing this, and a famous writer/illustrator of children’s books came walking down the sidewalk with her dog.  I had to scramble to prevent an embarrassing episode!  Ice-T is from L.A. and was one of my early favorites.  He’s held up well!

Give It Away - Red Hot Chili Peppers

            Another band from L.A.  One of my college roommates, a rich kid with over 400 CDs in his collection (yes, I counted them once) used to play this song almost constantly, along with “Down In It” by Nine Inch Nails.  They were the only two songs I ever heard him play.  I didn’t realize I liked this song (and band) until years later when I’d recovered from that roommate.  A colleague of mine once encountered this band’s bass player, Flea, on an airplane.  They were both flying first class to Europe.  Flea seemed to be on drugs and decided to climb up into the overhead bin to sleep.  (He’s not a very big guy.)  This caused a major altercation with the flight attendant.

Got Hungry - Obie Trice

             Obie hit a long dry spell (from 2006 to 2012) between his second and third studio albums.  I started anticipating his third album in 2008 and was getting mighty impatient when in 2009 he decided, probably just to pay the bills, to release a compilation of old stuff, which he called “Special Reserve.”  It was kind of unpolished, but full of highly energetic stuff like this song.  Perfect with a lactic acid chaser!

Stay tuned

Obviously I still have H thru Z to go.  I hope you like this topic because it'll be the next 4 or 5 posts at this rate. Click here for Part II.

More reading

Here are links to the rest of my series of Workout Megamix liner notes:

• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Part V
• Part VI
• Entire playlist on Spotify

--~--~--~--~--~--~--~---~--

For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Blogger Eats Crow Over Compact Crank!

NOTE:  This post is rated PG-13 for mature themes.

Introduction

A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog post called “Man vs. Compact” explaining how the relatively new, smaller bicycle chainwheels (aka chainrings) figure in the manliness equation.  If you’re not familiar with what gearing says about one’s manhood, here’s a very brief primer:  a high gear helps you go fast on the flats and downhills, while a low gear gets you up the hills—that is, it makes up for lack of brute strength.  Thus, large chainrings and small rear cogs are macho, while small chainrings and large rear cogs are embarrassing.  As I wrote in my original post, I’m aware that some males are so secure in themselves, or so ignorant, that they aren’t even beholden to this chainring/machismo link—and I pity those males.  I concluded my post by saying that “at least in this one tiny realm—compact vs. standard crank—I can hold my head up high.”

Well, you can guess the rest.  This post is about me being a hypocrite, and incurring the ruthless and well-deserved ridicule of my cycling pals.  If you’ve ever felt kind of bummed to miss out on watching the gladiatorial battles in the coliseums of Rome, you may well enjoy my friends’ barbs.  Meanwhile, if you yourself ride a compact crank, or are on the fence about giving in to one, take heart because I’ll also discuss, in nerdy mathematical terms, the tangible benefits a compact crank can offer.  (No, this isn’t actually for your edification; it’s so you can pity me all the more, for offering up a weak argument that any real man would simply dismiss as surely as he would a statement like “This pink shirt actually goes with my skin tone rather well.”)

Why’d you do it, man?!

If my bold earlier post wasn’t a setup for eating crow later, I don’t know what is.  Yes, that’s my compact crank you see above.  Here’s how it came about.  Recently, I bought a new bike frame which required a new bottom bracket, which in turn required a new crankset.  This stuff isn’t cheap.  I decided that so long as I was shelling out all this money, I wanted the new crankset to offer some material distinction over my old one (besides its basic compatibility with the new frame).  Switching to a compact did provide a functional difference.  (It’s a lot like the rationale I applied when my dining room ceiling caved in and, after having it sheetrocked, I had to have the whole room repainted even though the old paint had been perfectly good.  I went with a different color because I couldn’t bear to shell out all that dough just to get back to where things were.)

That was one of the reasons, anyway.  On top of this, my 12-27 rear gear cluster recently wore out.  I’d bought myself this cassette for my 40th birthday as a concession to ageing, and I’m lucky it lasted as long as it did.  Alas, given the brutal climbs I like to do, like South Park Drive and its even harder big brother, Lomas Cantadas, I can no longer get by in a 39x25.  And yet, because I’m cheap and thus still riding 9-speed cassettes, I can no longer find top-end Dura-Ace cassettes in 12-27.  To twist the knife even harder, I have a stockpile of Dura-Ace 12-25 cassettes just gathering dust, waiting for a fountain of youth I’ll never find.  With a compact, a 25 is once again large enough, so I’ll have plenty of Dura-Ace cassettes to last me through to my adult-diaper years.

Preemptive invective

Some twenty years ago, I went to my first-ever corporate job interview.  This was at a headhunting agency.  In those days men wore suits and women wore skirts.  The headhunter interviewing me started off by saying, “Before we begin, I want to point out this run in my nylons.  Better that we just acknowledge it now, and move on, than have it distracting us the whole time.”  I respected that, and perhaps it has influenced my behavior because I decided that, rather than have my cycling pals discover my compact crank one by one and excoriate me for it in dribs and drabs over the rest of the summer, I’d just come clean and preemptively bring the onslaught.  So I sent out a group  e-mail announcing my switch and inviting my pals’ invective.  “Those of you still rocking 39s should have no problem casting aspersions on my manhood,” I wrote, “while those of you with compacts can castigate me for my hypocrisy.  That’s just a start, of course ... I’m sure there are all kinds of angles you could come at me from.”  This they did.

My just deserts

The first response, though not vicious, was decidedly firm.  Jan wrote, “With a compact crankset, the term BigRingRiding is nothing.  NOTHING!”  He’s referring, of course, to the website “Big Ring Riding,” a celebration of the manlier side of cycling (you know, the aspect of cycling that Christopher Froome is ruining forever).  This feedback stung, because at UCSB I was the self-appointed captain of the Big Ring Club, whose main activity was riding bikes while using the little chainring as seldom as possible.  If I remember correctly, I was the one who coined the terms “good ring” and “bad ring” to describe the big and small chainrings, respectively—a usage that became ubiquitous among our members.  In a way, I’ve gotten myself kicked out of my own club.

The next response, from former UCSB and current EBVC teammate Trevor, was exactly what I deserve: 

        The compact crank is the cycling equivalent of the old man’s walker. Don’t forget the tennis balls or, instead, you might as well dangle your own off the back of your saddle, like little fuzzy dice and a St. Christopher medallion, since you’re apparently not using them anymore. Display them like the now useless withered tokens they’ve become.
        It’s brave of you Dana, to embrace defeat out in the open. I would say it’s like ripping the band-aid right off, but rather than suffering a few pulled hairs to let a healing wound breathe, you’re laying naked in your decrepitude and impotence, in your willingness to disengage from the good of cycling. The “good” ring, if you recall, is no more for you.
        It’s okay Dana, go easy big guy. Getting old and weak is tough stuff, not to mention losing your ‘nads like that. How awful. Right out in public, too. You deserve a rest and that compact should do nicely.

(As you may have guessed, Trevor still rides a 39.  In fact, he only recently went to a 25-tooth rear cog, and is working through his own shame issues over that.)

The shriveled gonad theme appeared again in Paul’s response:  “My original ‘shrinking genitals’ comment still holds true but now that it’s a reality for you (or will be soon—shrinkage times vary from rider to rider), please consider that it impacts others ... of most note, your wife.  I consulted with [my girlfriend] before I made the switch.  After buying her a bunch of expensive jewelry she caved.”

Ceely suggested corrective measures:  “I’m picturing a new episode of 'Intervention.'  Dana shows up at Cole [the coffee shop where our group rides meet]; conversation abruptly stops.  Two bouncers pull Dana off of his bike while Trevor says, ‘This is for your own good, Dana.’  Cameras zoom in on Dana while he is spouting off expletives.  A couple of mechanics pull off his compact crank while Dana sobs, saying ‘I’m sorry, I’ve let you all down!’  Mechanics put on a proper crankset, and for good measure install a 11-23 cluster on the back.  Everybody hugs, Dana is still weeping, and Dr. Phil appears and says to Dana, ‘This ain’t my first rodeo, son.  A man’s got to have manly gearing.’”

You may be surprised to know that the next comment, from Ian, stung me as much as any of the others:  “When will you be buying an electric group then?”  This is a subtle dig at my hypocrisy, as in addition to bagging on compact cranks I’ve blogged quite frankly about how stupid I think electronic shifting is.

Constructive criticism

Among the jabs were some more instructive comments.  Lucas alerted me to a blog explaining how larger chainrings provide a tangible mechanical benefit.  The blog cites  a “New Scientist” article:  “Tests by Burgess have shown that larger sprocket wheels are more efficient than smaller ones, because larger wheels reduce friction in the chain drive, which is more important than the marginal increase in weight….  In his tests, Burgess showed that doubling the sprocket size increased the efficiency of the chain drive from 98.8 per cent to 99.4 per cent.”

Of course, it’s not feasible to double the size of our chainrings and cogs, because 24-tooth small cogs and 100-tooth chainrings simply aren’t widely available.  However, that bit of arcana from Lucas led to a great photo from Muzzy:

As you can plainly see, the springs on that saddle bring to mind the tennis balls, fuzzy dice, and shrunken testicles that Trevor had mentioned.  Muzzy also offered up a real-world suggestion of getting a T.A. Cyclotourist crankset with an inner chainring so small as to be almost invisible:  “Dana, you’ll psychologically destroy your competition on the starting line of Everest Challenge with a setup like this.  They’ll look over at your  11-20 cassette and just give up before starting!”

Surprisingly, I also got some encouragement about my compact.  It came from Jamie, one of the best climbers on our club:  “You’ll love your compact, especially for the Everest Challenge.  More power, less fatigue—a winning combo.”  I appreciate the spirit of this message, but the problem is, Jamie is more than fifty-five years old.  To get this kind of advice from someone his age is the wrong kind of rite-of-passage; it’s about as gratifying to my male ego as getting a gift subscription to “Prevention” magazine.  Nothing against Jamie, of course—he could crush me on any climb, any day—but in the peculiar logic of maleness I’m far more receptive to statements like “Don’t be a wanker!” from young pups like Jan.  Note that I’m not the only guy who’s loathe to take advice from his elders; Gary wrote, “A few of the older guys I ride with up here in Santa Rosa have compacts and tell me often that I really need to get one. I just can’t do it as I’m afraid I may actually use it.”

(Trevor’s response to Jamie’s prediction:  “He’ll love it? Oh no he won’t. He might use it, but he won't love it. Not by a long shot. Because he knows the truth of it all.”  Perhaps if I were a bigger man, Trevor’s statement wouldn’t be so true.  Of course, if I were a bigger man, I’d climb even worse than I already do.)

Waxing nerdy

Some of the responses (you can see how raw a nerve this topic hit, eh?) were technical in nature.  Ken wrote, “Does the mid-compact [i.e., 36/52 instead of 34/50] create a less severe shrinkage than a full compact? Should one worry about an asymmetric shrinkage effect? And for that matter, what exactly defines the ‘compactness’? Is the deleterious effect tied to lower BCD, thus damning all users of the new Shimano DA11 cranksets (which have only one spider that handles everything from compact to cajones grandes), or is it strictly chainring tooth count?”

If “BCD” threw you, rest assured it threw me too, though only for a second.  It means bolt circle diameter, which is the characteristic of a crankset that determines how small an inner chainring you can use.  (For example, the Campagnolo cranksets that were the norm in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s peloton would take nothing smaller than a 42-tooth inner ring.)  In fact, BCD is a matter of mere trivia; all that matters in terms of machismo is the tooth count, as it alone produces your effective gearing.

Why does tooth count matter, but not BCD?  Well, because the teeth of the chainrings and rear cogs are (obviously) the same size, the tooth count is representative of their effective outer diameter.  Ultimately, the ratio of the number of teeth in front to the number of teeth in back is directly proportional to how far you’ll go with each pedal stroke.  Think of it this way:  with the bike in a given gear, if you pedaled it forward exactly one pedal revolution, measured in inches the distance traveled, and then divided by Pi, you’d get the all-important “gear inches” value.  This value is a very handy way of expressing exactly how high or low a gear is.  Fortunately, we don’t actually have to measure anything; we can calculate gear inches using the following formula:

The equation above only holds for road bikes with 700C wheels (which measure roughly 27 inches).  One benefit to the 27-tooth cog is that it makes it really easy to calculate the gear inches:  the gear inch number is simply the number of teeth on the chainwheel, because the two 27s cancel out. 

I tried to explain this to Craig on a recent ride up Mount Diablo.  He didn’t grasp it, because this was our second trip up the mountain and he was too hypoxic to process new ideas.  (I was too, but for me this was pre-digested lore that I spouted off as easily as running a macro.  [“Karma police, arrest this man, he talks in maths, he buzzes like a fridge.”])  The benefit to this chatter was that Craig’s rhythm got all screwed up so his pace slackened, which was a great relief to me. 

You may be asking, “Why do gear inches matter?” or even “Why the hell do gear inches even matter?”  Well, they’re front and center in deciding if a compact crank can offer a silver lining now that it’s destroyed my male credibility.  As it turns out, if we examine—in gear-inch terms—the overall range of gearing created by a 39/53, 12-27 setup and compare it to a 34/50, 12-25 setup, we can actually find tangible evidence that—masculinity aside—a compact actually kind of makes some sense, in a very finite revenge-of-the-nerds kind of way.

The myth of 18, 20, or 22 “speeds”

Even back when I actually had what was known as a 10-speed bike, I knew that it didn’t really have ten speeds.  This is because I come from a family of science-y types (my mom was a hospital laboratory technologist and my dad a bona-fide rocket scientist).  I understood that you shouldn’t ride with your chain in a “crossover” gear (i.e., small chainring and smallest rear cog, or large chainring and largest rear cog) because it flexes the chain sideways too much, causing it to wear out early.  So that knocks off two speeds right there.  Moreover, I understood that in terms of gear inches, certain combinations of chainring and cog produced duplicate gears.  That’s right:  with almost every gear combination, a small chainring and smallish cog ended up being exactly the same gear as the big chainring and a largish cog.

My brother Bryan, at age fourteen, was a computer whiz.  I don’t mean in the modern sense of a kid who knows how to install programs or set up a printer and is thought to be a whiz because his benighted parent somehow can’t figure out these things.  No, Bryan was a computer whiz in that he could make the pre-Apple, pre-IBM-PC computers (and teletypes) of the day do anything at all.  He programmed our dad’s HP-85 to produce gear charts plotting each of our bikes’ gear-inch profiles on a logarithmic scale.  We taped these charts to our handlebar stems, so we could always know what gear to shift into next—that is, the next highest or next lowest gear.  While our pals were guessing wildly about how to shift (and dropping us, I might add, being physically superior), we smugly had the real answers.

The silver lining of compacts:  one more speed

So, just because you have two chainrings up front and ten cogs in the back doesn’t mean you have a 20-speed bike.  You can knock off two “speeds” for the crossover gears, and another three or four for the duplicated gear-inch combinations, making your bike a 14- or 15-speed.  Now I’m going to provide my real-life examples of gearing duplication, using my 9-speed traditional and compact setups, to show why the compact offers some technical superiority.  In short:  the compact gives me 13 actual discrete useable gears, while the traditional 39/53 crankset gave me only 12.  Look:

On the left is my old 39/53 12-27 setup.  I’ve shown duplicate gear combos in red, and aligned things so you can see the overlap in gear-inch values between the two chainrings.  There are 12 useable gear combinations with this setup. 

Why not 13, you ask?  Well, let’s think about how people actually shift when they ride.  Say you’re on a hill and it’s either flattening out, or you’ve decided to accelerate over the top.  So when you’re in the little ring and you’ve gone through the first (i.e., largest) four cogs, your next move is to throw the chain into the big ring and then shift to the second-largest cog in back (so you’re in the 53x24).  This is just a slightly higher gear than you were in, which is exactly what you want.  Moreover, your next two shifts are also reasonably small increments, and easy to make—just shift again on the back, down to the 21 and then the 19.  Now say you’ve maxed out your useful cadence in the 75-inch 53x19.  The next highest gear is the 81-inch 39x13.  But are you really going to shift back to the small chainring and then from the fourth-largest cog to the second-smallest to get this gear?  Yeah, it’d be a nice gear to be in, but when you max that out you’ll have to go right back to the big ring, and back up three more cogs in the back.  Nobody would actually do this.  It’s just too much shifting (and probably most riders—myself included—never realized that was actually the next highest gear to begin with).  So in actual practice, that 39x13 is a totally wasted gear.  You’ll never use it.  With 9 cogs in the back and a double up front, you’ve really only got a 12-speed bike.

With the compact, marching through the gears from lowest to highest is a much simpler affair.  After maxing out in fifth gear (the 34x15), you throw her in the big ring and shift to the 2nd cog in back (the 23), and then (as you continue to accelerate) you just drop down in the back, one cog at a time, the whole rest of the way down the stack.  So you get 13 useable gears instead of just 12.  For those of you who are “more visual,” here is a pictorial representation of what I’m getting at:

One more thing:  with a compact, because you don’t need that (embarrassing!) 27 anymore, you get a tighter gear range in the largest cogs (21-23-25 instead of 21-24-27).  Look at that chart again.  With a compact, the gear-inch difference among these cogs is only 3 to 4 inches, whereas the 39 chainring gives you larger steps:  5 to 6 inches.  The size of these steps makes a big difference when you’re in these low gears, because that’s when your cadence tends to be the lowest  as you slog up some brutal grade.  With a 39, you might be turning the 27 pretty well but not quite up for the 24, whereas with a 34, going from the 25 to the 23 is a reasonable upgrade to your effort.

Conclusion

So, do I put enough stock in all this technical arcana to want to vindicate the compact?  Am I drunk enough on my own bathwater to rescind my earlier position and declare the compact superior?  Of course not.  The compact, whatever its practical benefits may be, is a humiliation.  It’s a bit like if you discovered somehow that your toddler would actually nap so long as he got to snuggle with a stuffed Barney.  Sure, you might resort to this, but you’d sure be a lot happier if your toddler had chosen something cooler, like a Totoro.

The Barney analogy actually fits this compact crank discussion perfectly.  The writer Adam Gopnik wrote an essay in “The New Yorker” years ago complaining about how, though he was raising his kids in Paris, the insidious purple dinosaur somehow managed to find them—and, worse, his two-year-old son Luke not only declared that he liked Barney, but upon seeing the effect this had on his father, tended to announce this pretty often, just to taunt him.  But finally Luke saw the light:

“At breakfast, Luke made an announcement.  ‘Daddy,’ he said, ‘I don’t like Barney.’
‘You don’t like Barney?’ I asked, incredulous, delighted.
‘No, I don’t like Barney.’  He paused.  ‘I like to watch Barney.’”

So:  do I like my compact?  Well, at least on the uphills, I do like riding with the compact.  But no, I don’t like the compact.  How could I?

Rock Song Covers & Music Fusion

NOTE:  This post is rated PG-13 for mild strong language and a suggestion of sensuality.

Introduction

My daughter’s violin instructor is taking leave for five weeks to tour with a well-known rock band.  If my daughter ever becomes self-conscious about playing nerdy classical music, perhaps she can look to this for inspiration. 

For this post I use the term “music fusion” to encompass a number of ideas:  classical instruments in rock music; covers of rock songs; amateur covers; cross-genre exploration; and fusion I’d like to see.

Classical in rock

I’m not a musician.  Though my mom wanted me, as a kid, to learn the cello, the orchestra teacher thought better of it.  So I’m just a listener.  Perhaps with a better trained ear I’d pick out all kinds of classical instruments in the rock music I listen to.  Watching a documentary on “Pink Floyd The Wall”  recently, I got the answer to a question that had long troubled me—how do they get that strange menacing backdrop of vague sound?—when I saw four cellos performing with the band.  I’ve also picked out some violins backing up Eminem songs.  At a Radiohead concert a decade ago, I watched one of the band members carefully playing an xylophone during “No Surprises.”

Sometimes rock music gets treated to a stronger dose of classical instruments.  A string quartet called “The Section” did an entire album of classical arrangements of Radiohead songs.  After reading some reviews to make sure it wasn’t just a gimmick, I bought the album, and I love it.  And there was the Metallica album, S&M, of a live performance where the rock band played alongside the San Francisco Symphony.  I haven’t heard the album, but one of its songs, “No Leaf Clover,” got a fair bit of radio play and I liked it fine.  And I love that Devo decided to do their own elevator music; the 30-second snippets I’ve heard of their E-Z Listening Disc sound pretty good.  (I'm not about to shell out $193.97 for the disc, which must be a collector's item or something.) 

Cover versions

Some years ago I was flipping through the FM stations in the car when I heard a song that was both familiar and not.  It was a cover of Radiohead’s “High and Dry,” and it sounded great—which intrigued me because though it’s a neat song, I’ve never liked it.  (To my ear, Thom York, the lead singer, sounds too whiny in this song.  Perhaps this is because he never wanted to record it anyway; in an interview he once said of the song, “It’s not bad ... it’s very bad.”)

But who did the cover?  Alas, modern deejays are apparently too cool to bother themselves with announcing what song you just heard and who played it.  When I googled “High and Dry cover” I discovered a dozen versions of this song.   I figured out pretty quickly that what I’d heard on the radio wasn’t from Amanda Palmer’s album of ukulele-based Radiohead covers.  I think the version I heard was by Jamie Cullum, but I’m not sure I want to shell out $13 to find out if I was right.

I also like Urge Overkill's cover of “Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon” whereas I could never stand Neil Diamond.  (I suffered an overdose of secondhand Neil Diamond at a moldy-oldies radio station where I worked, as a receptionist, in the ‘80s.)  I also love The Breeders’ version of “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” by the Beatles. 

Not all covers are good, of course; Limp Bizkit did what I can only assume is a sarcastic version of George Michael’s “Faith,” which strikes me as a kind of pointless exercise.  I mean, making fun of a mediocre song by squawking the chorus?  And this gets airplay?  According to Limp Bizkit's guitarist, George Michael hated the cover and ‘hates us for doing it.’”  Oddly, the copyright law concerning covers doesn’t require the covering band to get permission from the original artist, though royalties must be paid.

There’s a pretty cool website listing cover versions of everything, including “cover chains” (“a set of songs in which each song is a cover of a song by the artist who covered the preceding song”); the longest chain listed is over 300 songs long.  Click here for The Covers Project.

Amateur covers

Of course it would be impossible to count the number of times a startup band of aspiring musicians plays a cover at some tiny venue.  I also figure that anytime I sing at home, that’s a cover, and not a good one, though I take some satisfaction in my kids not always asking me to be quiet (which is especially remarkable when I sing Pink Floyd's “Vera,” which in my rendition is particularly maudlin).  Aside from quality issues, the most distinctive trait of the “home cover” is that it’s almost always sung a capella, unless a wooden spoon on Tupperware, or some foot-thumping, is employed (which works best if your audience is babies or toddlers).

Of course around the kids I have to sometimes alter the lyrics—I can't sing "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" (of which I count five actual covers, by the way) because it’s about a serial killer, so I do “Maxwell's Silver Platter” (e.g., “Maxwell's silver platter made sure that she was fed”).  Other kid-targeted enhancements:  Thorogood's “Who Do You Love” is corrected as “Whom Do You Love,” and the final line of “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” becomes “that book by Vladimir” (since Sting pronounces “Nabokov” completely wrong, and the right pronunciation would throw off the meter of the line).

But enough of this childish stuff.  The best enhancement opportunities involve some thought and sophistication.  Here’s an example.  Say you’re tired of getting your brother’s voice-mail and tired of leaving boring messages, so instead of a normal message you rap Ice-T’s “The Girl Tried to Kill Me” into the phone.  Doing this straight would be amusing enough, but then you think, wouldn’t it be even better to refashion the song as a poem, presented at a cozy poetry reading by a tweedy professor, a dignified man much like your father?  And if he were to read it in a gentle, thoughtful, caring voice?  Imagine:

“Yo.”  [This spoken a bit uncertainly, as if the professor isn’t quite sure what to make of this word.]

“I met this girl the other night.”  [Pause.]

“Hype.”  [Spoken with a trace of wonderment:  what is this word, exactly?]

“Super-dope body and face, her mini-skirt ... tight.”  [“Tight” given after a pause, and without the slightest trace of salaciousness.  The professor is now adrift, and just sounding out the words.]

“Talking about legs and lips, mind-blowing hips,

Had to cross my legs just to look at her...” [Here the professor falters as he cannot bring himself to utter the vulgar word “tits,” and eventually substitutes:]

“Vipassana.”  [You hang up immediately after this, as if to suggest that the professor has suddenly realized that, though “Vipassana” was the gentlest word imaginable—one of his favorites—in this context it sounded lewd, and he has blushed and abruptly abandoned the lectern for his seat.]

Genre-bending covers

Some covers seem pointless to me—e.g., Billy Idol’s version of “Money Money” and the Lemonheads’ cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson”—because they’re too similar to the original.  They add nothing.  The best covers, I think, are the ones least faithful to the original, where the band doing the cover sees a way to present the song in a totally new way.  For example, the Jamie Cullum cover of “High and Dry” isn’t even rock—it’s something more like jazz.  (Not everybody likes this genre-bending; an amateur reviewer of a Cullum album complained, “Over here in the U.K Jamie Cullum is regarded as the saviour of jazz.  [But] he isn’t jazz.  It masquerades under that name in order to make jazz trendy and saleable.”)  Whatever genre this cover is, if it can lure me out of my rock/rap rut, I’m all for it. 

I can say the same of Amanda Palmer’s cover of “Idioteque,” which you can listen to here.  I expected the ukulele bit to be a gimmick (I mean, c’mon, a ukulele?) but the song is brilliant.  (For one thing, with Palmer’s clear vocals instead of Yorke’s mumbling, I can actually make out the words.)  I also cannot categorize the Cowboy Junkies and their great cover of Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane.”  Though their cover bears little resemblance to the original, Lou Reed reportedly called it “the best and most authentic version I have ever heard.”

Often a cover is done whimsically (though can’t be only whimsical or it wouldn’t hold up musically).  At a Bob Schneider concert many years ago, I was delighted to hear a rockabilly version of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Give It Away.”  I didn’t even recognize the song until about a minute in.  But later Schneider outdid even this feat with a cover of Aretha Franklin’s “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.”  Only the choice was whimsical, though.  Had he played the song ironically—if he’d thrown in any hint of wink-wink, nudge-nudge—it would have been a silly and pointless stunt, but he played it completely straight.  Even his (male) backup singers came in perfectly (“Womaaan!”) and Schneider did a call-and-response thing with the audience—well, at least with the many females in the audience—and I can’t imagine any singer has ever had better opportunities with groupies after the show.

Devo co-founder Mark Mothersbaugh, in a bio you can find here, acknowledges the value to a song’s creator of hearing a good, creative cover of it.  Of the Teddybears’ version of “Watch Us Work It,” he says, “They took Josh Freese’s drums off and put on a sample from something we did back in, like, 1982.  And I thought, ‘That actually is better!’  That was when I first really saw that Devo had something to absorb, as well as something to impart.”

Odds and ends

Some covers aren’t exactly covers, like the brilliant “20 Dollar” by M.I.A., which is really its own song but grounded in Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” (which has spawned some eighteen covers).  M.I.A.’s liner notes in say “Incorporates elements of ‘Where Is My Mind,’ written by....”  Of the twelve songs on her “Kala” album, six of them say “Incorporates elements of....”

In rap, of course, infusion of one genre into another via sampling is standard—like the guitar lick from Heart’s “Magic Man” in Ice-T's “Personal,” or the chorus of Aerosmith’s “Dream On” throughout Eminem’s “Sing For the Moment.” 

Music fusion I’d like to see

It's a pity, I think, that bands mainly do covers early on, when they don’t yet trust their own material.  As Mothersbaugh suggests, an established artist or group might really learn from hearing, or doing, outlandish covers (in the spirit of Devo’s own cover of The Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”).

Perhaps some bands are shy about covering bigger bands’ songs.  It seems that the more a song gets covered, the more likely it is that somebody else will cover it, as memory of the original becomes more distant and vague.  We associate “Hey Joe” with Jimi Hendrix, though his cover is one of hundreds, and the song’s original authorship is a matter of debate.  Richard Berry’s “Louie Louie” has become a staple:  all kinds of bands have covered it, including the Troggs (whose big hit, “Wild Thing,” was itself a cover); Swamp Rats; Motörhead; Led Zeppelin; Black Flags; Joan Jett and the Blackhearts; and the Smashing Pumpkins. 

In my perfect world, I could compel bands to do covers of my choosing, which would propel them into totally new musical directions.

Some music fusion I’d like to see:   

• Eminem doing James Taylor;
• James Taylor doing Eminem;
• My own dad doing Ice-T;
• Radiohead doing a rockabilly version of  “Optimistic”;
• Metallica doing Kenny Rogers;
• George Michael covering Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl (and I Liked It)”;
• Tom Waits doing Dido;
• Dido doing Tom Waits;
• The Rolling Stones doing a Devo song;
• Amanda Palmer covering Pink Floyd’s instrumental “One of These Days” on the ukulele.

Of course this list is incomplete.  I encourage you to list your own fusion ideas in the Comments section below.

dana albert blog