Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Mental Floss; for Music Monday~Behind the Lyrics: The Inspirations for 6 Famous Songs

by Mark Arminio
1) Hey Man, Nice Shot; In the late 1980s, Pennsylvania was embroiled in a bit of an accounting crisis. Employees of the Commonwealth had overpaid millions in FICA taxes and the state legislature began to search for an outside accounting agency to calculate the appropriate refunds. Harrisburg native John Torquato, Jr. eventually won the $4.6 million contract for his Californian-based firm, Computer Technology Associates, through a series of well-placed bribes.

A few months and an investigation by the US Attorney later, the trail led back to Budd Dwyer, State Treasurer, who was indicted for receiving $300,000 in kickbacks to help Torquato secure the business. Dwyer vehemently denied the charges, refused to step down from his post, and even passed on a plea bargain that would have carried a relatively light sentence. In December of 1986, he was found guilty of racketeering, bribery, fraud and conspiracy. After the verdict, he continued to proclaim his innocence and even wrote President Reagan asking for a pardon.
The day before his sentence was handed down, Dwyer called a press conference. After reading a prepared statement, he handed a series of sealed envelopes to staffers, pulled out a .357 Magnum, placed it in his mouth and shot himself on live television. While most of the local and national TV stations debated how much of the suicide to air (some played it in its entirety, others with only the audio), Filter used it as the inspiration for “Hey Man, Nice Shot,” which garnered a fair amount of radio play in 1995.

2)Turns out 1986 was an interesting time for musical inspiration. Early that year, newsman Dan Rather was assaulted on the streets of New York by a man who kept yelling “Kenneth, what is the frequency?” as he pummeled the shocked anchorman. At the time, no one could quite explain the attack.

In 1994, R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe wrote “What’s The Frequency Kenneth?,” a song exploring the effects of the media, deliberately written in slightly unintelligible lyrics. The track became a huge hit off R.E.M.’s album Monster. But what happened to the strange man who inspired it?
The assailant was later identified as William Tager. He was arrested nine years after battering Rather when he murdered a stagehand outside The Today Show studios. Tager was a mentally disturbed individual who believed television networks were beaming secret messages into his brain using a specific frequency. Convinced if he found the correct frequency he could stop the incoming transmissions, he jumped Rather.

Dan Rather later appeared with R.E.M. on Letterman to help belt out the song,

Meanwhile, Tager is currently serving a 25-year sentence for manslaughter in Sing Sing. He is eligible for parole later this year.

3)Thom Yorke was born with a paralyzed left eye and underwent a series of surgeries before the age of six, the last of which left him with a drooping eyelid. Due to his condition, during the majority of his childhood Yorke wore an eyepatch. This series of events left him awkward and shy around members of the opposite sex.
While at school, Yorke and his classmates eventually formed a band called On A Friday, as Friday was the only day of the week they could rehearse. The band continued to rehearse together as they earned university degrees, with Yorke enrolling at Exeter College.
While at Exeter, Yorke began to follow around an attractive female. Not exactly in a binoculars-from-a-tree way, just sort of admiring from a distance. However, the tables were turned one night when this girl he had been psedo-stalking showed up at one of the bands’ shows. Yorke was truly unsettled.
You’ve probably heard his tale, because the song about it became the band’s first major hit. In 1991, On A Friday changed their name to Radiohead and released it under the title “Creep

4) Often considered to be one of the first concept albums, The Beatles spun out Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. Appearing as the sixth song on side one is “She’s Leaving Home,” a track about a young girl who slips away from her comfortable life in the dead of night, leaving her parents stunned and grief-stricken.
Turns out the song had a very real inspiration; 17-year-old Melanie Coe. Paul McCartney saw the news of her disappearance on the cover of The Daily Mirror, a British tabloid, and wrote the verses (with bandmate John Lennon crafting the chorus). In the article, Coe’s parents confess they simply couldn’t understand why Melanie would leave. “She has everything here,” her father said.
Although McCartney took some liberties with the story, Coe later confirmed the majority of the details. Coe, who was pregnant at the time, was found ten days after her disappearance with her boyfriend (who was not the father of her child) in a nearby town.
Oddly enough, Coe and McCartney had crossed paths before. Melanie appeared on a show called Ready, Steady Go! in which Paul was a judge.
Coe was crowned the winner of a mime contest. This was three years before she would inspire McCartney to pen “She’s Leaving Home,


5)
James Taylor’s beautiful, haunting and personal song “Fire and Rain” is composed in three parts, each with a separate story. Furthermore, the track as a whole is a tumultuous autobiography chronicling Taylor’s struggle with depression, substance abuse and fame.

During his later years in high school, Taylor began to experience clinical depression. He didn’t go to college (though he did later earn a degree), instead checking himself into McLean Hospital, a renowned psychiatric facility in Belmont, Massachusetts.
The first section of “Fire and Rain” describes Taylor coming to grips with the sudden death of a close friend, Suzanne Schnerr (“Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you”). At the time of her death, Taylor had just signed to The Beatles’ new label, Apple Records, and was working on his first album. However, Taylor didn’t find out about her death until months after she had passed away. His family and friends kept the information from him, worried he would slip back into depression.
Part two describes Taylor’s struggle with alcoholism, drug abuse and depression. After checking himself out of Belmont, Taylor moved to New York to pursue a music career and became addicted to heroin. During this time, he formed a band named The Flying Machine, a short-lived project that was derailed because of his addictions. Broke and depressed, his father eventually flew in to NYC and drove him back to North Carolina, where Taylor entered a drug rehab center.
The final stanza is a retrospective on how far Taylor had traveled. Many people falsely believe the line “Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground” somehow refers to a plane wreck. However, it actually references Taylor’s previous band The Flying Machine and his regret at their demise

6)Not posting this one. It's too, well you can check it out yourself. Ticking the title will get you there temporarily. The magazine moves on and so should we. It's good to write some new songs! With the number of musicians out there, let us give it a whirl!!! Mucic with some meaning!!!!!!

1 comment:

  1. hi allison :) this was interesting reading although i did not know some of the songs. ah, but jt won my heart, and the background of his 'fire and rain' was excellent. thanks for taking the time to research this because it's really neat to know!

    ReplyDelete

Banana This; Recycle Old Peels~ fertilizer or silver polish

There are things you can do with that old peel.

1. Do you have a green thumb? House hold plants and outside gardens require fertilization. A great way to give your plants nutrients is with a banana peel. The banana peel is very rich in potassium and phosphorus, which give that added boost to your plants soil, especially so with roses. Here is how to use a banana peel to fertilizer your soil for your plants. Remove the peel from the banana. Place the banana peel on a cookie sheet to let it air dry. Grab a paper bag or envelope. Crumble the dried banana peel and place it in the bag. Let the banana sit at room temperature for about two days. When your caring for your plant, give it a potassium treat of crumbled banana peel. Mix well in the soil to ensure the roots are fed evenly.
2. Have you been thinking about pulling out that old silver? Well there is no time like the present. Bananas peel can also be used to polish silver. Yes, polish silver. Take the old peels and place them in a blender. You want the peels to become smooth and creamy. Once they have, grab a cloth and small amounts of the creamed banana peel and begin polishing your silver. The shine will be breath taking.

SOURDOUGH STARTER with WILD YEAST

SOURDOUGH STARTER with WILD YEAST
Wild yeasts exist in the air around you and to some extent on the wheat berries. There are wild yeasts on grapes (unsulphured) and apples and other fruits. It is those wild yeasts which are 'captured' to make a sourdough starter. The process takes from 3 to 5 days. I wish I had specific amounts for you, but you could start with 1/4 to 1/2 cup of flour and mix in enough warm (not hot) water to make a thin paste. DO NOT make it too soupy. That, in fact, is the trick to a good starter, according to the French bread makers, and I think they should know. And after you've fooled around with the flour and water thing, you might wish to branch out into adding those unsulphured grapes, apples, sour milk, etc as a catalyst in order to capture other strains of yeast. Each of these strains has a slightly different taste. In fact if you move to another area, you might end up with a starter that produces an entirely different flavor. For instance, San Francisco sourdough bread is well known and has a distinct taste due to the wild strains in the air there. On day one you mix the flour and water (and add any catalysts to encourage fermentation) and place in a warm spot. After 3 days, the dough should be moist, inflated, and slightly sour. More flour and water is added (mixed in) and left to sit in a warm spot. After 2 days the process is repeated. Then the next day it is done again. Note the order: 3 days, 2 days, 1 day. At this point you should be able to make a loaf of bread using part of the starter and adding back what you took out in the form of more flour and water. Rule of thumb: Use about 10% starter to size of loaf. In the case of a 2 lb loaf this is a bit over 3 oz of starter (3.2 to be exact). For a 1 lb loaf 1.5 oz would be used. A book that describes this process in great detail is The Village Baker by Joe Ortiz, copyright 1993, published by Ten Speed Press, Berkley CA. If it's not still in print, try the used books stores, that's where I got mine. Or try your local library. If they don't have it, they might be able to get it for you. ©2008 by Ernestina Parziale

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