« After the Jump Heads to Austin! | Main | SXSW Eat and Listen »
March 10, 2008
Numerology: A Heptagonal Number That's Really Quite Centered
Game Show Host (John Cleese): Mr. Voles, I understand that you claim that you wrote all those plays normally attributed to Shakespeare.
Voles (Michael Palin): That is correct. I wrote all his plays and my wife and I wrote his sonnets.
Host: Mr. Voles, these plays are known to have been performed in the early 17th century. How old are you, Mr. Voles?
Voles: 43
Host: Well, how is it possible for you to have written plays performed over 300 years before you were born?
Voles: Ah well. This is where my claim falls to the ground.
My claim—that there is a worthy song for every number up to 100—also seems vulnerable to a sudden collapse. I never realized it before, but people like to poke fun at 43. In the above excerpt from Monty Python’s game show “Stake Your Claim,” Voles could have been any age, but it’s funny that he’s 43. Likewise, a fictional sport that Mad magazine dreamed up, called 43-Man Squamish, commences when the words “My uncle is sick but the highway is green” are uttered in Spanish. Forty-three, where is thy dignity?
It should be noted that not everyone thinks 43 is ridiculous. The brain trust behind 43things.com stands firmly behind the belief that 43 is “the right number of things for a busy person to try and do.” Why 43, you ask? Why not, for example, 44? “It’s too much,” they say. And as for doing less than 43 things, the answer is just as airtight in its logic: “You can do less, but it’s still called 43 things.”
One of the 43 most difficult things to explain to people who weren’t around in the ‘70s is how a band led by a shaggy-headed, codpiece-wearing man in tights, prone to playing the flute while balanced on one leg, could regularly play to a sold-out Madison Square Garden, before an adoring teenage audience. How, indeed, could a band named after the 18th-century agriculturist who invented the seed drill grow hugely popular, in the States, no less, playing complicated songs that drew heavily on Irish jigs and ‘round-the-maypole reels? It sounds ludicrous now, doesn’t it, like Spinal Tap’s dancing elves? The biggest mystery is what it all meant. Most bands gave the youth something to go on—Love is all you need; You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows; Well, whatever, nevermind—but what was the proper response to Jethro Tull? Take up archery? Reconsider leotards and lutes?
It’s tempting to say a certain type of nonsense went further when our world had yet to be digitized, but what really made the band relevant to the kids is quite simple: the music had a heavy rock foundation. The rock could coexist with the Olde English folke traditions and the jigs and not harsh anyone’s mellow. Even as Ian Anderson’s look went from the mad beggar of Aqualung to the Robin Hood duds of Songs From the Wood, there were still plenty of loud guitars. And in the early ‘70s, young people in many quarters liked their music to have the appearance of depth. They had no problem with artifice and couldn’t have cared less about danceability or authenticity. And Tull always seemed to be saying something deep. The band’s signature song, “Aqualung,” about a pervy old coot, is a prototypical ‘70s epic: a mini-symphony anchored by a fat guitar riff that was made to be aped by teenage boys “nare-nare-nare”-style. Add to that a reference to snot and you’ve got a song with eternal appeal to the young at heart. “Hymn 43,” from the Aqualung (1971) record, shows off guitarist Martin Barre’s knack for a memorable hook as well as Ian Anderson’s distinctive delivery. The song was part of a growing trend wherein Jesus Christ was a character in a rock song.
Country Joe and the Fish were a West Coast band who played Woodstock in ’69, and whose jokey name does not suggest they had the depth to record the seven-minute instrumental “Section 43.” This dark, organ-drenched psychedelic suite, written a few years before bands like the Grateful Dead made lysergic jams commonplace on vinyl, has been called one of the best and truest examples of acid rock, but even while I acknowledge it to be an important song, I would only want to hear it once every ten years or so. Timeless it’s not, and timelessness is of the essence.
Dillinger Escape Plan - "43 Percent Burnt"
I’m blown away, still quivering really, from the sheer physicality of one single Dillinger Escape Plan song. “43 Percent Burnt” is such a brutal, impossibly complicated cluster bomb that, next to it, Vanilla Trainwreck’s fairly evil sounding “43” sounds like the Buzzcocks, “43” by neo-heavy metalists Mushroomhead is a Stone Temple Pilots ditty, and the anti-pedophile “Rule 43” by Glaswegian Oi purveyors Bakers Dozen is a lost Proclaimers song, written after a lager fight.
After Crosby Stills Nash & Young broke up acrimoniously in 1970, Crosby stayed with Nash, but if the drippy soft-rock of “Page 43” is any indication, the well was pretty much tapped: “I think I’ll have a swallow of wine/Life is fine. Even with the ups and downs. And you should have a sip of it. Else you’ll find/It’s passed you by.” It’s not clear whether Crosby was cautioning us that life might pass us by, or just the bottle of wine, but since the song was written in 1972, the odds are he meant both, man.
My winning song is a single by the bird-obsessed UK outfit known as the Guillemots, whose lush, unabashedly romantic songs might come off as a bit too sweet if they weren’t shot through with intriguing instrumentation and arrangements, and hints of conflict underneath the often-soaring surfaces. “Made Up Love Song #43” showcases these qualities. I had trouble with the opening reference to “shining dragons,” but I hung on, and after the second run through of the verse and chorus, the whole thing bursts to life delightfully, with especially lovely interplay in the rhythm section and over-the-top falsetto background singing. “M-ULS43” teems with the irrepressible optimism of the truly smitten; only a person nestled deep in the arms of amour could find “poetry in an empty Coke can.”
Guillemots - "Made Up Love Song #43"
Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. It's starting to creep everybody out.
Previously: No. 1, 2-4, 5-7, 7 (counterpoint), 8, 9, 10/11, 12/13. 13 (counterpoint), 14/15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26/27, 28 , 29 , 30, 30 (counterpoint), 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42
Posted by David Klein at March 10, 2008 11:55 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.merryswankster.com/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/1472
Comments
Thanks for the introduction to the Guillemots. They have another song called Get Over It that is also very good.
Posted by: Kelli Douglas at March 10, 2008 03:40 PM
If given the moniker Fyfe Dangerfield, one has no choice but to be a lead singer in a rock band. Or, Rodney Dangerfield's Irish cousin.
Posted by: Liza at March 12, 2008 05:28 PM
the guillemots are english, not canadian.
Posted by: melvin lesley at March 20, 2008 07:13 AM
They are indeed--I must have had too many Canadian whiskeys when I wrote this...thanks.
Posted by: david at March 20, 2008 07:19 AM
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)
