On the most-recent episode of Saturday Night Shut-In I promised to tell the story of breaking up a fight between our 2 boys minutes before my wife and I departed the house for yet another delicious meal at Le Virtu, a restaurant in South Philadelphia owned by 2 old friends, Rusty and Cathy. A few of you wrote me off list, disappointed that I did not ever get around to telling this story. I apologize. I was caught up in the flow of the show and lost track of my note to share that tale. Here goes, and a resulting thread suggested by the owners of Le Virtu follows!
So my wife and I had our coats on and were leaving the boys their instructions/reminders for the couple of hours they’d be spending alone when suddenly our older son had our younger son in a headlock…
“Tell him that ‘Come Sail Away’ is a terrible song!” our older son shouted up from the headlock he was applying.
“But I like it!” our younger son managed to squeeze out from the headlock being applied.
“Boys,” my wife and I said in unison, “break it up!”
“I’m sorry, Daddy, I know Styx is bad but I like that song,” our little guy said as soon as his head was free.
Big brother jumped in: “That’s not fair, when I was his age you never would have let me get away with that!”
“He likes it,” I tried to explain, “because of its use in an episode of Freaks and Geeks.”
“You wouldn’t have accepted that excuse from me,” our teenager replied, disgustedly.
“You didn’t have a big brother,” said my wife, “so your father had to play this role for you.”
He bought that answer. There was peace in the foyer, and we could get on the road to our dinner. That woman’s a genius!
At dinner we chatted with Cathy, telling her about this episode with the boys, who are also big fans of the restaurant. Then she told us that Rusty still has it in for me over my inability to embrace Cheap Trick. Then she told me the story surrounding “Come Sail Away” reminded her of one of their pet peeves, and a thread we may not have ever covered: songs with grammatically gratingly lyrics.
She said Rusty was constantly disgusted by Styx’s “Come Sail Away,” beyond all that is wrong with the song itself, by the chorus’ switch to the singular after a plural set up:
A gathering of Angels appeared above my head
They sang to me this song of hope and this is what they said:
They said, “Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me lads
“It should be ‘come sail away with us,'” Rusty can’t help grumbling.
Another song that gets their goat is Paul McCartney‘s “Live and Let Die”:
And in this ever-changing world in which we live in…
“Why?” Cathy asked rhetorically, “It’s just wrong!”
So leaving out songs purposely or sincerely written in a grammatically questionable vernacular, what song’s lyrics really bug the English major in you?
Not grammar but pronunciation: in the bridge of Let’s Active’s “Every Word Means No,” Mitch Easter pronounces the word “anathema” as “anna-THEEM-uh.”
Game Theory actually re-recorded their song “Bad Year At UCLA” for their best-of comp to fix a grammatical error, changing “It fits as good as all your clothes” to “as WELL as all your clothes.”
I love that Game Theory story!
Me too! That’s awesome.
I was trying to reply to Mod’s comment about Game Theory…
Guns ‘n Roses, “Sweet Child o’ Mine”: “She’s got a smile that, it seems to me, reminds me of childhood memories.” Yes, it’s possible to be reminded of a memory but mainly you’re reminded of the thing itself and not the memory. It’s awkward and ungainly. Also, he’s not sure the smile reminds him? Still a great song, of course.
Rob Tyner of the MC5 was bothered by the fact that “kick out the jams” should have been “kick the jams out.” Read about it here:
http://www.machinegunthompson.com/2009/08/dennis-machinegun-thompson-mc5-story.html
btw, fly your flag at half mast today:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/19/michael-davis-bassist-mc5_n_1287408.html
Is the Styx argument that it should be written, “Come sail away with us?” Maybe this slogan has been used before by Hertz Rent A Car or Trans World Airlines or something…
Not being very much up on my seraphim and other heavenly creatures, could it be possible that each angel individually said, in unison, “Come sail away with me…” Just imagine an overdubbed Dennis De Young…
Hah. When you’re a committed prog fan, you have to face lyrics like the following by Yes on Tales from Topographic Oceans…
“Dawn of thought transferred through moments of days undersearching earth
Revealing corridors of time provoking memories
Disjointed but with purpose
Craving penetrations offer links with the self instructors sharp and tender love
As we took to the air a picture of distance.”
Grammar? What grammar? I tend to ignore the lyrics and just listen to the cool music.
I thought the “me lads” line was sailor talk, like “Avast, me hearties!” Even as a prog fan, I strongly dislike Styx and De Young’s eardrum-splitting vocals.
How about the “I am an Anti-Christ, I am an anarchist” forced rhyme on the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy In The UK”?
If you know me you know that I’m not inclined to give McCartney the benefit of the doubt, but I always thought he was singing “And in this ever-changing world in which we’re living,” mainly because I find it hard to believe anyone would make a howler like that.
Bob Dylan had a bad habit of misusing ‘whom.’
From I Pity the Poor Immigrant:
That man whom with his fingers cheats
And who lies with ev’ry breath
And this from I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine:
Searching for the very souls
Whom already have been sold.
I recently heard Jimmy Webb on the radio describing how someone pointed out to him that the line from Wichita Lineman which goes “and I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time” breaks some fundamental rule of grammar, he said he would have changed it had the song not been number one in the charts before he found out, but it bugs him still.
I’m quite forgiving of acts singing weird stuff in English when it’s not their native tongue (Kraftwerk, Boney M, ABBA, Aphrodite’s Child), but less so of acts and artists who should know better.
There is no question in my mind that the most annoying line in rock is “she’s giving me excitations”. There is just no excuse for that, no matter how stoned they all were.
For reasons like these I try to stay away from “whom” in my everyday speech and writing. I’d rather miss a “whom” than misuse one.
How about the Stones’ iconic grammatical clanger in “I can’t get no satisfaction”? A double-negative whammy that logically implies that Mick just might be getting his satisfaction after all. Perhaps the line should have been written as…
“I can’t get any satisfaction.”
“I can get no satisfaction.”
Not quite the same, is it?
See, that’s one of those lines that’s purposely written in hipster vernacular. We can’t hold that against anyone, and like you said, the song would not work had it been written properly. These grammatically grating songs should be ones demonstrating clear oversight by a songwriter who was not trying to use the vernacular and who should know better.
With that argument, then Bob Dylan’s overuse of “whom” should be allowed to slide, too. After all, both examples are pretensions, right? One is a groovoid hipsterism and one is wannabe-poesy.
By the way, my candidate for the most gratuitous use of hipster/minority vernacular is “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby”.
There may be no topping that one!
I’m pretty sure it’s:
“But if this ever-changing world in which we live in,
Makes you give in and cry,
Say ‘Live and Let Die.'”
Grammatically sound, it seems to me.
Mr. Mod, Le Virtu is probably my favorite South Philly restaurant!
For me, one of the biggest clunkers is The Doors’, “Touch Me.”
“I’m gonna love you ’til the stars fall from the sky
for you and I.”
In addition to the fact that it’s a completely lame-ass song.
I don’t see why. It should just be “ever-changing world in which we live.” What justification is there for the second “in?”
Glad to hear of another Le Virtu fan! Maybe we could do an RTH dinner outside there when the weather gets nice.
On the subject of The Doors, “LA Woman” has the following lines:
If they say I never loved you
You know they are a liar
Ha, that’s bad!
Live and Let Die gets the silver medal for me. The gold will forever go to Bernie Taupin for Your Song:
“But the sun’s been quite kind while I wrote this song, It’s for people like you that keep it turned on”
“Sharin’ the Night Together” by Dr. Hook, has the following lyric that is either just lousy or un-grammatical, depending on how you deploy your punctuation:
‘Cause I like feeling like I do and I see in your eyes that you’re liking it, I’m liking it too…
Here’s a lyric by America (“A Horse With No Name”) that may have the only triple-negative in music history… (and why is “for” used twice?)
“For there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.”
That’s just a great play on words.
That’s the way Clevelanders would put it. We always add the extra “in.” I remember a long time ago seeing a TV show where someone said something along the lines of, “I’m going to the store, want to come with?” No one here would ever not finish that with “me.” “I’m going to the store, want to come with me?” Years later I noticed on Drew Carey’s show that he still talked that way but the other actors didn’t.
In Cleveland everything is “down,” too. We go down to Akron, down to Florida and I just went down to Detroit a few weeks ago.
Please: grammatical issues were surely the least of Dr. Hook’s problems. (This reminds me of my thought a couple of weeks ago about a Dr. Hook thread. Stand by.)
That was the 2nd one that came to my mind, after Live and Let Die.
I’ve always wondered about that. Since Dylan seldom pays much attention to grammatical niceties, I figured that these–both from the John Wesley Harding lp–were an attempt to give the lyrics a quasi-Biblical sound, regardless of grammatical inaccuracy. I’m not sure, but I don’t think this was a “bad habit” that extended beyond this one record.
I think grammar rules are put in abeyance when you aren’t even attempting to make sense.
Perhaps it sounds wrong to you guys because you are not that familiar with a little something called “poetry”. Maybe you can’t handle it because the Lizard King just blew your little fragile eggshell mind…
I know for the British it’s correct usage, but it bothers me when I hear “the band are not quite right” in Harrison’s Its Only A Northern Song.
In addition to teaching John to finger pick, creating folk rock, jazz rock, and world music, introducing the Beatles to the Maharishi, inventing the ShamWow, and all the other things Donovan takes credit for, he also pioneered the use of inventive pronunciation.
A song called “Sand & Foam” has the line “Straining my eyes for a surfacing submarine” and he pronounces “surfacing” as “sur-FACE-ing”. And in the song “Sleep” he asks that sleep “Do envelope me” where “envelope” is pronounced as “en-ve-LOP”. In neither case is the pronunciation necessary for a rhyme.
Isn’t “Touch Me” a Robby song?
aloha
LD
“Every picture tells a story, don’t it…”
(Has anyone come up with a phrase that describes the charming adoption of rural American slang by British musicians in the ’60s and ’70s?…)
The author Tom Wolfe once coined the phrase “Mid-Atlantic man” for an Englishman who picked up American mannerisms.
Well played Raoul, well played…
To be fair to the mighty Don, he has quite a broad Scots accent to start with, although I wouldn’t dispute that some of his diction is slightly odd even while taking that into consideration.
En-vellop is NFOH (Normal For Over Here) when used as a verb as it is in this context, an en-(or on-, depending on whereabouts you live)ve-low-p is something you stuff a letter into.
No excuse for Sur-face-ing, though, but all this talk is tempting me to go and dig out Fairytale.
Almost every song by The Steve Miller Band.
Ok, I know there is a Dead Milkman or two in the Hall, correct?
This always bugged me. The line in Punk Rock Girl:
And someone played a Beach Boys song
On the jukebox
It was “California Dreamin'”
So we started screamin’
“On such a winter’s day”
It’s the Mamas and the Papas. Was this an intentional mistake? I love this song, but this always bugs me.
Can someone explain???
The Beach Boys recorded a version of “California Dreamin'” with a couple of the Mamas & Papas in 1986 – a couple of years before the Dead Milkmen song was released.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsBEMyi5u1w
The Pursuit Of Happiness – I’m An Adult Now
“…some guy screaming in a leather jacket”.
That’s what we call a dangling participle.
Now that’s a pince-nez; I sit corrected!
Thought so. I mean, who could ever have any issues with the artistic and linguistic genius of Mr. Mojo Risin?
aloha
LD
Muswell Hillbillies.
Along these lines me been discounting the typical subject pronoun/object pronoun switcheroo common to reggae tunes, mon.
Jah Love
LD
“Feeling well was good enough for McGee,
good enough for Bobby McGee and me.”
Ah, screw that. Gimme the bad grammar
aloha
LD
Not sure I buy this, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt. You think a Beach Boys cover of that song would ever be on a Jukebox??? Seems unlikely. But again, I’m just hypothesizing here 🙂
The song was released as a single in September 1986 and got as high as #8 on Adult Contemporary charts. Also, the video for the song got some exposure in 1986-87.
A couple of grating things in music to me:
1. Oasis had an album titled Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, which drives me nutty, but not as nutty as
2. John Sebastian proclaiming that Sun Records came from Nashville in “Nashville Cats”, which drives me nutty since he knew damn well that Sun Records came from Memphis.
I stand corrected.
It’s not “we.” It’s “we’re” with a British accent.
“You used to say ‘Live and Let Live.’ But if this ever-changing world in which we’re livin’ makes you give in and cry, say ‘Live and Let Die’.”
Perfectly grammatical.