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pettifogging

Message 354: We Haven’t Forgotten About You

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pettifogging

Message 353: Embed Amok

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lyrics pettifogging

Message 349: The Daily Mail

The loonies are up on the mountain.
The lunatics have taken over the asylum.
Waiting on the rapture.

Singing, “We’ll keep your prices down,
Feed you to the hounds,
to the Daily Mail.”

Together.
Together.

You made a pig’s ear.
You made a mistake.

Paid off security and got through the gate.
You got away with it. Who will lie in wait?

Where’s the truth?
What’s the use,
In hanging around.

[unclear]

Innocent.
Fat chance.

[unclear]

Cut the queue.

[unclear]

Go back again.
President.

[unclear]

The fish in the sea.
You’ve lost command.

Categories
lyrics pettifogging video videos

Message 347: Little By Little

The OED confirms that the phrase construction “x by x” first appears in English in Langland’s Piers Plowman (the year: 1393). The phrase “little by little” itself first appears in English in 1483. In this: Catholicon Anglicum: an English-Latin wordbook.

Little by little, the phrase “little by little” seemed to have entered the English vernacular c. 1865.

 

Categories
pettifogging

Message 345: Watch Me Dance, I’m A Puppet

From In Rainbows. The song “Up On The Ladder.” One line: “Watch me dance / I’m a puppet / You can almost / See the strings” (line divisions are best guess).

In the video for “Lotus Flower,” we cannot see strings:

What we do see is “peculiar but totally liberated dancing,” to quote Ben Sisario (“Thom Yorke’s New Band, From Many Angles,” October 5, 2009 in the New York Times.

Similar to a later description at another Atoms for Peace concert: “Twitching, strutting, pivoting, hopping, jittering and gesticulating, he let the music propel him in ways that were anything but cerebral” (“A Thinker Finds His Funk“, Jon Pareles, April 6, 2010 in the New York Times.

Consider this dance the antidote to the claustrophobic near-drowning of “No Surprises.”

Yorke’s head is submerged by water, his body is submerged by camera–dry but out of sight (correction here suggested by caitlin, comment below). No dancing. Not even with puppet strings.

The song “No Surprises” is about a form of contentment with failed failover safety. Contentment becomes quiet contempt that becomes a carbon monoxide handshake—suicide as formality. For the video, Yorke underwent entrapment. The making of “No Surprises,” as seen in Meeting People Is Easy, shows the entrapment’s extent. The real claustrophobia, the real risk:

Yorke’s energetic frustration at his inability to hold his breath is the negative image of his frenetic dance for “Lotus Flower.” Dance without a helmet. Doing whatever you want while the cat is away.

Categories
pettifogging

Message 343: Mouths

Kid A begins with a mouth closed around a lemon: “Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon.” A past-tense description.

The King Of Limbs begins with a mouth open wide: “Open your mouth wide.” An imperative.

Categories
lyrics pettifogging

Message 337: Give Up The Ghost

These lyrics are difficult ( for me ) to make out.

(background)
don’t [ hold? ] me
don’t [ hold? ] me

gather up the [ ? ]
in your arms

gather up and [ ? ]
in your arms

what seems impossible
in your arms

i think i’ve had my fill
in your arms

i’ve been told to give up the ghost
in your arms

Categories
pettifogging Uncategorized

Message 317: Harry Patch (In Memory Of)

Radiohead has released a single titled: “Harry Patch (In Memory Of).” It is available for purchase and download from W.A.S.T.E.

Thom Yorke posted the song’s lyrics and comments on Dead Air Space. The lyrics read:

“i am the only one that got through
the others died where ever they fell
it was an ambush
they came up from all sides
give your leaders each a gun and then let them fight it out themselves
i’ve seen devils coming up from the ground
i’ve seen hell upon this earth
the next will be chemical but they will never learn”

Yorke mentions the song was inspired by “a very emotional interview with him a few years ago on the Today program on Radio4.” Mike Thomson interviewed Harry Patch on December 24, 2005 for BBC 4’s Today program. That day’s audio archive does not correctly link to the original audio. However, this recent BBC Today audio clip contains excerpts from the 2005 interview.

Some lyrics are almost verbatim from the interview, a practice in keeping with of Yorke’s composition methods. This aside, the directness of the lyrics and the clarity of the song’s purpose–to memorialize Harry Patch–seems new for Radiohead. The song’s speaker is clear: it is Harry Patch. The lyrics are clear: war is horror. This may be Radiohead’s first threnody. “Harrowdown Hill” memorializes David Kelly, but the band has yet to produce a song with the directness of “Harry Patch (In Memory Of).” The song’s lyrics and music recalls, in part, Wilfred Owen‘s posthumous preface: “This is in no sense consolatory.” The song, too, is in no sense consolatory.

Yorke’s voice sounds fragile throughout. Cracking at times, seeming unable to transition between, for example, the song’s opening syllables: “I am.” This same crack or dissonant transition mirrors somewhat the music’s relation to the lyrics: it never quite matches up. In typical Radiohead fashion, the music has a comforting, swaying start at odds with the lyrics’ imagery. The music climbs to a joyful height when the lyrics suggest we give leaders guns to fight it out themselves, as if the suggestion might work, but the song falls into a despairing sound and then returns to Yorke singing along with the opening sway–devils are coming up from the ground and leaders will not learn from past mistakes: the next will be chemical. At this point the lyrics conclude but the swaying music continues for a minute or so longer.

The music’s sway speeds up and turns into a solid dissonant sound. The song, at this point, doesn’t end so much as it stops. The music’s opening and close are opposed. Lull, almost lullaby, versus and an ending that seems to come too soon without a feeling of resolution.

To quote Owen again: “All the poet can do to-day is to warn.”

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pettifogging Uncategorized

Message 315: Recording

From a w.a.s.t.e email dated July 14, 2009: “The band members are recording in their studio at the moment”.

jonny in check
jonny in check

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pettifogging

Message 309: Card Index Archival Mistake Retrieval Filing System

On http://www.theeraser.net/, clicking the book icon in the lower left-hand corner takes you to a hand-drawn and Flash-animated library index card catalog cabinet. In the drawers are the following 24 PDF files. They are listed in the order they appear in the cabinet.

acidfractal.pdf
centrepoint.pdf
ghostcoach.pdf
rained.pdf
backyard.pdf
chance.pdf
hurricane.pdf
shark.pdf
bigben.pdf
chronicle.pdf
imperfections.pdf
tappingashes.pdf
bloodsucking.pdf
easynow.pdf
medusa.pdf
thanks.pdf
boilingover.pdf
frontback.pdf
mercy.pdf
toowasted.pdf
butterfly.pdf
fryingpan.pdf
mi6.pdf
walkaway.pdf