From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V7 #34 Reply-To: loud-fans@smoe.org Sender: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk loud-fans-digest Saturday, February 10 2007 Volume 07 : Number 034 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [loud-fans] more songs about rocks off and drugs [Roger Winston ] Re: [loud-fans] Pazz & Jop [2fs ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2007 05:48:58 -0700 From: Roger Winston Subject: Re: [loud-fans] more songs about rocks off and drugs At Friday 2/9/2007 12:16 AM, rslloyd wrote: >Regardless of all that, I've been mulling over whether "Jimmy Still Comes >Around" might not have been, at least in part, an earlier song about "Rocks >Off." "Jimmy Still Comes Around" seems to confront the influence of heavy >drugs more directly than "Song About Rocks Off" and feels less personal. >The song title certainly seems like it could allude to "What's the matter >with the boy, he don't come around no more" from "Rocks Off." And "They can >buy their own pool and survive all the drops off the deep end" sounds like >it could be an ironic reference to Brian Jones being found dead in his >swimming pool. The Stones have certainly had their ups and downs with >drugs, including not just Jones and Richards, but Jimmy Miller, the Stones' >producer at the time of "Rocks Off." > >On the other hand, you could make a case that "Jimmy Still Comes Around" is >just as likely inspired by Jim Morrison of The Doors, with (again) its title >and lines like "You can deadbolt the doors" and "A Miami exposure bust >looking for a stage." And Morrison was found dead in a bathtub, I think. I've always subscribed to that theory, though it's a bit too obvious and Scott never goes for the obvious. (Yeah, Jimmy M always showed up for those shows all wasted, but he always came around on the downbeat, Ray.) Maybe the song is about several iconic rock and roll characters/figures/bands/ideas all rolled into one. So your Stones interpretation is correct also. Or as correct as it can be where ScottWords are concerned. Latre. --Rog - -- FlasshePoint, yet another blog among millions: http://www.flasshe.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2007 08:24:27 -0500 (EST) From: Dan Sallitt Subject: Re: [loud-fans] more songs about rocks off and drugs > I've always subscribed to that theory, though it's a bit too obvious and > Scott never goes for the obvious. (Yeah, Jimmy M always showed up for those > shows all wasted, but he always came around on the downbeat, Ray.) Maybe the > song is about several iconic rock and roll characters/figures/bands/ideas all > rolled into one. So your Stones interpretation is correct also. Or as > correct as it can be where ScottWords are concerned. "Jimmy" doesn't read like something that wants to be nailed down completely, but the vibe I get is that the drug references are part of a larger portrait of an ambitious, hustling, perhaps not too thoughful personality, too much on the make to be a reliable lover. The woman in the song seems to find Jimmy exciting but not good relationship material. I think he's more than a rock 'n' roll reference. - Dan ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2007 08:20:53 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: [loud-fans] more songs about rocks off and drugs On 2/9/07, rslloyd wrote: > > > Listening to "Song About Rocks Off," I can hear a few apparently direct > references to "Rocks Off," such as "Don't watch my mouth move, that was my > devil's mask pretending," which could be an echo of "Your mouth don't > move, > but I can hear you speak" and maybe "Sympathy for the Devil." The two > songs > also seem to share some references to driving and to dancers, and maybe to > a > lot of time and experiences lost to drugs (not necessarily referring to > the > singer). Both songs seem to indicate a loss of ability to connect, even > physically, to anyone else: Scott's song begins with a feeling of > detachment > and ends with "Your handshake is all the holding I know." > > (I have no idea what's going on with the dogs, though it almost sounds > like > some sort of Zen koan. And I sometimes wonder if the end isn't actually > about getting a diploma and a handshake upon graduating but having no idea > what of value actually happened during those years.) Best I can interpret the "dogs" thing is that the lines refer to a sort of manic avoidance of being alone with one's own thoughts for even a moment - with yr sex drugs & rock'n'roll acting as agents of distraction and a means of ensuring company. So "one dog is flawed" - you can never be alone - but "two dogs are perfect dogs": everything will be okay as long as there's more than one dog. In that, then, it's sort of a follow-up to "Why We Don't Live in Mauritania," which Scott has said is about needing to be where there's "something else going on," again to avoid having to be alone with oneself. I think also there's something about the narrator realizing his own desperation, and occasional obnoxiousness, has driven away the very company he seeks, or separated off all but the most shallow acquiantances - the other losers like him, essentially. Both songs are about a sort of exhaustion, about the aftermath of excess, and (more Scott than Stones) what motivates that need for excess in the first place. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2007 08:32:26 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: [loud-fans] dogs and towers and rocks and things Back when WIIW came out, we collectively transcribed the lyrics as best we could, and I compiled them and put them up here < http://tonerbomb.warpmail.net/wiiwlyrics.txt> if anyone wants to refer back to them. At one point Aaron Mandel had a site doing something similar with the earlier albums; Aaron, if you want to update that site by wholesale cutting and pasting the content of my link above, feel free. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2007 09:12:22 -0800 From: "bradley skaught" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] more songs about rocks off and drugs I remember Scott talking about being young and seeing in songs like "Rocks Off" some kind of idealized code of grown up behavior, and I think "Song About Rocks Off" is kind of exploring the idea--what happens if you grow up following that code? "Jimmy...", I think, is maybe about someone who's actually done that! B ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2007 09:32:23 -0700 From: dennis Subject: Re: [loud-fans] dogs and towers and rocks and things 2fs wrote: > Back when WIIW came out, we collectively transcribed the lyrics as best we > could, and I compiled them and put them up here < > http://tonerbomb.warpmail.net/wiiwlyrics.txt> if anyone wants to refer back > to them. > > At one point Aaron Mandel had a site doing something similar with the > earlier albums; Aaron, if you want to update that site by wholesale cutting > and pasting the content of my link above, feel free. > I was searching on Loud Family lyrics earlier this week and ran across Aaron's site; http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~aaron/scannot It is well worth checking out. Dennis S(t)acks ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2007 12:33:42 EST From: CertronC90@aol.com Subject: Re: [loud-fans] more songs about rocks off and drugs In a message dated 2/9/2007 8:32:54 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, sallitt@panix.com writes: "Jimmy" doesn't read like something that wants to be nailed down completely, but the vibe I get is that the drug references are part of a larger portrait of an ambitious, hustling, perhaps not too thoughful personality, too much on the make to be a reliable lover. The woman in the song seems to find Jimmy exciting but not good relationship material. I think he's more than a rock 'n' roll reference. - Dan I'll leave this very interesting deconstruction to the big boys, but the image of a guy in Day-Glo sportswear with tan shoulders in 1993 sounds vile, and has to be the one mental image in all of Scott's songs that I've always found repellent. Douglas Coupland's description of a rugby panted character of J-Pod as looking like "a 1982 liquor store clerk with herpes" comes to mind. I picture Jimmy as some guy with 1986 James Spader hair, Pepsodent smile, bright yellow '84 Corvette, and a stash of coke in the bottom of his box of Cheer in the laundry room. It also evokes mental images for me of that horrible gilded style of the late '80s, early '90s (remember the style of the old AOL logo and teal EVERYWHERE?) Just my "queer eye" perspective, - --Mark ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2007 16:11:18 -0800 From: "Michael Mitton" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Pazz & Jop Well, in fear of taking the geekiness further than necessary, I took the vote compilation done by glenn and calculated the Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spearman%27s_rho) The correlation is 71%, and as you'd assume, the test that the two rankings are independent (statistically speaking) is soundly rejected. I don't have a good intuitive sense of what that number means, but I think of it as how much of one list you could guess right (measured by distance from the true rank) if you knew the order of the other list. mm On 2/8/07, glenn mcdonald wrote: > Yeah, I have the two polls completely cross-tabulated now, so I can > tell you pretty much anything you want to know. Here are the basics: > > http://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=twas&id=twas0508h > > although I think the better first way to look at the data is like this: > > http://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=twas&id=twas0508g > > > 180 people voted in both polls, with varying degrees of ballot > overlap. And to see the skew between the polls, go to that first link > and click the delta heading. > > What else do you want to know? > > glenn ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2007 23:32:06 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Pazz & Jop On 2/9/07, Michael Mitton wrote: > > Well, in fear of taking the geekiness further than necessary, I took > the vote compilation done by glenn and calculated the Spearman Rank > Correlation Coefficient. > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spearman%27s_rho) This measure is not to be confused with the Rank Spearmint Correlation Coefficient, which indicates the likelihood that any given selection would be preferable to chewing week-old chewing gum picked up off the sidewalk. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V7 #34 ******************************