The Music Court

Today’s Word:

Perambulate (Verb): To walk through or over

Walking all over you with her boots

Musical Example: “These boots are made for walking, and that’s just what they’ll do one of these days these boots are gonna perambulate over you.” Yeah, I just did that. Nancy Sinatra, the daughter of Frank Sinatra and his first wife Nancy Barbato, released “These Boots Are Made For Walkin'” in 1966. It quickly shot to #1 on both the U.S and U.K pop charts adumbrating covers of the song by future female singers including Jessica Simpson (who only reached #14 on the charts so score one for the original). Also, the song may go down as the best example of a girl saying screw-you to a man. It is the momma of modern day man-hating songs. A humorous side note. When Nancy Sinatra was recording the song, the writer of the song Lee Hazlewood encouraged Sinatra to sing the song like a sixteen-year old girl giving the middle finger to a forty-year old man. What!?! I have a brief change in lyric. “These boots are made for walking, and that’s just what they’ll do, if you don’t leave me alone I will call the cops on you.”

Today’s Word:

Tortuous (adj.): full of twists, turns, or bends; twisting, winding, or crooked

Example: In 1970, Paul McCartney recorded his tortuous ballad “The Long and Winding Road” which became the Beatles’ last #1 song and coincidentially their last single released. The song, which is claimed to actually be inspired by a true tortuous road in Scotland, quickly became one of the Beatles’ most beautiful releases despite troubles with the torturous and crazy Phil Spector who insisted on post-production modifications. Spector actually succeeded with his pestering annoyance and he added into “The Long and Winding Road” an agglomerate of lush, but fake, orchestral sounds that The Beatles had been previously attempting to avoid with their “real” “Get Back” recording campaign. The Beatles broke up soon after proving that maybe it was not just Yoko’s fault but was also the fault of a stark-raving lunatic…that wasn’t Yoko!

“The Long and Winding Road”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6ZegjrEIGQ

Quotidian: Occurring or returning daily; Of an everyday character

Example: Bob Dylan (I used him last SWOD) writes of the quotidian draw of daily life in the song “Workingman’s Blues #2” which is off of Dylan’s 32nd studio album “Modern Times” which was released in 2006. The song is crowded with Dylan’s story-telling lyric, but always comes back to the four line chorus which supports the SWOD.

“Meet me at the bottom, don’t lag behind
Bring me my boots and shoes
You can hang back or fight your best on the front line
Sing a little bit of these workingman’s blues”

The chorus repeats several times in the same fashion of the work day. It is sure worth a listen.

        Next week the anticipated return of the top lyricists list will come to fruition and I am sure everyone will bounce up in jubilation. But, for now I thought we would try something a little different for the song of the day section. Since we are all about creativity at the Music Court I thought we could combine two of my favorite things into one intelligible post. These two things are music and words.

      As an English major words are my friends. Each one has its own personality and sound. Often people look over language and simply, well, speak it, but I believe that analyzing words and their corresponding meanings, synonyms and antonyms is stimulating. This is one reason why I am an English major as opposed to a mathematician. Numbers are way to plain for me.

     SWOD, the new section, will take a Word of the Day from one of the various dictionary sites and I will match the word with a song or artist who demonstrates the word to perfection. Today’s word of the day is

Veracity (Noun): A devotion to truth

    Example:   Bob Dylan portrays lyrical veracity in his song “Only a Pawn in Their Game” which appeared on his third studio album The Times They Are a-Changin.’ In this particular song Dylan’s nasally croon sings a true story of the assassination of African-American Civil Right’s Activist Medgar Evers who was assassinated outside of his home by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, on June 23, 1964. Unfortunately, veracity was not stressed by all-white juries who deadlocked twice on Beckwith’s guilt. In 1994, 30 years after the initial trials, the case was brought back up on new evidence and on February 5, 1994 Beckwith was convicted of murder.

“Only a Pawn in Their Game”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fffHzrtHhZM (Great version at a 1963 Civil Right’s Rally)