Monday, December 11, 2006

we never mean to bother, but don't think we will ever go to one of your concerts again if you don't do a certain song

sheeptrailerwhat's in back of the backyard
(way back, where I come from [set])

"So, are you going to, like, be screaming in-between songs for her to do 'Iowa'?"
"I cannot even begin to tell you how un-Iowan that would be."

Saw Dar Williams tonight. Her opening act was this guy who sounded the way you'd imagine an obese goat sounds as it's being killed. (At least if your imagination is accurate; me, I grew up on a farm, and so don't have to imagine.) He also had these highly autocorrelated lyrics where you imagined him sitting down to write and each time he managed to come up with a new line thinking, "That was tough! How 'bout next I just sing that same line again."

Dar Williams has two songs that are better known than her others. One, "Iowa," I have already offered 50% of all future earnings to a campaign to have it made the official song of my home state. The other, "The Christians and the Pagans," is this hokey-boppy-Kucinichy song regarded with distaste by myself and fellow emotionally discriminating DW fans. When she closed her set having done "The Christians and the Pagans" and not "Iowa," I was clearly Not Happy. Fortunately, she came back and did it as her encore, and all was well.

The lyrics from "Iowa" include "Way back where I come from / We never mean to bother / We don't like to make our passions other people's concerns" and "What is love? / Where did it get me? / Who ever thought of love is no friend of mine." I am convinced that if I could get the bill passed to make it the state song, within five years every rural bar every Saturday night there would be a moment with farmers sitting with their arms around one another, swaying and bellowing these lines.

6 comments:

Ang said...

What does obesity sound like?

jeremy said...

Obese goats have a deeper bleat than skinny goats. Kill a couple and you'll see.

Anonymous said...

Gross.

jeremy said...

The guy sounded like Eddie Vedder if you took off the top three notes of Vedder's range, gave him a yodelly falsetto, and made him sing inane and repetitive folk songs.

Anonymous said...

sounds disturbing

Anonymous said...

the family farm is beautiful, jeremy.