Acorns From An Okie

Allen February 15th, 2006

My wife recently celebrated her birthday (1 day before Valentine’s Day so I luck out in remembering important dates) and I purchased Barry Manilow’s new CD, The Greatest Songs of the Fifties for her.

I was picking my daughter up at the ballet studio and listened to the CD while waiting for her to come out.  Fairly good album, even though Barry is no longer my cup of tea.

And on the CD, Barry answers the eternal question, how many key changes can you hammer into one song?  In Unchained Melody, it had to be over fifty.

Known as a Truck Driver’s Gear Change, we find out:

Many writers and arrangers feel that when their song is in risk of getting a bit tired, it can be given a fresh lease of life by shifting the whole song up a key, usually in between choruses, towards the beginning of a "repeat-till-fade" section. You may have heard this technique informally referred to as "modulation", but the correct ethnomusicological term for the phenomenon is the truck driver’s gear change. This reflects the utterly predictable and laboured nature of the transition, evoking a tired and over-worked trucker ramming the gearstick into the new position with his – or, to be fair, her – fist.

Contrary to what many people seem to think, the truck driver’s gear change is in no way inventive, interesting or acceptable: it is in fact an utterly appalling and unimaginative admission that you’ve run out of inspiration and the song should have ended one minute ago; but you’re under pressure to make something which can be stretched out to the length of a single. The concept of the truck driver’s gear change seems to transcend all musical styles, from Perry Como to The Misfits, although my investigations reveal that it’s most prevalent in mainstream pop, and, let’s face it, it’s unlikely to feature in hip-hop. But who’s to say.

Also from the site, we see that Barry is no new-comer to gear changes.  Barry rammed the gearshift home in many of his earlier songs, including: Even Now, I Write The Songs, Looks Like We Made It, Mandy, and Weekend In New England.

One would assume at some point the Grammy’s will award Barry a lifetime achievement for his endeavors.

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Allen February 15th, 2006

The sun shone brightly on a sunny cold morning in Oklahoma.  And while the wind outside whipped the leaves into dancing patterns, Allen, overweight with black hair salted with grays, wrote gravely about a recent article he read, Elmore Leonard’s Ten Rules of Writing.

Suddenly all hell broke loose when Allen loudly cried out, "Mon du!! He shore did ’splain them rules ‘rite purty like!!"  And outside, the brown crinkly leaves verigated with dead veins danced in the chilled winter wind.

[Via Lifehacker]

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Allen February 15th, 2006

Iowahask notes there how the Seething Midwest Explodes Over Lombardi Cartoons. Yet another example of how the Intoonfada is spreading far and wide.

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Allen February 14th, 2006

I’m amazed that no-one in the Mainstream Media hasn’t picked up on the fact that Kerry went hunting, but never shot anyone.

My thoughts?  Kerry never went hunting.  He held a photo op where he had a gun in his hands.  You don’t go hunting with a gaggle of press photographers.

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Wow.  Too many draft postings again.  New job starts this Tuesday.  Since I’ll be in a secured environment, I will now have to start maintaining this exclusively from home — whereas before I tried maintaining before/after work and during lunch.  Obviously this wasn’t working, so perhaps I’ll start posting more.

Recently purchased a $499 laptop from Compaq (what a deal!), so perhaps I can make a go of it now.

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