Your Custom Text Here
Jarvis Cocker playfully addresses the issue of the volgivagant in a classic number from 1995
Word of the week: It’s an obsolete 17th-century term pertaining to the common masses and so-called more vulgar or baser tastes within the uneducated and poor, but something that remains as relevant today in the pursuits of cultural or political popularism
Read more
A woundikins moment in Family Guy …
Word of the week: It’s an archaic, comically silly swearword, an exclamation of pain or exasperation that was only used for a brief period in the 19th century, but where does this kind of thing relate song lyrics?
Read more
The yaffingale, or green woodpecker
Word of the week: It’s an archaic, southern English name for the European green woodpecker, picus viridis, that species of beautiful colour that taps on softer wood trunks to feed and nest, but how does such a bird come up in song?
Read more
Güiro - used in more genres than you might imagine
Word of the week: Used in Latin American music, but also by artists from David Bowie to The Rolling Stones, it’s idiophone made of resonant gourd or wood, is held through holes making a rhythmic, ratchet sound by scraping a stick across specially created ridges
Read more
The vibraslap is a replacement for the jawbone
Word of the week: It's one of the most modern of all analogue percussion instruments, a combination of stiff wire, wooden ball and box with metal teeth, a replacement for animal bones, but where does it appear in songs?
Read more
Whamola
Word of the week: This week’s funky instrument is a strange cousin of the washtub bass, a fusion fo whammy bar and viola, comprising the neck form a double bass with a string and with note changed by a lever-and-pulley system
Read more
The xylorimba has a bigger range than either the xylophone or marimba
Word of the week: This week’s strikingly unusual instrument combines the higher range of the four-octave xylophone and lower notes of marimba, using similar wooden bars set out like a piano keyboard that resonate when hit
Read more
A typical zambomba, cuíca or friction drum
Word of the week: The evocative Spanish name for a friction drum, similar to Brazilian samba’s cuíca, it is used around the world in ceremonious or celebratory music, working as a sound box via rubbing with stick, hand or wet cloth
Read more
Bombast, ironic and otherwise, comes in this album by The Fall
Word of the Week: It describes high-sounding, pretentious, showy language with little meaning used to impress people, and explodes enjoyably when pronounced, but how it is used in lyrics, and does it affect the natures of the song itself?
Read more
The Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant of the constellation of Taurus
Word of the week: It’s a cloudy cluster of related words as we play with lovely sounding space dust, a haziness or vagueness and more, but where can it be found song lyrics?
Read more