It's been a long time since I posted a geology-related song (even though my collection of them has been growing steadily), but I've been waiting for just the right moment to post this one. Seeing as tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the M6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake, I think we've come upon the right time.
I found this song by typing "Loma Prieta" into the iTunes store, as I've had to get more and more specific (or obscure) to keep expanding my playlist. Two songs with the title popped up, and I downloaded both of them. This was the one I liked better, though; the other puts the quake into a relationships context, but this one seems like it must be describing an actual real experience.
I'd never heard of Liz Pappademas before, and I still don't know how well-known she is. Her website tells me that she was raised in San Francisco, but has moved around since and is currently a resident of Los Angeles. I think I could have gathered the first part just from the lyrics to the song. It opens with, "Loma Prieta, dark hill. Shook up the San Andreas to the heart of a little girl," and goes on to be an account of a very scary experience told through the eyes of a child who has some understanding of what's going on in a physical sense, but is having more trouble with the emotional side. She describes clinging to her mother in the doorway (nevermind that you shouldn't get in the doorway!), of school being canceled, of camping out in her parents' bedroom, of expecting aftershocks, and of feeling much older after the whole experience. There's also a stanza, a little more separated from what appears to be personal experience, that describes images of 1906 being recalled by the fires in 1989. I don't know how much a little kid would or wouldn't know about 1906 as a product of a San Francisco upbringing, but I do know the comparison is consistent with some of the news media about Loma Prieta. It's certainly a moving comparison in the context of the song.
In terms of the music, "Loma Prieta" is both simple and complex. It's simple in terms of its instrumentation - mostly just voice against a piano accompaniment consisting of elaboration upon broken chords, with a little bit of electronic stuff for color. The chord sequences are not, however, your typical I-IV-V-I of so many pop songs. I'd have to sit down and think about exactly where the chords go, but the specific progression is not the point - rather, it matters more that it takes a while to get to the resolution, and there are parts that don't get resolved. The melodic line is also very free, with phrases of unequal length and pacing. It also encompasses a wider range of pitches than many pop songs do; not lingering on a specific set of pitches adds to the somewhat freeform feeling of the song. In the way the melody is shaped (and perhaps also in the broken chord piano accompaniment), "Loma Prieta" seems to be toeing the line between pop song and art song.
I very much like this song, for its subject and for its music. I think that this free and sparse style of music fits the storytelling aspect of the lyrics, and I think that the lack of any attempt to paint the words with the music allows the severity of what the singer experienced to be come all the more stark and clear. The last verse also really gets me: "Loma Prieta, dark hill. Please stay dark, I pray, please stay still."
Please stay still. This is a very human thing to plead after disaster, but the plea is made to something that cannot and will not stop moving. That particular mountain may not be shaking all the time, but the forces underneath it keep grinding steadily away, and eventually, there will be another earthquake at Loma Prieta Peak. It's inevitable, and the music seems to know it, even if the lyrics pray for it to not be so - the final cadence never quite happens.
Liz Pappademas on Rhapsody. (You can listen to the song for free there.)
Showing posts with label playlist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label playlist. Show all posts
Friday, October 16, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Geosong: Demolition Hammer's "Pyroclastic Annihilation"
In honor of last night's eruption of Mt. Redoubt - and its glorious timing with regards to someone called the governor of Louisiana's remark about volcanoes - I give you a death metal song about explosive volcanism.
Now, I'm not a death metal fan. It isn't even particularly on my listening radar, and tuneless screaming does not do much for me aesthetically. I do, however, think that if there is any situation in which this sort of musical treatment would be apt, the explosion of a mountain would be a good candidate. I also have to admit that I adore the title of this one. "Pyroclastic Annihilation," seriously, is a winner of a title.
My knowledge of the band that performs this song, Demolition Hammer, comes entirely from Wikipedia. They were a death/thrash metal band from the Bronx, active in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They disbanded around 1994 and are, from what I gather as an outsider to the genre, pretty obscure now.
The lyrics to "Pyroclastic Annihilation" have no sense of narrative or particular sentence structure of which to speak. It simply consists of various volcano-related terms and processes strung together in random order. The album this song comes from was produced in 1992, which was well before rampant Googling of things was prevalent, so I imagine the band must have trawled through some actual volcanology textbooks or articles to derive these lyrics. Most of the terms in there actually make sense, though there's a few that make me wonder what source they were actually looking at. Would anyone care to define "subrelluric forces" for me - a creative made-up definition definitely works, since I'm not finding anything real! Also, "intrusive tuff," guys? Yes, the random trawling for large and menacing phrases in a volcano book without any sense of meaning seems to have been the modus operandi here...
But still. A death metal song about explosive volcanism. For its flaws in lyrics, I still adore the concept. And it's actually screamed clearly enough that I can understand those lyrics without having to consult any external source. That's definitely worth something! And it also shows that even '90s death metal bands care about volcano monitoring.
Hear the song on YouTube (no video, though)
Lyrics
Oh crap, have I really not updated in almost a month? I had some really good excuses this month, at least, though they were stressful/depressing ones. It's spring break now. I have lots of things I actually want to write about, and will probably spew them out in the next few weeks.
Now, I'm not a death metal fan. It isn't even particularly on my listening radar, and tuneless screaming does not do much for me aesthetically. I do, however, think that if there is any situation in which this sort of musical treatment would be apt, the explosion of a mountain would be a good candidate. I also have to admit that I adore the title of this one. "Pyroclastic Annihilation," seriously, is a winner of a title.
My knowledge of the band that performs this song, Demolition Hammer, comes entirely from Wikipedia. They were a death/thrash metal band from the Bronx, active in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They disbanded around 1994 and are, from what I gather as an outsider to the genre, pretty obscure now.
The lyrics to "Pyroclastic Annihilation" have no sense of narrative or particular sentence structure of which to speak. It simply consists of various volcano-related terms and processes strung together in random order. The album this song comes from was produced in 1992, which was well before rampant Googling of things was prevalent, so I imagine the band must have trawled through some actual volcanology textbooks or articles to derive these lyrics. Most of the terms in there actually make sense, though there's a few that make me wonder what source they were actually looking at. Would anyone care to define "subrelluric forces" for me - a creative made-up definition definitely works, since I'm not finding anything real! Also, "intrusive tuff," guys? Yes, the random trawling for large and menacing phrases in a volcano book without any sense of meaning seems to have been the modus operandi here...
But still. A death metal song about explosive volcanism. For its flaws in lyrics, I still adore the concept. And it's actually screamed clearly enough that I can understand those lyrics without having to consult any external source. That's definitely worth something! And it also shows that even '90s death metal bands care about volcano monitoring.
Hear the song on YouTube (no video, though)
Lyrics
Oh crap, have I really not updated in almost a month? I had some really good excuses this month, at least, though they were stressful/depressing ones. It's spring break now. I have lots of things I actually want to write about, and will probably spew them out in the next few weeks.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Geosong: Kathy Kallick's "The Quake of '89"
I've given up on even pretending about the "...of the week" part, but I still have plenty of songs!
I've already highlighted a few songs that were either explicitly about Northridge, or were released within a year or so of that earthquake. I've only come across two songs (thanks to Kim for the second!) about Loma Prieta, however. Since today is the 17th of October, which is the 19th anniversary of that earthquake, I'm going to feature one of them: Kathy Kallick's "The Quake of '89."
Kathy Kallick is another musician I'd never heard of before I started compiling the Fault Poking Playlist. A quick bit of googling tells me that she's originally from the Chicago area, but moved to the Bay Area in the 1970s, where she started a bluegrass band. She's lived in that area since (making her Loma Prieta experience firsthand, rather than a song about a thing on the news), and while bluegrass is still her main musical style, her solo albums have a more diverse set of influences.
"The Quake of '89" is not stylistically bluegrass. It is more of somewhere between mainstream country and pop, very upbeat, with guitars and keyboards. The fact that it is such a musically-upbeat song about a very serious topic, though, is very much in line with bluegrass.
The lyrics combine a personal reaction to the quake (building up supplies to prepare for the next one, planning escape routes, feeling generally freaked out) and some intrapersonal conflict, in that Kallick seems to be singing to some unknown significant individual (I'd guess a lover, since it's a pop-ish song, but it's not really clear) about how everyone who cared about her contacted her after the quake except for that person. Considering how many of my east coast friends and family called me after this summer's Chino Hills quake - much MUCH smaller than Loma Prieta! - I would agree with Kallick that it takes a pretty darn insensitive and inconsiderate soul to not check in when something really big does happen.
But for the storyline of the song, the thing that still really gets me is the chorus, specifically the first line of it:
"The earth went bang, there were two big waves."
Yes, we have specified P-waves and S-waves! And this is a country/pop song. It's not meant as an educational song, it's not by a scientist or for in-joke scientist consumption. It's mainstream country/pop song, written by a professional songwriter who experienced the quake, and we've got specific P-waves and S-waves and the truck-hitting-building sound that comes with them. This level of detail in a song that's not a novelty or an educational tool makes me irrationally happy.
There's another line in this song to which I can closely relate. Near the end of the song comes the verse:
"I've been thinking a lot about bridges,I've been thinking a lot about time.
Things shift into focus when your life is on the line.
To me, that was the message of the Quake of '89."
I cannot, of course, relate to this regarding Loma Prieta specifically, since I was five years old and in Virginia at the time. But my life being on the line in that car accident in 2007 (which was not on a bridge, but the road was raised) definitely put a lot of things into focus for me, and was one of the reasons I decided to go for it and change majors. I have no plans to write a song about that accident, but an event that can instill the same clarity after fear in thousands of people, an event like Loma Prieta, is undoubtedly worthy of musical treatment, even without explicit mention of P- and S-waves. Those just make Kathy Kallick's song a particularly good one.
Lyrics
Kathy Kallick on Rhapsody
I've already highlighted a few songs that were either explicitly about Northridge, or were released within a year or so of that earthquake. I've only come across two songs (thanks to Kim for the second!) about Loma Prieta, however. Since today is the 17th of October, which is the 19th anniversary of that earthquake, I'm going to feature one of them: Kathy Kallick's "The Quake of '89."
Kathy Kallick is another musician I'd never heard of before I started compiling the Fault Poking Playlist. A quick bit of googling tells me that she's originally from the Chicago area, but moved to the Bay Area in the 1970s, where she started a bluegrass band. She's lived in that area since (making her Loma Prieta experience firsthand, rather than a song about a thing on the news), and while bluegrass is still her main musical style, her solo albums have a more diverse set of influences.
"The Quake of '89" is not stylistically bluegrass. It is more of somewhere between mainstream country and pop, very upbeat, with guitars and keyboards. The fact that it is such a musically-upbeat song about a very serious topic, though, is very much in line with bluegrass.
The lyrics combine a personal reaction to the quake (building up supplies to prepare for the next one, planning escape routes, feeling generally freaked out) and some intrapersonal conflict, in that Kallick seems to be singing to some unknown significant individual (I'd guess a lover, since it's a pop-ish song, but it's not really clear) about how everyone who cared about her contacted her after the quake except for that person. Considering how many of my east coast friends and family called me after this summer's Chino Hills quake - much MUCH smaller than Loma Prieta! - I would agree with Kallick that it takes a pretty darn insensitive and inconsiderate soul to not check in when something really big does happen.
But for the storyline of the song, the thing that still really gets me is the chorus, specifically the first line of it:
"The earth went bang, there were two big waves."
Yes, we have specified P-waves and S-waves! And this is a country/pop song. It's not meant as an educational song, it's not by a scientist or for in-joke scientist consumption. It's mainstream country/pop song, written by a professional songwriter who experienced the quake, and we've got specific P-waves and S-waves and the truck-hitting-building sound that comes with them. This level of detail in a song that's not a novelty or an educational tool makes me irrationally happy.
There's another line in this song to which I can closely relate. Near the end of the song comes the verse:
"I've been thinking a lot about bridges,I've been thinking a lot about time.
Things shift into focus when your life is on the line.
To me, that was the message of the Quake of '89."
I cannot, of course, relate to this regarding Loma Prieta specifically, since I was five years old and in Virginia at the time. But my life being on the line in that car accident in 2007 (which was not on a bridge, but the road was raised) definitely put a lot of things into focus for me, and was one of the reasons I decided to go for it and change majors. I have no plans to write a song about that accident, but an event that can instill the same clarity after fear in thousands of people, an event like Loma Prieta, is undoubtedly worthy of musical treatment, even without explicit mention of P- and S-waves. Those just make Kathy Kallick's song a particularly good one.
Lyrics
Kathy Kallick on Rhapsody
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Geosong of the Week: The Sundowners' "San Andreas Fault"
Getting tired of that song title yet? Well, tough, because this isn't even close to the last one!
This week's song falls into a category that hasn't turned up yet in my song reviews: songs that use geological features and events as metaphors for other things, but don't actually focus on those events. The Sundowners' "San Andreas Fault" is probably the first song I found in this category (I think - I don't know the exact order in which I found these!), and I was actually kind of surprised that a song with such a title really has so little to do with earthquakes.
The metaphor here is of the San Andreas as a ticking time bomb - but not of the blow everything into smithereens type. I'm pretty certain that the songwriter was aware how the fault works, since the metaphor also involves pulling two people away from each other. Yes, we have a seismically-inclined failed relationship song here. The lyrics don't outright mention pulling apart, but the rest of the song makes it plenty clear that this is what's going on.
The Fault's name only comes up twice:
"Feels like I am standing on the San Andreas Fault. I believe it's only a matter of time. All you pushers and you shovers and you disenchanted lovers better take a number and move on down the line."
"Hello, operator, can you get me someplace else? Anywhere but here would be alright. It feels like we are standing on the San Andreas Fault, and you and I are running out of time."
Actually, "move on down the line" fits in nicely with the impression of strike-slip motion, but I'm sure the songwriter wasn't thinking that far into this!
The rest of the song describes the problems between the singer and his significant other, and what needs to happen in order for the relationship to work out. The significant other seems to be at fault here (hey - this song doesn't use that pun, so I had to get it in there somewhere!); s/he's apparently guilty of all kinds of lying and mistrust and afraid to sacrifice anything for the greater good of the relationship. The accumulation of stress seems like it will eventually snap the singer's patience just like it snaps a plate boundary. Good on him, I guess, that he wants to get out before there's an enormous surface rupture scar ripping his house and heart in half!
Reviews of the album this song is from, Strange Hours (2001), describe The Sundowners' style as a mixture of modern and classic rock, and lyrical all the way. I think that pretty much pegs it. There is nothing particularly special or outstanding about the style, but this song at least is pretty darn catchy. It has gotten itself firmly stuck in my head in the past, and it's an enjoyable enough song that I didn't mind.
Based on CD review sites (the band's own website doesn't seem to exist anymore, and I can't find anything on them past this CD, so I assume they broke up), The Sundowners are based in North Carolina, which is not a place that generally gets associated with earthquakes in any shape or form. The fact that they've chosen the San Andreas as an impulse for songwriting shows the extent of its infamy, and how it has wormed its way into popular culture as something big and dangerous and shaky. People may know that the San Andreas Fault is that earthquake thing, even if they haven't had a geology class (much like how the Richter Scale has become a popular metaphor/reference, even if people don't understand how it works). But then again, pop infamy could play into the misconception that the San Andreas is the only earthquake thing in the States, at least. And there are still all too many people in California (a good third of the class when I took Geo 1) that don't know what the fault really is.
The most likely thing is that I am reading too much into a catchy pop song. But is that not what I promised to do in these blog posts?
The Sundowners' Strange Hours on Rhapsody
I can't find the lyrics already typed out on teh intarwebz, but if people want it, I can transcribe.
This week's song falls into a category that hasn't turned up yet in my song reviews: songs that use geological features and events as metaphors for other things, but don't actually focus on those events. The Sundowners' "San Andreas Fault" is probably the first song I found in this category (I think - I don't know the exact order in which I found these!), and I was actually kind of surprised that a song with such a title really has so little to do with earthquakes.
The metaphor here is of the San Andreas as a ticking time bomb - but not of the blow everything into smithereens type. I'm pretty certain that the songwriter was aware how the fault works, since the metaphor also involves pulling two people away from each other. Yes, we have a seismically-inclined failed relationship song here. The lyrics don't outright mention pulling apart, but the rest of the song makes it plenty clear that this is what's going on.
The Fault's name only comes up twice:
"Feels like I am standing on the San Andreas Fault. I believe it's only a matter of time. All you pushers and you shovers and you disenchanted lovers better take a number and move on down the line."
"Hello, operator, can you get me someplace else? Anywhere but here would be alright. It feels like we are standing on the San Andreas Fault, and you and I are running out of time."
Actually, "move on down the line" fits in nicely with the impression of strike-slip motion, but I'm sure the songwriter wasn't thinking that far into this!
The rest of the song describes the problems between the singer and his significant other, and what needs to happen in order for the relationship to work out. The significant other seems to be at fault here (hey - this song doesn't use that pun, so I had to get it in there somewhere!); s/he's apparently guilty of all kinds of lying and mistrust and afraid to sacrifice anything for the greater good of the relationship. The accumulation of stress seems like it will eventually snap the singer's patience just like it snaps a plate boundary. Good on him, I guess, that he wants to get out before there's an enormous surface rupture scar ripping his house and heart in half!
Reviews of the album this song is from, Strange Hours (2001), describe The Sundowners' style as a mixture of modern and classic rock, and lyrical all the way. I think that pretty much pegs it. There is nothing particularly special or outstanding about the style, but this song at least is pretty darn catchy. It has gotten itself firmly stuck in my head in the past, and it's an enjoyable enough song that I didn't mind.
Based on CD review sites (the band's own website doesn't seem to exist anymore, and I can't find anything on them past this CD, so I assume they broke up), The Sundowners are based in North Carolina, which is not a place that generally gets associated with earthquakes in any shape or form. The fact that they've chosen the San Andreas as an impulse for songwriting shows the extent of its infamy, and how it has wormed its way into popular culture as something big and dangerous and shaky. People may know that the San Andreas Fault is that earthquake thing, even if they haven't had a geology class (much like how the Richter Scale has become a popular metaphor/reference, even if people don't understand how it works). But then again, pop infamy could play into the misconception that the San Andreas is the only earthquake thing in the States, at least. And there are still all too many people in California (a good third of the class when I took Geo 1) that don't know what the fault really is.
The most likely thing is that I am reading too much into a catchy pop song. But is that not what I promised to do in these blog posts?
The Sundowners' Strange Hours on Rhapsody
I can't find the lyrics already typed out on teh intarwebz, but if people want it, I can transcribe.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Geosong of the Week: The Little Girls' "Earthquake Song"
Uh. Yesterday was Monday, wasn't it? So much for remembering what day of the week it is over the summer! (Even with the two-day-out-of-seven breaks from model running...)
So you get a Tuesday song. Who decided Monday, anyway? WHO?
In honor of two-weeks-ago's earthquake, I think it's time for a Los Angeles Falling Into The Ocean song. There are a quite a lot of songs that fall into this category on the Playlist, and most of them are quite upbeat. The general consensus among the songs of the Playlist is that San Francisco must be saved and should be revered for persevering despite San Andreas' blows, but that the loss of Los Angeles will benefit the world at large. Also, the singers in the LA-based songs don't generally seem to give a crap that their city is falling down, while it is far more serious business for the SF songs. I think this ties into the whole SoCal Denial thing when it comes to nature, but that's a rant for another post.
This week's song may be one of the silliest on the list. I've mentioned it in this blog before, but I feel it deserves its own post, since it made me laugh so hard that I wheezed the first time I heard it. Despite its unoriginal title, "Earthquake Song," by The Little Girls, is a real gem.
The Little Girls are a pop/new wave band based in Santa Monica. They were popular in the 1980s for goofy novelty songs like this one, but their MySpace seems to indicate that they're still going strong as a group, and even have a new album out. "Earthquake Song" was on their 1983 release, "No More Vinyl." I don't know what time of year this came out, and I haven't googled up anything about the specific impetus for the writing of the song, so I'm not going to claim it's related to the 2 May 1983 Coalinga quake, nor a delayed reaction to the 1979 Imperial Valley quake. I'm just guessing that quakes on the news sparked this song, since they're not often discussed in the mainstream media unless one has just happened.
The music to this song is a classic example of a SoCal surf song. It has all the right driving guitar rhythms and riffs, drum punctuations, vocal harmonies, and backup/contrapuntal lines. If you weren't listening to the words, you might almost take it as a girl group covering a Beach Boys song. But because this music is so dead on to the genre, it allows the words to really shine in context.
Here are the lyrics in full:
There's gonna be an earthquake in this town
There will be houses falling down
The fire hydrants will blow up
The streets will crack
The pipes will pop
It's going kill my mom and dad
They are the only folks I had
But they better not blame me
'Cause it's not my fault
It's always fun living in L.A.
Always a good show on somewhere
What more can I say
There's gonna be an earthquake
I can't miss it, no way
I'm gonna run, run, run
We're having so much fun
'Cause there's a building chasing me
Smack, smack, I just fell in a crack
And now I'm gonna be debris.
There's going to be an earthquake in this town
The dogs are chasing their tails around
There's a buzzing in the air
Maybe I'll die, but I don't care
My surfboard's ready for the tidal wave
I'm gonna ride down Sunset like a Beach Boy today
I only hope I don't wipe-out in West L.A.
Yes, I enjoy living life this way
Always a good show on somewhere
What more can I say
It's gonna be an earthquake
I can't miss it, no way
I'm gonna run, run, run
We're having so much fun
There's a building chasing me
Jump up. Jump back
Break your mother's back
And we'll all fall in the sea
Wheeeee!
It's always fun living in L.A.
Always a good show on somewhere
What more can I say
It's gonna be an earthquake gonna get me
It's gonna be an earthquake gonna get me
It's gonna be an earthquake gonna get me today
Let us review:
Reference to LA treating nature as another showbiz spectacle that'll be out of the news as soon as the next celebrity dates someone new? Check.
Surfing the seismic waves and tsunamis? Check.
Reference to all kinds of earthquake foreboding myths? Check.
Reference to the actual Beach Boys? Check.
Falling into the ocean? Bring it on!
Pun on "fault"? Of course!
I also adore the part about "a building chasing me." It's such a silly mental image in and of itself, even without context, but it becomes more ridiculous when one considers how it's a cheery and blithe reference to outrunning buildings that have been shaken to the point of collapse. Apparently it's ok to discuss damage when it's worded in a silly way, but better not to address it directly until it happens...
Glaringly '80s video of a live performance of "Earthquake Song"
So you get a Tuesday song. Who decided Monday, anyway? WHO?
In honor of two-weeks-ago's earthquake, I think it's time for a Los Angeles Falling Into The Ocean song. There are a quite a lot of songs that fall into this category on the Playlist, and most of them are quite upbeat. The general consensus among the songs of the Playlist is that San Francisco must be saved and should be revered for persevering despite San Andreas' blows, but that the loss of Los Angeles will benefit the world at large. Also, the singers in the LA-based songs don't generally seem to give a crap that their city is falling down, while it is far more serious business for the SF songs. I think this ties into the whole SoCal Denial thing when it comes to nature, but that's a rant for another post.
This week's song may be one of the silliest on the list. I've mentioned it in this blog before, but I feel it deserves its own post, since it made me laugh so hard that I wheezed the first time I heard it. Despite its unoriginal title, "Earthquake Song," by The Little Girls, is a real gem.
The Little Girls are a pop/new wave band based in Santa Monica. They were popular in the 1980s for goofy novelty songs like this one, but their MySpace seems to indicate that they're still going strong as a group, and even have a new album out. "Earthquake Song" was on their 1983 release, "No More Vinyl." I don't know what time of year this came out, and I haven't googled up anything about the specific impetus for the writing of the song, so I'm not going to claim it's related to the 2 May 1983 Coalinga quake, nor a delayed reaction to the 1979 Imperial Valley quake. I'm just guessing that quakes on the news sparked this song, since they're not often discussed in the mainstream media unless one has just happened.
The music to this song is a classic example of a SoCal surf song. It has all the right driving guitar rhythms and riffs, drum punctuations, vocal harmonies, and backup/contrapuntal lines. If you weren't listening to the words, you might almost take it as a girl group covering a Beach Boys song. But because this music is so dead on to the genre, it allows the words to really shine in context.
Here are the lyrics in full:
There's gonna be an earthquake in this town
There will be houses falling down
The fire hydrants will blow up
The streets will crack
The pipes will pop
It's going kill my mom and dad
They are the only folks I had
But they better not blame me
'Cause it's not my fault
It's always fun living in L.A.
Always a good show on somewhere
What more can I say
There's gonna be an earthquake
I can't miss it, no way
I'm gonna run, run, run
We're having so much fun
'Cause there's a building chasing me
Smack, smack, I just fell in a crack
And now I'm gonna be debris.
There's going to be an earthquake in this town
The dogs are chasing their tails around
There's a buzzing in the air
Maybe I'll die, but I don't care
My surfboard's ready for the tidal wave
I'm gonna ride down Sunset like a Beach Boy today
I only hope I don't wipe-out in West L.A.
Yes, I enjoy living life this way
Always a good show on somewhere
What more can I say
It's gonna be an earthquake
I can't miss it, no way
I'm gonna run, run, run
We're having so much fun
There's a building chasing me
Jump up. Jump back
Break your mother's back
And we'll all fall in the sea
Wheeeee!
It's always fun living in L.A.
Always a good show on somewhere
What more can I say
It's gonna be an earthquake gonna get me
It's gonna be an earthquake gonna get me
It's gonna be an earthquake gonna get me today
Let us review:
Reference to LA treating nature as another showbiz spectacle that'll be out of the news as soon as the next celebrity dates someone new? Check.
Surfing the seismic waves and tsunamis? Check.
Reference to all kinds of earthquake foreboding myths? Check.
Reference to the actual Beach Boys? Check.
Falling into the ocean? Bring it on!
Pun on "fault"? Of course!
I also adore the part about "a building chasing me." It's such a silly mental image in and of itself, even without context, but it becomes more ridiculous when one considers how it's a cheery and blithe reference to outrunning buildings that have been shaken to the point of collapse. Apparently it's ok to discuss damage when it's worded in a silly way, but better not to address it directly until it happens...
Glaringly '80s video of a live performance of "Earthquake Song"
Monday, July 28, 2008
Geosong of the Week: High Country's "The Earthquake"
Even though I've only been playing bluegrass music for a little under a year, I have come to the understanding that it is never a bad idea, when writing a song, to kill off a character within said song, no matter how upbeat the actual music is. It's part of a sort of laughter-and-tears aesthetic that bluegrass shares with a lot of the Celtic music from which many tunes stem: perky fast music, casual wording, depressing substance.
Natural disasters are an obvious way to kill off characters, so I figured I would fire up Google in search of some earthquake bluegrass. And nearly immediately - perhaps because it is the title track of the album in question - High Country's "The Earthquake" turned up.
The lyrics are pretty much what I expected: a happy relationship is destroyed by the house falling on the girl. There is a good sense of the suddenness of the earthquake, though, since the singer keeps talking about how things were, but in the present tense - as if the quake hadn't happened - then juxtaposes the reality of the events against it by inserting a chorus. By the end of the song, the depth and severity of the situation has finally hit the singer, once his beloved has been buried. What I think is the best line of the song comes from this stanza:
"She's lyin' there alone at the mercy of nature, and I've never felt so helpless and small."
To have to put the body down in the earth, when the earth's own "misbehavior" is responsible for her death...that has to be a troublesome feeling. (Though, geek that I am, I couldn't hear this part without thinking to earlier in the verse, where he says she's buried at the foot of the mountain. "No!" I thought, "Don't put her there! Not on the fault scarp! No!")
I also really enjoy the music to this one. I listened to it a bunch of times and couldn't figure out the chords, which was both frustrating and exciting, since this one clearly deviates from the I-IV-V-I progression that's the backbone of so many songs in so many genres. The mystery chord turned out to be a flat III, and its presence made me inordinately happy. The melody that fits over these chords is also incredibly catchy. When I played this song for a friend of mine who happens to be an ethnomusicologist whose Master's thesis was on bluegrass, he immediately said it was a cool song, and I caught him humming it in the hallway a few days later. This song stands up on its own musically, with or without the earthquake factor. Excellent.
Remember last week, how I was saying that people in the mariachi band were threatening to make me sing "La falla de San Andrés"? Well, I still don't know if that's happening, but the bluegrass band I'm in (we're tentatively named Inland Wildfire) is definitely working on "The Earthquake," and yours truly is definitely the one singing it. Terrifying, yes? If we're ever in a position to record it, I most likely will inflict this one on my hapless readers...
But you should listen to the real version first. Here's High Country's Rhapsody page.
Natural disasters are an obvious way to kill off characters, so I figured I would fire up Google in search of some earthquake bluegrass. And nearly immediately - perhaps because it is the title track of the album in question - High Country's "The Earthquake" turned up.
The lyrics are pretty much what I expected: a happy relationship is destroyed by the house falling on the girl. There is a good sense of the suddenness of the earthquake, though, since the singer keeps talking about how things were, but in the present tense - as if the quake hadn't happened - then juxtaposes the reality of the events against it by inserting a chorus. By the end of the song, the depth and severity of the situation has finally hit the singer, once his beloved has been buried. What I think is the best line of the song comes from this stanza:
"She's lyin' there alone at the mercy of nature, and I've never felt so helpless and small."
To have to put the body down in the earth, when the earth's own "misbehavior" is responsible for her death...that has to be a troublesome feeling. (Though, geek that I am, I couldn't hear this part without thinking to earlier in the verse, where he says she's buried at the foot of the mountain. "No!" I thought, "Don't put her there! Not on the fault scarp! No!")
I also really enjoy the music to this one. I listened to it a bunch of times and couldn't figure out the chords, which was both frustrating and exciting, since this one clearly deviates from the I-IV-V-I progression that's the backbone of so many songs in so many genres. The mystery chord turned out to be a flat III, and its presence made me inordinately happy. The melody that fits over these chords is also incredibly catchy. When I played this song for a friend of mine who happens to be an ethnomusicologist whose Master's thesis was on bluegrass, he immediately said it was a cool song, and I caught him humming it in the hallway a few days later. This song stands up on its own musically, with or without the earthquake factor. Excellent.
Remember last week, how I was saying that people in the mariachi band were threatening to make me sing "La falla de San Andrés"? Well, I still don't know if that's happening, but the bluegrass band I'm in (we're tentatively named Inland Wildfire) is definitely working on "The Earthquake," and yours truly is definitely the one singing it. Terrifying, yes? If we're ever in a position to record it, I most likely will inflict this one on my hapless readers...
But you should listen to the real version first. Here's High Country's Rhapsody page.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Geosong of the Week: Kevin Johansen's "La Falla de San Andrés"
Sorry for the long hiatus, guys! (Is two weeks a long hiatus?) I was on the east coast visiting people that I pretty much only get to see twice a year, and this was not conducive to much internet time. Which was, probably, a good thing, but I still missed mah intarwebz. And now I am back in California and have more time on my hands, but also more geology to talk about, so I will try to be less dead.
But I will start back in with a song.
I have a friend in England who delights in sending me very strange music. One of the all-time strangest she's sent me is a Finnish humppa-rock song about a town where cows say cuckoo and cuckoos give milk. She's also sent me songs in Hungarian, Estonian, German, and Latvian. When I moved to California, though, she said she had the perfect song for me, in Spanish and English. The song in question is by a guy called Kevin Johansen, and it's called "La Falla de San Andrés." (Yes, there are a lot of SAF songs on this playlist.)
Kevin Johansen is Argentinian-American, was born in Alaska, and moved to Buenos Aires at the age of 12, but the gap between birth and that move was spent in the San Francisco Bay area. This gave him more than enough time, apparently, to pick up some seismic lore and plant the seeds for this song. It is not, however, a serious song about earthquake damage or the emotional impact thereof. Johansen instead opted for a type of lyrics that, from what I read, resonates well with the geoblogosphere: puns.
Yes, this is a song that is an elaborate setup for a dreadful geoscience pun in two languages.
No fue mi culpa esta vez! Fue la Falla de San Andrés!
This time it wasn't my fault! It was San Andreas' Fault!
What's not to love?
(I suspect this also works in other Romance languages. But definitely not German or Russian.)
As if this wasn't gloriously goofy enough, the story that leads up to the singer placing the blame on the Fault is punctuated by sound effects. My favorite, hands down, is when the singer describes the Earth opening up, and there's a creaky door noise; the other sound effects are equally ridiculous, in the best possible way.
The music itself is bouncy and Latin - a little bit mariachi, a little bit cumbia. One of the other people in the mariachi band at school thinks we should adapt this to be entirely mariachi, so we can play it with me singing. Yikes! If that happens, I will probably hide from the recording, if there is one.
Kevin Johansen, however, used to have a free MP3 of this song on his website. It no longer seems to be there, which makes me sad, because now it is harder to inflict the song on people. It is, at least, still on his Rhapsody page.
And here are the complete lyrics.
But I will start back in with a song.
I have a friend in England who delights in sending me very strange music. One of the all-time strangest she's sent me is a Finnish humppa-rock song about a town where cows say cuckoo and cuckoos give milk. She's also sent me songs in Hungarian, Estonian, German, and Latvian. When I moved to California, though, she said she had the perfect song for me, in Spanish and English. The song in question is by a guy called Kevin Johansen, and it's called "La Falla de San Andrés." (Yes, there are a lot of SAF songs on this playlist.)
Kevin Johansen is Argentinian-American, was born in Alaska, and moved to Buenos Aires at the age of 12, but the gap between birth and that move was spent in the San Francisco Bay area. This gave him more than enough time, apparently, to pick up some seismic lore and plant the seeds for this song. It is not, however, a serious song about earthquake damage or the emotional impact thereof. Johansen instead opted for a type of lyrics that, from what I read, resonates well with the geoblogosphere: puns.
Yes, this is a song that is an elaborate setup for a dreadful geoscience pun in two languages.
No fue mi culpa esta vez! Fue la Falla de San Andrés!
This time it wasn't my fault! It was San Andreas' Fault!
What's not to love?
(I suspect this also works in other Romance languages. But definitely not German or Russian.)
As if this wasn't gloriously goofy enough, the story that leads up to the singer placing the blame on the Fault is punctuated by sound effects. My favorite, hands down, is when the singer describes the Earth opening up, and there's a creaky door noise; the other sound effects are equally ridiculous, in the best possible way.
The music itself is bouncy and Latin - a little bit mariachi, a little bit cumbia. One of the other people in the mariachi band at school thinks we should adapt this to be entirely mariachi, so we can play it with me singing. Yikes! If that happens, I will probably hide from the recording, if there is one.
Kevin Johansen, however, used to have a free MP3 of this song on his website. It no longer seems to be there, which makes me sad, because now it is harder to inflict the song on people. It is, at least, still on his Rhapsody page.
And here are the complete lyrics.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Geosong of the Week: The work of Gustav Mahler
I'm going to diverge a little from the pop/rock basis of the Fault Poking Playlist this week. This is because today, 7 July, happens to be the 148th birthday of Gustav Mahler, who happens to be my favorite composer (and the subject of my music MA thesis). Mahler was a composer whose creative output happened almost exclusively in spectacular geologic settings, and those settings had a profound influence on his work.
Mahler was essentially a "summer composer." From the age of 20 onward, he worked as a conductor for most of the year, taking the offseason months to do the bulk of his composition - the sketching short scores and drafts of works that he would flesh out and orchestrate during the rest of the year. Starting in the early 1890s, this summer work was done away from the bigger cities, nearly unfindable in the mountains.
The first summer home was in Steinbach am Attersee, in lower Austria. This is about an hour and a half outside of Salzburg; it is still small enough to not have its own train station. The Attersee is a large oblong Alpine lake and has the clearest blue water I have ever seen (I visited in the summer of 2005). Behind it rises the Höllengebirge, a sheer vertical limestone face, 1800 meters high. In his hut by the lake, Mahler composed a good dozen art songs, most of his Second Symphony, and all of his Third. When Mahler was visited in Steinbach by a friend, who asked him to give him a tour of the area, Mahler replied that he had composed it all into his Third Symphony, and that listening to that piece would be as good as getting a tour. The first movement of that symphony is meant to portray the rock that underlies the rest of the environment at Steinbach. Mahler described it as "lifeless, crystalline nature." The movement opens with a unison melody from ten french horns, majestic and solid as the mountain face (and, if you happen to be in the back of the viola section, sitting in front of all of those horns, like getting hit in the back of the head with a big chunk of said rock). Having seen the mountain myself, and having played the symphony, I think Mahler was absolutely right to say he'd captured the landscape in notes.
The Second Symphony, another Steinbach-era piece, has a different sort of geologic significance. Namely, its fifth movement includes a portrayal of an earthquake. In the storyline of the piece, this earthquake opens up the ground so all the senseless dead people can come out of the ground and gather together to be rejoined with their spirits and thereby fully resurrected. Mahler's earthquake is all percussion - rolls on the cymbals, snare drum, bass drum, and timpani, beginning pianissimo and crescendoing to fortissimo over the course of two measures, ending with a bang. To my ear, he got the rattling aspect just right, but at the same time, my experience with earthquakes tells me that even the small ones go BANGrattlerattlerattle rather than rattlerattlerattleBANG. The actual rupture, followed by the building response, not vice versa. My guess would be that Mahler never actually felt a quake (though news of the 1906 San Francisco one really upset him) - or is there a circumstance where the bang could come last?
The second summer home, occupied from 1900 to 1907, was at Maiernigg am Wörthersee, also in the Austrian Alps, not far from Klagenfurt. The setting here is similar to that at Steinbach: house and composition hut nestled in the woods between a wide Alpine lake and steep mountains. The only reason Mahler abandoned his first summer home was the fact that noise from other vacationers got on his nerves, so it makes sense that he would seek the same geologic setting without all the noise. Mahler composed another dozen songs here, as well as most of the Fourth Symphony, and the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Symphonies in their entirety. There is no concrete landscape scene for Maiernigg, like the Third provides for Steinbach, but there are still ample mountains and valleys in the verbal descriptions Mahler made of his works from this period. He even devised a very specific orchestrational device here - the low sound of offstage cowbells to represent looking out over the landscape from a high peak.
The third summer home was at Toblach, aka Dobbiaco, high (elevation of the valley in which the town lies: 4072 feet) in the Dolomites of Italy's Südtirol/Alto Adige region. Mahler moved there in 1908, after his young daughter's death in 1907 made the prospect of returning to Maiernigg too painful. Though there are lakes in the area, there isn't a single large one that characterizes the landscape like at Mahler's previous two summer homes. The mountains at Toblach, however, are perhaps more breathtaking than at Steinbach or Maiernigg - they are far higher, and consist more of points and spires and crags than continuous rock faces. Low clouds (of which there were plenty when I visited in 2005) may completely obscure even the lowest peaks in the area. Mahler did not speak so explicitly about working the specific landscape of Toblach into the music he wrote there (Das Lied von der Erde, the Ninth and Tenth Symphonies), but he really didn't need to. The title "The Song of the Earth" says so very much, and the soundworld coupled with the text to the final movement paint a picture that can only be Toblach at night, if one has seen the place for comparison. That final movement, "Der Abschied" ("The Farewell") is a long and poignant farewell to life, which begins with the sun setting behind the mountains, and ends with praise of the Earth itself, which always renews itself in cycles. Perhaps those cycles are seasons, but for such an inhabitant of the mountains as Mahler, he would likely have been thrilled to know that mountains come and go in great cycles as well.
Mahler was essentially a "summer composer." From the age of 20 onward, he worked as a conductor for most of the year, taking the offseason months to do the bulk of his composition - the sketching short scores and drafts of works that he would flesh out and orchestrate during the rest of the year. Starting in the early 1890s, this summer work was done away from the bigger cities, nearly unfindable in the mountains.
The first summer home was in Steinbach am Attersee, in lower Austria. This is about an hour and a half outside of Salzburg; it is still small enough to not have its own train station. The Attersee is a large oblong Alpine lake and has the clearest blue water I have ever seen (I visited in the summer of 2005). Behind it rises the Höllengebirge, a sheer vertical limestone face, 1800 meters high. In his hut by the lake, Mahler composed a good dozen art songs, most of his Second Symphony, and all of his Third. When Mahler was visited in Steinbach by a friend, who asked him to give him a tour of the area, Mahler replied that he had composed it all into his Third Symphony, and that listening to that piece would be as good as getting a tour. The first movement of that symphony is meant to portray the rock that underlies the rest of the environment at Steinbach. Mahler described it as "lifeless, crystalline nature." The movement opens with a unison melody from ten french horns, majestic and solid as the mountain face (and, if you happen to be in the back of the viola section, sitting in front of all of those horns, like getting hit in the back of the head with a big chunk of said rock). Having seen the mountain myself, and having played the symphony, I think Mahler was absolutely right to say he'd captured the landscape in notes.
The Second Symphony, another Steinbach-era piece, has a different sort of geologic significance. Namely, its fifth movement includes a portrayal of an earthquake. In the storyline of the piece, this earthquake opens up the ground so all the senseless dead people can come out of the ground and gather together to be rejoined with their spirits and thereby fully resurrected. Mahler's earthquake is all percussion - rolls on the cymbals, snare drum, bass drum, and timpani, beginning pianissimo and crescendoing to fortissimo over the course of two measures, ending with a bang. To my ear, he got the rattling aspect just right, but at the same time, my experience with earthquakes tells me that even the small ones go BANGrattlerattlerattle rather than rattlerattlerattleBANG. The actual rupture, followed by the building response, not vice versa. My guess would be that Mahler never actually felt a quake (though news of the 1906 San Francisco one really upset him) - or is there a circumstance where the bang could come last?
The second summer home, occupied from 1900 to 1907, was at Maiernigg am Wörthersee, also in the Austrian Alps, not far from Klagenfurt. The setting here is similar to that at Steinbach: house and composition hut nestled in the woods between a wide Alpine lake and steep mountains. The only reason Mahler abandoned his first summer home was the fact that noise from other vacationers got on his nerves, so it makes sense that he would seek the same geologic setting without all the noise. Mahler composed another dozen songs here, as well as most of the Fourth Symphony, and the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Symphonies in their entirety. There is no concrete landscape scene for Maiernigg, like the Third provides for Steinbach, but there are still ample mountains and valleys in the verbal descriptions Mahler made of his works from this period. He even devised a very specific orchestrational device here - the low sound of offstage cowbells to represent looking out over the landscape from a high peak.
The third summer home was at Toblach, aka Dobbiaco, high (elevation of the valley in which the town lies: 4072 feet) in the Dolomites of Italy's Südtirol/Alto Adige region. Mahler moved there in 1908, after his young daughter's death in 1907 made the prospect of returning to Maiernigg too painful. Though there are lakes in the area, there isn't a single large one that characterizes the landscape like at Mahler's previous two summer homes. The mountains at Toblach, however, are perhaps more breathtaking than at Steinbach or Maiernigg - they are far higher, and consist more of points and spires and crags than continuous rock faces. Low clouds (of which there were plenty when I visited in 2005) may completely obscure even the lowest peaks in the area. Mahler did not speak so explicitly about working the specific landscape of Toblach into the music he wrote there (Das Lied von der Erde, the Ninth and Tenth Symphonies), but he really didn't need to. The title "The Song of the Earth" says so very much, and the soundworld coupled with the text to the final movement paint a picture that can only be Toblach at night, if one has seen the place for comparison. That final movement, "Der Abschied" ("The Farewell") is a long and poignant farewell to life, which begins with the sun setting behind the mountains, and ends with praise of the Earth itself, which always renews itself in cycles. Perhaps those cycles are seasons, but for such an inhabitant of the mountains as Mahler, he would likely have been thrilled to know that mountains come and go in great cycles as well.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Geosong of the Week: Ventilator's "Earthquake Song"
This week's song is much more obscure than last week's, though I actually found it fairly early on in my search for earthquake-related music, thanks to typing "earthquake" into the iTunes music store to see what happened. This "Earthquake Song" is by a Los Angeles-based band called Ventilator, from their 1996 album "Reseda Spleen." (Is that not a fantastic album name? Spleen spleen spleen! And the guy on TV just said "spleen" as soon as I typed it - how weird is that?) It's another Northridge song - this would be evident from the album's release date and the "Reseda" in the title pinpointing the quake's actual epicenter - but the band's MySpace says outright that the idea for the song came after one bandmember's studio was trashed by the temblor. The song is in two parts: a section with lyrics, followed by an extended guitar solo.
The lyrics focus on the aftermath of the earthquake, rather than the imminent shaking, or the exact moment of the rupture. It also zooms in on one person wandering the bewildering postquake city and struggling with the enormity of the situation, rather than taking the city at large as the closest focus.
I couldn't find the lyrics transcribed online, so I'll take a stab at it. If I'm not supposed to do this, someone please let me know!
So you say you've walked the streets today.
What was left unharmed still remains.
Your hands are at your sides, you face me with denial.
How can we rely on our houses?
Gonna need a loan to hold us in.
Feel the movement, continental drift.
Don't be so surprised, your home is now a lie.
Remember how you walked without standing.
I particularly like that last line, since people that I know who experienced the Northridge quake talk about how they were basically thrown out of their beds. Why walk, when the ground walks for you? I also think the line about denial is interesting, since there seems to be a fair amount of it in southern California. There are a few quake awareness campaigns going on in the area now to try and fix this, but when I bring up quakes with non-sciency people, I have more often than not received a remark to the extent of, "Silly east coaster, stop worrying about that!" This song covers the switch from "haha can't happen to me!" denial to "how did that just actually happen?" denial.
Musically, this song hits me with a strong Beatles influence. I don't know if everyone will hear that influence as strongly as I do, but it was pretty much the first thing I thought upon listening, even before I considered the lyrics. The influence is more prominent in the first section of the song - the part with words. I think it's the combination of a modal scale as the basis for the melody, as well as the wide leap in register between the second and third phrases of the verse. Modes and interesting melody contours were not, apparently, things the Beatles set out to do on principle, but I think it sounds good. Ventilator's "Earthquake Song" hits that sound, to my ear, which is a very good thing as far as I'm concerned. The opening guitar riff is also pretty Beatlesy, but the end guitar solo isn't quite as much.
Considering I like this song, there's really no good reason why I haven't listened to the others available on their site yet.
Ventilator on MySpace
You can hear "Earthquake Song" and others on there. And there is not annoying flash.
The lyrics focus on the aftermath of the earthquake, rather than the imminent shaking, or the exact moment of the rupture. It also zooms in on one person wandering the bewildering postquake city and struggling with the enormity of the situation, rather than taking the city at large as the closest focus.
I couldn't find the lyrics transcribed online, so I'll take a stab at it. If I'm not supposed to do this, someone please let me know!
So you say you've walked the streets today.
What was left unharmed still remains.
Your hands are at your sides, you face me with denial.
How can we rely on our houses?
Gonna need a loan to hold us in.
Feel the movement, continental drift.
Don't be so surprised, your home is now a lie.
Remember how you walked without standing.
I particularly like that last line, since people that I know who experienced the Northridge quake talk about how they were basically thrown out of their beds. Why walk, when the ground walks for you? I also think the line about denial is interesting, since there seems to be a fair amount of it in southern California. There are a few quake awareness campaigns going on in the area now to try and fix this, but when I bring up quakes with non-sciency people, I have more often than not received a remark to the extent of, "Silly east coaster, stop worrying about that!" This song covers the switch from "haha can't happen to me!" denial to "how did that just actually happen?" denial.
Musically, this song hits me with a strong Beatles influence. I don't know if everyone will hear that influence as strongly as I do, but it was pretty much the first thing I thought upon listening, even before I considered the lyrics. The influence is more prominent in the first section of the song - the part with words. I think it's the combination of a modal scale as the basis for the melody, as well as the wide leap in register between the second and third phrases of the verse. Modes and interesting melody contours were not, apparently, things the Beatles set out to do on principle, but I think it sounds good. Ventilator's "Earthquake Song" hits that sound, to my ear, which is a very good thing as far as I'm concerned. The opening guitar riff is also pretty Beatlesy, but the end guitar solo isn't quite as much.
Considering I like this song, there's really no good reason why I haven't listened to the others available on their site yet.
Ventilator on MySpace
You can hear "Earthquake Song" and others on there. And there is not annoying flash.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Geosong of the Week: Natalie Merchant's "San Andreas Fault"
As someone with a strong background in the arts (visual art in addition to music), the latest edition of The Accretionary Wedge was particularly enjoyable to me. I had a great time reading all of the entries, and I was even more excited to see the numerous posts about geology in song lyrics that ensued. This, I figured, meant it was high time for me to start posting something I'd been thinking about doing for a while.
Last year, a friend and I went on a a road trip along the San Andreas Fault. (This was the trip that led to my accident, and also to the infamous LOLfaults.) In anticipation of such a trip, I figured we needed a playlist of relevant songs. The original list included only twelve songs, some of which were only related to earthquakes when put in context with the others (ie. "I Feel the Earth Move" and "Shake, Rattle, and Roll"), but some of which were directly relevant. The list was a great accompaniment for the trip, but with future trips in the works, the list needed to grow. A boring summer library job was all the time I needed to dig up more. At the present time, the playlist is 41 songs long, out of which about 30 are actually directly related to earthquakes, or mention them explicitly. My plan is to write a post featuring one of these songs each week, at least throughout the summer, if not longer.
The first song I want to feature is the first song I found in this whole project; if I hadn't found it, I might not have thought to build a playlist to begin with. When I mention to people that I have compiled a list of earthquake songs, I tend to get asked if this one is on there: Natalie Merchant's San Andreas Fault.
I get the impression that this is one of the most mainstream/popularly exposed songs on the list. I certainly didn't have to dig far for it. And it's even been quoted in a serious book about the 1906 San Francisco quake (Simon Winchester's A Crack in the Edge of the World) - not bad for a pop song!
"San Andreas Fault" is a song that seems subdued at first, but despite being quiet and predominantly-acoustic, the story within is devastating, to individuals and to whole regions. This is not a song with a snapshot narrative that doesn't go anywhere. It moves from complacence to conflict within a few minutes. I like this song. I like how the chord progression is different from the standard pop/rock I-IV-V-I. But I think the lyrics make this song - the imagery is very strong and poetic. Here are the lyrics.
I particularly like the image of the Fault moving its fingers through the ground, and the juxtaposition of "promised land" and "wicked ground." (I admit, nerdily enough, to titling an earthquake-related piece of fiction that I wrote "The Wicked Ground," after the line from this song.) Those phrases say so much about California, I think, with the combination of natural beauty and natural danger that pervades the state. I also find the verses about the Fault and its natural force to be all the more poetic compared to the first two verses, discussing human beauty and ambition. Those pale against what nature can do. Indeed, nature has no regard for human goals and dreams.
"San Andreas Fault" is the first track on Merchant's first solo album, Tigerlily, which was released in late 1995. Most of the recording was done in the winter of 1994. This timeline pretty much indisputably pegs this song as being a Northridge song. Since so much music comes as a response to historical events, it makes far more sense that the song was a response to the quake rather than an unconscious anticipation; if it had been written prior to Northridge, chances are there'd be blurbs along the lines of, "OMG SONG PREDICTS QUAKE!" I haven't found anything to that extent. Plus, the imagery in the first part of the song is clearly a reference to LA, what with the discussion of dreams of physical beauty and aspirations to the silver screen.
But the Northridge earthquake was not caused by the San Andreas - Merchant has blamed the wrong fault. This misconception is all too common (I even saw it on Wikipedia at one point, and promptly corrected it), particularly in songs. This is not the only time it turns up on the Playlist. Scientifically, it's an important misconception to get rid of, since people living in Southern California needs to realize the earthquake threat is not confined to one single fault, but is spread over many and is therefore even harder to evaluate and predict. But I suppose it can be excused for songs - if the songs are any good - providing people don't consider those songs to be literal lessons rather than poetic ones.
Natalie Merchant page on Rhapsody. You can listen to the song here.
Last year, a friend and I went on a a road trip along the San Andreas Fault. (This was the trip that led to my accident, and also to the infamous LOLfaults.) In anticipation of such a trip, I figured we needed a playlist of relevant songs. The original list included only twelve songs, some of which were only related to earthquakes when put in context with the others (ie. "I Feel the Earth Move" and "Shake, Rattle, and Roll"), but some of which were directly relevant. The list was a great accompaniment for the trip, but with future trips in the works, the list needed to grow. A boring summer library job was all the time I needed to dig up more. At the present time, the playlist is 41 songs long, out of which about 30 are actually directly related to earthquakes, or mention them explicitly. My plan is to write a post featuring one of these songs each week, at least throughout the summer, if not longer.
The first song I want to feature is the first song I found in this whole project; if I hadn't found it, I might not have thought to build a playlist to begin with. When I mention to people that I have compiled a list of earthquake songs, I tend to get asked if this one is on there: Natalie Merchant's San Andreas Fault.
I get the impression that this is one of the most mainstream/popularly exposed songs on the list. I certainly didn't have to dig far for it. And it's even been quoted in a serious book about the 1906 San Francisco quake (Simon Winchester's A Crack in the Edge of the World) - not bad for a pop song!
"San Andreas Fault" is a song that seems subdued at first, but despite being quiet and predominantly-acoustic, the story within is devastating, to individuals and to whole regions. This is not a song with a snapshot narrative that doesn't go anywhere. It moves from complacence to conflict within a few minutes. I like this song. I like how the chord progression is different from the standard pop/rock I-IV-V-I. But I think the lyrics make this song - the imagery is very strong and poetic. Here are the lyrics.
I particularly like the image of the Fault moving its fingers through the ground, and the juxtaposition of "promised land" and "wicked ground." (I admit, nerdily enough, to titling an earthquake-related piece of fiction that I wrote "The Wicked Ground," after the line from this song.) Those phrases say so much about California, I think, with the combination of natural beauty and natural danger that pervades the state. I also find the verses about the Fault and its natural force to be all the more poetic compared to the first two verses, discussing human beauty and ambition. Those pale against what nature can do. Indeed, nature has no regard for human goals and dreams.
"San Andreas Fault" is the first track on Merchant's first solo album, Tigerlily, which was released in late 1995. Most of the recording was done in the winter of 1994. This timeline pretty much indisputably pegs this song as being a Northridge song. Since so much music comes as a response to historical events, it makes far more sense that the song was a response to the quake rather than an unconscious anticipation; if it had been written prior to Northridge, chances are there'd be blurbs along the lines of, "OMG SONG PREDICTS QUAKE!" I haven't found anything to that extent. Plus, the imagery in the first part of the song is clearly a reference to LA, what with the discussion of dreams of physical beauty and aspirations to the silver screen.
But the Northridge earthquake was not caused by the San Andreas - Merchant has blamed the wrong fault. This misconception is all too common (I even saw it on Wikipedia at one point, and promptly corrected it), particularly in songs. This is not the only time it turns up on the Playlist. Scientifically, it's an important misconception to get rid of, since people living in Southern California needs to realize the earthquake threat is not confined to one single fault, but is spread over many and is therefore even harder to evaluate and predict. But I suppose it can be excused for songs - if the songs are any good - providing people don't consider those songs to be literal lessons rather than poetic ones.
Natalie Merchant page on Rhapsody. You can listen to the song here.
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