Homecoming King

[cosmolinguist]

Andrew got the new Guster album, Keep It Together, after two friends (me being one of them) recommended it to him. Now it's mixed in with the rest of the music on his computer, which is an extremely random combination. Among the nice songs and the bad songs and the weird songs XMMS plays for us all the time, I was almost surprised to hear a song I recognised from an album I know is current.

The only problem I have is with that specific song. It's called 'Homecoming King,' and it'd be a good song if it weren't for one thing, one odd problem I have.

Last fall, when her computer was still slightly more than a big paperweight, mllesarah downloaded a bunch of music off Kazaa. Along with the cheesy music and the French music (and the cheesy French music!), she got a few things I asked her for. One was 'Amsterdam,' from this Guster album.

When Sarah noticed it'd finished downloading and started playing it, I was confused because the song did not sound right. This was not 'Amsterdam.' Before I could chalk it up to a stupid person with mislabeled music files, it got worse The words started ... if you can call them words; there's only one in the whole song.

And it's meow.

The song consisted of incongruously-well-produced guitars and drums and things, and someone singing 'meow' in a silly voice. Sarah and I considered this an amusing curiosity--we even played it for the evil_grapefruit, because we knew she'd like it--and that was all. We called it 'the meow song.' Someone (probably setharoo or comradexavier or someone like that, but I can't remember) suggested that the RIAA is planting bad files on such P2P networks, to sabotage the file-sharers, as it were.

Earlier this summer when I was visiting paninogirl and she played this Guster CD in her car, I heard a song off the album that I didn't recognise, but I knew the melody and the guitar solo. It was the meow song.

Now when I hear this otherwise-decent piece of music, known to the rest of the world as 'Homecoming King,' I'm tortured by hearing 'meow meow m-meow meow meow, meow me-owwwww' in my head. Follows the song perfectly. I can't make it stop; I ruin the song in my head every time I hear it.

Still, part of me is convinced that this is actually a rather amusing sort of dilemma to have.

Comments

[kalieris.livejournal.com]

Do I have to tell you how much I now want to hear the meow song?

*makes with the Puss in Boots eyes*

[cosmolinguist]

If it were up to me, I'd happily have shared it. It's better (or worse, depending on your perspective) than my words could ever describe. But, as I said, it was on my illustrious roommate's computer and not my own, and she didn't even use it herself for most of the year, due to it being old and impossibly slow and crashing all the time and things... and also due to the fact that she knew she could use mine, just over on the next desk, or computers in the labs at our school.

[kalieris.livejournal.com]

Damn. I shall have to seek this meow song.

"This here isn't a pipe." Is that what that means?

[cosmolinguist]

You're very good at my multilingual names, you know that? :-)

(I like the other one better; I might go back to that.)

Yeah, it's the caption on a painting--of a pipe--by some French guy whose name escapes me at the moment. It's not a pipe, of course, but a painting of one.

My journal is more obviously not a pipe.

[evil-grapefruit.livejournal.com]

I have it on my computer... but I don't know how to share it.

Jenn

[kalieris.livejournal.com]

Squee!! Depending on how big it is, you could just email it to me:

ambershaye at msn dot com

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

Ceci n'est ce pas un pipe is the title of a very famous picture by Rene Magritte (or 'some French guy whose name escapes me' to my culturally illiterate housemate :-p), the picture in question being a picture of a pipe.
If you haven't already, you should read Godel, Escher, Bach, which is where Holly found out about the picture from. It's very good, and has many things that will make your brain hurt in a good way.

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

Except she didn't of course - it was in Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud.
D'oh

[cosmolinguist]

True that. But I also knew about it because I had a Francophile roommate--not you, the one before you. :-)

[cosmolinguist]

Oh, who cares about French people's names, anyway?

And I did not learn about that from Godel, Escher, Bach because I didn't get that far in the book before I had to take it back to the library. Not everything I know has been learned at your suggestion. :-) Though I intend to read the rest of the book if you ever get it back from your mom.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

Somebody brilliant should release that version to the radio.

[karaksindru.livejournal.com]

fun factoid, Guster actually did that. Record themselves playing their songs but singing 'meow' to 'thwart' people who tried to get the music for free over P2P networks.

Also, this is one of the reasons I actually bought their discography. ^_^

[cosmolinguist]

I don't like people who try to thwart file-sharing. (I don't like big nasty corporations that try to do it, either, but I already didn't like them anyway). I'm quite fond of Guster, but don't really want to give them money now. And it's not that I want everything for free--I have tons of CDs, many from people I became interested in thanks to downloaded mp3s. And I guess my whole open source/free software perspective has convinced me that things should be freely avallable; they can still make money.

[photomoviegeek.livejournal.com]

pretty funny problem. I love David gray, though.

[cosmolinguist]

Me too. That song was on the radio, but I have the CD, White Ladder, and it's one of my favorites.