The new 1st Bank Center in Broomfield, CO has snagged some stellar gigs in its short lifespan and apparently the streak of good bookings will continue into the fall with
Nearly 30 years after releasing their last studio album, Avalon, influential art-rock act Roxy Music have announced that they will reunite for the first time in over a decade for
Any Major Dude Will Tell You is the third track on the 1974 Steely Dan album Pretzel Logic. Here’s a funny excerpt from Blinded by the Lyrics…
“Okay, friends, break out your Steely Dan decoder rings. Starting with the release of their debut album Can’t Buy A Thrill back in 1972, no group has trafficked in more oblique, head-scratching, and just plain weird lyrics than Steely Dan. Case in point: Have you ever seen a squonk’s tears?, an enigmatic line from “Any Major Dude Will Tell You” off the Pretzel Logic LP.’
What on earth is a squonk? As they used to say on the old Laugh-In television show, “Look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls!” Actually, don’t both bother, because the word squonk is not found in any dictionary.
It turns out that squonk is a piece of jabberwocky, a completely made-up word referring to a mysterious animal, that due to its abject homeliness, spends most of its time crying. Credit for coining squonk goes to William T. Cox, who introduced the word in his oddly named book Fearsom Critters of the Lumberwoods, with a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts. To quote from Mr. Cox’s volume: “The squonk is of a very retiring disposition, generally traveling about at twilight and dusk. Because of its misfitting skin, which is covered with warts and moles, it is always unhappy; in fact, it is said, by people who are best able to judge, to be the most morbid of beasts.”
Two years after Steely Dan introduced listeners to the mythical squonk in “Any Major Dude Will Tell You”, Genesis included the song “Squonk” on their A Trick of the Tail album, wherein Phil Collins sang: Stop your tears from falling / The trail they leave is very clear for all to see at night.
The Contestants:
God Street Wine: The earliest recording on the Live Music Archive of God Street Wine performing this cover dates back to 1990. So when GSW played it last Friday, it was a good 20 years since that night at The Wetlands. Resident GSW expert ScottyB pointed me in the direction of the performance below from 1994. Man, the way they perform the intro makes it sound more like The Grateful Dead than Steely Dan. Source: 9-16-1994
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/gswdude.mp3]READ ON for the scoop on the rest of this week’s contestants…
The Virgin Mobile FreeFest returns to scenic Merriweather Post Pavilion on September 25th for the second year in a row boasting a ridiculous lineup that includes Pavement, LCD Soundsystem and
Back in May we broke the news that Phish’s Trey Anastasio had started working with a new songwriting partner – Broadway vet Amanda Green. The first fruit of the pairing’s
Widespread Panic made their first appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night and performed North. The jam legends return to town on Thursday for a show at Radio
Just as both camps will be attracted by the gorgeous color packaging of You Hear Me, newcomers to the music of Tommy Keene who hear the double CD set will no doubt be as impressed by the consistency of this Retrospective as long-standing fans. Yet the most beautiful virtue of this music may be that it’s equally satisfying to play in the background or sit down and listen closely.
Seagulls flying overhead, the unforgiving sun beaming scorching rays, and countless patches of crowds filled the Coney Island area of Brooklyn this weekend as The Village Voice presented its 10th installment of the Siren Festival.
Big Star bassist Andy Hummel, a founding member of the cult rock band who performed on the group's acclaimed first two albums, died yesterday in Weatherford, Texas, following a two-year
