In a previous post I was rambling on about misheard song lyrics and I forgot to mention that there was also a funny little thing called a mondegreen . Have you ever listened to Purple Haze and wondered whether Jimi Hendrix is saying: Excuse me while I kiss the sky …
This morning I was eating my breakfast whilst listening to the radio, when on came David Bowie’s song Modern Love, and I was suddenly struck by the rhetorical arrangement of the chorus. Anaphora is the technical term for starting a series of clauses with the same words. A classic example …
The following is a list of the most common misheard lyrics – make of it as you will but I am ashamed to admit that for years I thought The Police`s song “So Lonely” was a paen to the former news reader Sue Lawley. 1. ‘Money for nothin’ and chips …
R, E, S, P, E, C, T: Find out what it means to me. R, E, S, P, E, C, T. Take out the TCB. Sock it to me. Sock it to me. Sock it to me. Sock it to me. Sock it to me. So sang the late Miss …
Going to a classical music concert can be somewhat bewildering, what with all the odd terms that seem to be used. For this we must blame the Italians; they like to qualify things. Sometimes they do this with suffixes (that -issimo, for instance, means “very,” -ino and -etto both mean …
R, E, S, P, E, C, T: Find out what it means to me. R, E, S, P, E, C, T. Take out the TCB. Sock it to me. Sock it to me. Sock it to me. Sock it to me. Sock it to me. So sang the late …
The French cannot do pop music. Everybody knows this except the French. I recently met a fellow in my local pub who had a theory to explain this gallic failure. He said that all the best pop songs have Germanic lyrics. English is basically made up of Germanic words …
Known as František Kočvara in his native Prague, this rather odd fellow was a skilled double bass player and composer. He seems to have traveled considerably, finally finding a home in London where his works were published from the 1770s. He left little of note except one popular composition, …
Johan Schobert’s exact birth year seems uncertain and has been listed as anywhere between 1720 and 1740, with a cautious consensus of 1735. Beginning in 1760 he was a harpsichordist in the service of the Prince de Conti in Paris. He had interactions with the Mozart family, specifically the …
Lets hear it for Jean-Baptiste Krumpholtz (1742–1790) who was a minor composer not particularly well known these days, maybe because his last name sounds a bit like a German skin complaint. He was revered in his time as a skilled harpist, indeed one of the greatest of the later …
