Saturday Night Fish Fry

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[CONCEITS and VANITIES]

Who in the ever-lovin' fuck wrote the words to this thing?!?



I don't remember the single release in 1964, but stumbled across it while studying a 1967 Ron Riley WLS aircheck. He played it as an "oldie."

The lyrics would be disturbing if they were delivered in a serious manner (they're not) and if they weren't so goddam over the top. I haven't been able to hunt down the composer, but the words seem very much in the spirit of postwar R&B "chick abuse" tunes by entertainers such as Louis Jordan and Bull Moose Jackson. (They're not literally about abusing women, but portray the era's Battle Of The Sexes through the eyes of pseudo-macho, beleaguered rascals.)

The musical setting seems like a classic teen, American-Bandstand-style presentation, which puts an offbeat finish on the disc.

Over You, Paul Revere & the Raiders (1964, Columbia 4-43114), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Update: just noticed in the YouTube comments that the song is credited to Allen Toussaint and Allen Orange, which helps to explain the nature of the lyrics and the New Orleans flavor to the American-Bandstand-type chart. It says that Aaron Neville recorded it in 1960. Hilarious choice for the Raiders. Wouldn't be surprised if the responsible A&R man was fired over it.

What I mean is this

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[CONTEXT]

Pertaining to this post, I feel I got about a semester's worth of postmodern communication theory out of the epigraph at the beginning of John Brunner's Stand On Zanzibar (1968). It's a quote from The Gutenberg Galaxy, by Marshall McCluhan:

There is nothing wilful or arbitrary about the Innis mode of expression. Were it to be translated into perspective prose, it would not only require huge space, but the insight into the modes of interplay among forms of organisation would also be lost. Innis sacrificed point of view and prestige to his sense of the urgent need for insight. A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding. As Innis got more insight he abandoned any mere point of view in his presentation of knowledge. When he interrelates the development of the steam press with 'the consolidation of the vernaculars' and the rise of nationalism and revolution he is not reporting anybody's point of view, least of all his own. He is setting up a mosaic configuration or galaxy for insight . . . Innis makes no effort to 'spell out' the interrelations between the components in his galaxy. He offers no consumer packages in his later work, but only do-it-yourself kits...

"Innis" is Harold Innis, McLuhan's mentor. McLuhan's book (1962) is constructed in a so-called mosaic style that aims at synthesis of diverse ideas and events instead of composing the facade of a point of view. Brunner's book applies the mosaic approach to a (sub)genre of storytelling that I'd call social science fiction. The structure was radical back then, and is unusual even today. But it surprised me how accessible the book was after only a minor mental adjustment.

It may be easy for regular people to "get" the Innis Mode today because, really, it's a "killer app" for web technology. It just requires curation of material, as opposed to throwing everything into a box and shaking it up. But curation doesn't mean creating a point of view, which McLuhan says (above) "can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding." POV really is a dangerous luxury, and an irritating one too. Because everybody has one, but few of them are unique. Artificial POV is what I've disliked about my own writing, and it's what I despise about all the liberal blogs that I should, in theory, love and emulate.

So I'm copping the Innis Mode from McLuhan and stealing the format of "rubrics" from Brunner because these tools seem so useful to help a person get to the point in writing. Plus, it makes it easier to chill about this writing jazz.

Demographic misnomer

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[CONTEXT]

As it turns out, people of my generation should collectively be referred to as "Geezer Boomers."