Today's song is.......
Boat of Car
Let's all just take a moment to ponder, exactly what is a boat of car? I always kind of have this vision of a duck boat like they do tours in.
I don't have much else to say about this one unless anyone would like to weigh in on the "Daddy'll sing" vs "Daddy sang" debate?
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I vote "Daddy'll sing." That's what I hear.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of Gigantic. That awkward live version in the bonus features. I actually like that version a lot.
But yeah. Boat of Car. What a weird song. It makes me wonder what a Pink Album show would be like.
You've heard the story about that right? How Flans didn't have his guitar because it was stuck out in traffic on the highway somewhere, so they were hunting for songs they could do without it. One of the fans yelled out Boat of Car, which he had apparently been waiting to hear forever, and they actually did it! That is the sort of random happy occurrence I would like to happen to me.
ReplyDeleteBut yes, weird song.
What actually happened was, at the end of the show Flans asked AJ Shnack, who was shooting video for Gigantic if there were any songs that he wanted, and not being able to come up with anything he repeated what an audience member had shouted for earlier.
ReplyDeleteI think that might actually be even cooler.
ReplyDeleteThat IS a really cool story! And I've never heard it. I really need to see "Gigantic" again. I got it on interlibrary loan a couple of years ago and it took several months to come in. Then they had to send it back, of course.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I thought that "Daddy sang bass" was just a recording of Johnny Cash? No? I just assumed it was. But then again I also assumed that a John sang Boat Of Car and I was really weirded out by the voice they used but I was corrected on the forum and told that it was actually Margaret Seiler...
Anyway, though, I quite like this song. It's very catchy and fun and odd. :)
I've sometimes wondered which John wrote this song. I love the version on TMBG Unlimited where Linnell has to explain to the non-responsive audience that the song has ended.
ReplyDeleteI love this one, especially live. That is all.
ReplyDeleteMy John designed himself a Boat of Car shirt. I think it's awesome. He should share a pic here.
Boat Of Car. Odd as it may seem, this song is the one that hooked me. Rebecca had been diving head first back into serious TMBG fandom this year after a decade-plus hiatus, and I was already a big fan of the kids' albums, so watching "Gigantic" seemed like a good choice for an evening's entertainment. And by far, the strongest emotional impact of that movie on me was watching the lower Manhattan Tower Records (was it the 4th and Broadway store?) in-store performance footage from the first hour of September 11th, 2001. (It just occurs to me now to wonder if anyone in the audience in that footage perished in the next ten hours after smiling and laughing and singing the night before.) And all while having this wrenching and heartsick feeling while watching the footage of the performance, I'm also hearing for the first time this incredible little gem of a song with cold expressionist lyrics that's over way too fast. Afterwards, I knew that what little I had known of the band was woefully unrepresentative of their range of output. I knew I had to find out more, and I was sure I was going to like it, and I was right.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the song goes, it's my favorite vignette song of theirs. It's got a steel-cold emotionless humor to it, taut and beautiful, and haunting.
And as Rebecca mentioned, for the second day in a row, we have a t-shirt song: https://files.me.com/jreale/ceot27 . I chose it as my own because of the personal connection described above.
Jamie - You should read this to answer your question: http://tmbw.net/wiki/Talk:Boat_Of_Car
ReplyDeleteJohn - That is a beautifully written story. Gigantic also played an early role in me falling for the band, though not so much the music but the band themselves. I love the t-shirt!
haha, WOW. Visiting that page was an odd and rather interesting experience. It's very amusing to me that so many people go into such depth over something like that, so I can only imagine what the Johns would think if they happened to come across that wiki page! Anyway, quite enlightening, that was. And curiosity got the better of me, so I listened to the beginning of Boat Of Car and both ways it's said in the Johnny Cash song to compare. No one will ever know which version it is for sure unless, of course, one of the Johns weigh in, but for my two-cents'-worth, I think it's "Daddy'll sing bass". Mostly because I always thought it sounded a little off to be "Daddy sang bass" (now I know it was because of the extra syllable, I guess) and because the sample sounds exactly like the way Johnny Cash sings it during the future tense part of the chorus and not exactly like the way he sings it during the past tense part. Anyway, look at that, wikians must be my kindred spirits because of our mutual tendencies to go into great detail regarding very minute things. haha. At any rate, that was fun. :)
ReplyDeleteYes, I spend my Christmas Eve reading the posts from song of the day that I only skimmed the first time through (and also watching X-Files). I always thought it was "Daddy'll sing bass." Also, apparently I haven't watched all the bonus stuff on Gigantic. The only thing about this song I can add is that when some dude was shouting for them to play it at the Beacon Theater in '08, Flans said, "even the guys in the band don't like that song."
ReplyDelete-Kathy
P.S. if you hadn't posted a particular photo on the Weinkauf tumblr, I would have.