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Thursday, June 26, 2008
TRANSFUSION
Nervous Norvus
1956
Available on : Stone Age Woo
Norton : 2004
[Buy It]
NOON BALLOON TO RANGOON
Nervous Norvus
1956
Available on : Stone Age Woo
Norton : 2004
[Buy It]
At the start of the week a friend of mine called to say that she was in a poor mood. She considered a variety of causes--job, relationship, weird spot on her arm, crazy West Coat heat, biorhythms--and decided in the end to blame herself. "Maybe I'm too restless," she said.
"What's too restless?"
"You know," she said. "I think maybe I like novelty too much."
We hung up, and I thought about what she said, because, well, it's interesting. Does she like novelty too much? Life is boring at times--that seems hard to dispute--and while that boredom can be a source of frustration, it can also be a source of motivation. If you're in a job that has ceased to engage you, find a new one or a way to make the old one work. If you're in a relationship that feels drab, rejuvenuate yourself within it or rejuvenuate yourself without it. But the process of making things new is sometimes difficult to manage without feeling like a spoiled and greedy child. When you're seeking out new stimuli, how do you know when the jolt you've found is genuinely contributing to your sense of self and to the progress of your life (and when you're genuinely contributing to the lives of others), and when it's merely a new blip whose intensity will soon fade, leaving you yet again in search of something new? Should you settle for boring things and look for excitement in other areas of your life or should you hold out hope that you will discover something that exactly matches your needs?
These are only random notes on the problem, not even a whole melody. But thinking about novelty led me to thinking about novelty songs. The term, of course, refers to songs that are noteworthy not primarily for the beauty of their music or the skill of their musicians or the passion of their vocals, but rather for their comic strangeness. Sheb Wooley's "Purple People Eater," which was released fifty years ago today (well, this month, but today sounds more exciting), is one of the most famous novelty songs, so familiar that I won't bother posting it. "They're Coming to Take Me Away Ha-Haaa!" is another. It's annoying. On the other hand, there's C.W. McCall's "Convoy," which has the power to warm even the coldest hearts, and the dozens of novelty-flavored songs by artists with broader, more legitimate careers (Randy Newman's "Short People," Todd Rundgren's "Bang the Drum All Day," Offspring's "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)"). Novelty songs provide respite from the drudgery of life, like a juggler appearing at work. But which juggler do you prefer? The guy dressed like a jester? The one who adds an apple in with his juggling balls and takes a bite of it when it comes around? This is a highly personal choice. I once dated a girl who loved Cheech and Chong's "Earache My Eye," no matter how many times I'd try to redirect her to Spike Jones. I'm sure some of you even know people who like Ray Stevens' "The Streak." When they get out of jail, you can ask them why.
Even in the land of novelty songs, there are upjuts of genius. Jimmy Drake was working as a truck driver when he created the Nervous Norvus persona in the mid-fifties. Over the course of a year, he recorded a string of truly cracked songs that mixed absurdist jive (much borrowed from the Bay Area musician and DJ Red Blanchard), conversational singing (with occasional leaps into strangulated yowling), and highly rudimentary guitar backing (supplemented by sound effects). Drake's first hit as Nervous Norvus, "Transfusion," sketches a series of car wrecks, focusing on (as the title indicates) the sanguinary needs of the victims. It belongs to the fairly large genre of car crash songs ("Leader of the Pack," "Last Kiss," "Tell Laura I Love Her"), but it's also a novelty song about novelty--all the crashes are caused by speeding, and all require (literally and metaphorically) new blood. There are parts of "Transfusion" that could come from a love song, or at least a lust song: Transfusion transfusion
My red corpuscles are in mass confusion The transfusion requests are the heart of the song: they end each verse with absurd rhymes--"Slip the blood to me, Bud," "Shoot the juice to me, Bruce," "Pass the claret to me, Barrett," and, best, "Pour the crimson in me, Jimson"--that forecast Paul Simon's "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," another song about finding new blood. There's a tension, though, because the thrill of recklessness is counterweighted by risk: I'm never never never gonna speed again But he does. He always does.
"Transfusion," which went top ten, was followed by "Ape Call," a consideration of the courting practices of cavemen, and then there was one more Nervous Norvus single, "The Fang," a story about a Martian who comes to earth to chase skirt. But commercial momentum was slowing, in part because Drake didn't like appearing live as Nervous Norvus--he turned down a chance to perform "The Fang" on Ed Sullivan--and soon the act was history. Drake died in 1968. Then, in 2004, Norton records released a compilation that included several outtakes, including "Noon Balloon to Rangoon," which was rediscovered in a thrift store in Oakland and found its way back to the airwaves courtesy of Dr. Demento. "Noon Balloon to Rangoon" isn't just an oddity--it's a masterful oddity that holds up as one of the finest Nervous Norvus offerings. It shares most of the melody of "Transfusion," such as it is, and like its predecessor, it is a meta-novelty song. The lyrics are drawn directly from the Book of One Thousand and One Nights, perhaps literature's greatest lesson in the lifesaving powers of novelty: A boy named Aladdin had a magic lamp
His magic was the hottest in the Baghdad camp
What happened to Aladdin when the lamp got damp?
The noon balloon to Rangoon
Nervous Ali-Baba was a zorch mahalt
He trapped the forty thieves and laughed to hear them shout
What became of Ali-Baba when the thieves got out?
Noon balloon to Rangoon The lyrics go on, through Sinbad, through Scheherezade, but just as in "Transfusion" there's a tension between stimulus and safety: Rangoon is the safest place
When you get in a jam
So don't be a goon
Round about noon
Take that balloon and scram, Sam. The balloon is a vehicle of escape, but look at the escape route--it's to Rangoon, the safest place. Is that the solution, to pursue novelty from a solid foundation? And would Rangoon be deadly dull (rather than "a safe retreat") without the magic of the lamp or the carpet? It's worth further study. I'm not saying that all the answers to the questions of restlessness, energy, intensity, and comfort--how long to hold a job, how long to keep a lover, how long to stay in one place before hopping on a train or a plane or into a balloon--reside in two minutes of a never-released song recorded by a virtually unknown novelty singer. But I'm not saying that they're not.Labels: ben, novelty songs
posted by Ben
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