Ten Musical Notes for Mardi Gras

10. Until Whitney Houston’s death, I must confess I was unaware of this number from 1974: the original “I Will Always Love You” by Dolly Parton (h/t Nicholas Campbell).

9. While we’re outside my usual musical zone: I sometimes forget my prog side, perhaps because it’s less socially acceptable than the punk and the indie sides.  But I contend this, for instance, is beautiful: “Lady Nina” by Marillion.  Especially if you never, never see what the band looks like.  And don’t think too much about the fact that their name was picked as a variant on a Tolkien title. 

8. But then, I think Genesis by Genesis was one of the best albums of all time, and I don’t care if they ban me from Williamsburg for saying so.  Recall “Mama,” for instance.

7. The name of my own prog album someday (especially since I worked in a sewage treatment plant one summer) will plainly have to be: Scum Pot Valve Explosion.

6. Yet I could never call a band the Misplaced Modifiers.  Too grotesque a thing for my editor’s sensibilities.

5. And here a young woman says what we’re all thinking in response to “Scum Pot Valve Explosion” because it’s not a thought nowadays until a young woman on the Internet says it.

4. Speaking of young women, here’s a fake Jewel song from a decade ago about the X-Men from the geniuses at the now-defunct ModernHumorist (who also did this swell Vague News Report, worthy of Firesign Theatre).

3. And here’s my friend Tricia Summers, a Williamsburger, singing jazzy serious stuff beautifully on her new album. 

2. Hard as this may be to believe, in 1978, immediately after the breakup of the Sex Pistols, Richard Branson flew Johnny Rotten to Jamaica to meet with Devo, where Branson tried in vain to talk the band into making Rotten the new Devo lead singer.  (I wouldn’t mind at least visiting the alternate timeline where that worked out.)

1. Of course, it might well have just ended up sounding like “Rise” by Rotten’s actual next band, P.I.L.