We're Overheating In A Small Town World
Song #10: I'd Rather Count Cormorants With You
This started out as a potential Agony Aunts song, which means it was written in the Agony Aunts' style - anonymously, on a Facebook page of which we are all admins. People often ask us what the difference is between The Corner Laughers and Agony Aunts. They used to be totally distinct bands with different lineups and mission statements, but at this point in our evolution there's only one difference. KC is the priesthood holder in Agony Aunts; we write the songs anonymously online and record them at his studio in Oakland. He's usually the lead singer or co-lead singer. Karla is the priesthood holder in The Corner Laughers and as such she decided that this song would be a good fit for Poppy Seeds. We needed something with a surf-country-90s funk vibe, something about seabirds, and something about counting. She moved it to the top of the queue and we recorded it at Mystery Lawn, making it a full-fledged Corner Laughers song. (If you don't know what a priesthood holder is, you haven't been watching enough "Big Love".)
Although it's sung as a guy/girl country duet, the idea germinated from two dudes trying to bro-mantically avoid the Super Bowl. As all non-red-blooded un-Americans know, Super Bowl Sunday is the best day of the year to go out and do things, because there's virtually no traffic and all of the parks and trails are uncrowded. One day last January KC and I were discussing our anti-Super Bowl plans on Yahoo Messenger and if memory serves me right he said something like "Yeah, I have an invite to go to a manly Super Bowl party with some guys that know MC Hammer... but I'd rather count cormorants with you." The phrase stuck. If you've been reading this LJ since 2003 (I totally forgot to commemorate my 9th anniversary on May 30th) you already know that I'm a huge fan of cormorants. They're among my top ten favorite birds, and I'll take any opportunity to go see them or sing about them. My favorite memory of my 5 years at Wildlife Rescue was the baby cormorant who would wrap his neck around my face in a cuddly manner. He was smart too. When his bowl of fish ran out he would look at me, look down at the bowl, & look back up at me sadly as if to say "please sir, may I have some more?" One of the most awesome natural phenomena in the Bay Area is the grand cormorant army that gathers off the Santa Cruz coast in the winter months. The cormorant rookeries on the high electrical towers crossing the San Mateo Bridge are a breathtaking sight to behold. But I never really thought of counting them, that was KC's poetic imagination.
Notes On The Recording:
*I did about 20 takes of my vocal and I'm still not happy with it. We debated bringing another guest star in to sing it. I thought maybe John Wesley Harding, and I got as far as asking him if he'd like to do a guest vocal on our album, to which he said yes. Then I came to my senses and realized "am I really going to ask the greatest songwriter of our time to sing a song about counting cormorants?" (Maybe I should have tried Robyn Hitchcock.) We considered having KC do it, which would have really made it sound like Agony Aunts. In the end we cobbled together the best parts from my many takes, threw on a bunch of Autotune (should I be admitting that, or is that not cool?) and got it to sound half-way decent. I wish it was better though.
*"Buster Posey" was originally "Kirby Puckett". Kirby's name has been somewhat tarnished of late, and Karla thought we should skew younger so we decided to go with someone less controversial and more beloved, at least at the moment.
*Although you see the word "meme" a million times a day, you don't often hear it spoken aloud. I wasn't exactly sure how to pronounce it. I hope it is supposed to rhyme with "stream" because that's how I sing it. The line was written as "You can count all of your friends doing that 30 day meme". I shortened it to make it more singable. There are many versions of the 30 day meme, but I was specifically referring to this one.
*Listen for KC's Homer Simpson scream at the end of the guitar solo. That really happened.
*I enjoyed this guy's blog post.
Wikipedia Trivia
*Cormorants and shags are medium-to-large seabirds. They range in size from the Pygmy Cormorant (Phalacrocorax pygmaeus), at as little as 45 cm (18 in) and 340 g (12 oz), to the Flightless Cormorant (Phalacrocorax harrisi), at a maximum size 100 cm (40 in) and 5 kg (11 lb). The recently-extinct Spectacled Cormorant (Phalacrocorax perspicillatus) was rather larger, at an average size of 6.3 kg (14 lb). The majority, including nearly all Northern Hemisphere species, have mainly dark plumage, but some Southern Hemisphere species are black and white, and a few (e.g. the Spotted Shag of New Zealand) are quite colourful. Many species have areas of coloured skin on the face (the lores and the gular skin) which can be bright blue, orange, red or yellow, typically becoming more brightly coloured in the breeding season. The bill is long, thin, and sharply hooked. Their feet have webbing between all four toes, as in their relatives.
*Cormorants seem to be a very ancient group, with similar ancestors reaching all the way back to the time of the dinosaurs. In fact, the very earliest known modern bird, Gansus yumenensis, had essentially the same structure, although it was not a cormorant per se. The details of the evolution of the cormorant are mostly unknown. Even the technique of using the distribution and relationships of a species to figure out where it came from, biogeography, usually very informative, does not give very specific data for this probably rather ancient and widespread group. However, the closest living relatives of the cormorants and shags are the other families of the suborder Sulae—darters and gannets and boobies—which have a primarily Gondwanan distribution. Hence, at least the modern diversity of Sulae probably originated in the southern hemisphere.
*Cormorants feature quite commonly in heraldry and medieval ornamentation, usually in their "wing-drying" pose, which was seen as representing the Christian cross. For example, the Norwegian municipalities of Røst, Loppa and Skjervøy have cormorants in their coat-of-arms. The species depicted in heraldry is most likely to be the Great Cormorant, the most familiar species in Europe.
*In 1853, a woman wearing a dress made of cormorant feathers was found on San Nicolas Island, off the southern coast of California. She had sewn the feather dress together using whale sinews. She is known as the Lone Woman of San Nicolas and was later baptized "Juana Maria" (her original name is lost). The woman had lived alone on the island for 18 years before being rescued.
*The cormorant was the disguise used by Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost. The cormorant was significant as a symbol of "true Life/ Thereby regain’d," and was ironically used by Satan. Satan sat on top of the Tree of Life as a cormorant in his first attempt to deceive and tempt Eve.
*The mythical Liver Bird symbol of Liverpool is commonly thought to be a cross between an eagle and a cormorant. (We played this song at our Liverpool shows last year.)
This started out as a potential Agony Aunts song, which means it was written in the Agony Aunts' style - anonymously, on a Facebook page of which we are all admins. People often ask us what the difference is between The Corner Laughers and Agony Aunts. They used to be totally distinct bands with different lineups and mission statements, but at this point in our evolution there's only one difference. KC is the priesthood holder in Agony Aunts; we write the songs anonymously online and record them at his studio in Oakland. He's usually the lead singer or co-lead singer. Karla is the priesthood holder in The Corner Laughers and as such she decided that this song would be a good fit for Poppy Seeds. We needed something with a surf-country-90s funk vibe, something about seabirds, and something about counting. She moved it to the top of the queue and we recorded it at Mystery Lawn, making it a full-fledged Corner Laughers song. (If you don't know what a priesthood holder is, you haven't been watching enough "Big Love".)
Although it's sung as a guy/girl country duet, the idea germinated from two dudes trying to bro-mantically avoid the Super Bowl. As all non-red-blooded un-Americans know, Super Bowl Sunday is the best day of the year to go out and do things, because there's virtually no traffic and all of the parks and trails are uncrowded. One day last January KC and I were discussing our anti-Super Bowl plans on Yahoo Messenger and if memory serves me right he said something like "Yeah, I have an invite to go to a manly Super Bowl party with some guys that know MC Hammer... but I'd rather count cormorants with you." The phrase stuck. If you've been reading this LJ since 2003 (I totally forgot to commemorate my 9th anniversary on May 30th) you already know that I'm a huge fan of cormorants. They're among my top ten favorite birds, and I'll take any opportunity to go see them or sing about them. My favorite memory of my 5 years at Wildlife Rescue was the baby cormorant who would wrap his neck around my face in a cuddly manner. He was smart too. When his bowl of fish ran out he would look at me, look down at the bowl, & look back up at me sadly as if to say "please sir, may I have some more?" One of the most awesome natural phenomena in the Bay Area is the grand cormorant army that gathers off the Santa Cruz coast in the winter months. The cormorant rookeries on the high electrical towers crossing the San Mateo Bridge are a breathtaking sight to behold. But I never really thought of counting them, that was KC's poetic imagination.
Notes On The Recording:
*I did about 20 takes of my vocal and I'm still not happy with it. We debated bringing another guest star in to sing it. I thought maybe John Wesley Harding, and I got as far as asking him if he'd like to do a guest vocal on our album, to which he said yes. Then I came to my senses and realized "am I really going to ask the greatest songwriter of our time to sing a song about counting cormorants?" (Maybe I should have tried Robyn Hitchcock.) We considered having KC do it, which would have really made it sound like Agony Aunts. In the end we cobbled together the best parts from my many takes, threw on a bunch of Autotune (should I be admitting that, or is that not cool?) and got it to sound half-way decent. I wish it was better though.
*"Buster Posey" was originally "Kirby Puckett". Kirby's name has been somewhat tarnished of late, and Karla thought we should skew younger so we decided to go with someone less controversial and more beloved, at least at the moment.
*Although you see the word "meme" a million times a day, you don't often hear it spoken aloud. I wasn't exactly sure how to pronounce it. I hope it is supposed to rhyme with "stream" because that's how I sing it. The line was written as "You can count all of your friends doing that 30 day meme". I shortened it to make it more singable. There are many versions of the 30 day meme, but I was specifically referring to this one.
*Listen for KC's Homer Simpson scream at the end of the guitar solo. That really happened.
*I enjoyed this guy's blog post.
Wikipedia Trivia
*Cormorants and shags are medium-to-large seabirds. They range in size from the Pygmy Cormorant (Phalacrocorax pygmaeus), at as little as 45 cm (18 in) and 340 g (12 oz), to the Flightless Cormorant (Phalacrocorax harrisi), at a maximum size 100 cm (40 in) and 5 kg (11 lb). The recently-extinct Spectacled Cormorant (Phalacrocorax perspicillatus) was rather larger, at an average size of 6.3 kg (14 lb). The majority, including nearly all Northern Hemisphere species, have mainly dark plumage, but some Southern Hemisphere species are black and white, and a few (e.g. the Spotted Shag of New Zealand) are quite colourful. Many species have areas of coloured skin on the face (the lores and the gular skin) which can be bright blue, orange, red or yellow, typically becoming more brightly coloured in the breeding season. The bill is long, thin, and sharply hooked. Their feet have webbing between all four toes, as in their relatives.
*Cormorants seem to be a very ancient group, with similar ancestors reaching all the way back to the time of the dinosaurs. In fact, the very earliest known modern bird, Gansus yumenensis, had essentially the same structure, although it was not a cormorant per se. The details of the evolution of the cormorant are mostly unknown. Even the technique of using the distribution and relationships of a species to figure out where it came from, biogeography, usually very informative, does not give very specific data for this probably rather ancient and widespread group. However, the closest living relatives of the cormorants and shags are the other families of the suborder Sulae—darters and gannets and boobies—which have a primarily Gondwanan distribution. Hence, at least the modern diversity of Sulae probably originated in the southern hemisphere.
*Cormorants feature quite commonly in heraldry and medieval ornamentation, usually in their "wing-drying" pose, which was seen as representing the Christian cross. For example, the Norwegian municipalities of Røst, Loppa and Skjervøy have cormorants in their coat-of-arms. The species depicted in heraldry is most likely to be the Great Cormorant, the most familiar species in Europe.
*In 1853, a woman wearing a dress made of cormorant feathers was found on San Nicolas Island, off the southern coast of California. She had sewn the feather dress together using whale sinews. She is known as the Lone Woman of San Nicolas and was later baptized "Juana Maria" (her original name is lost). The woman had lived alone on the island for 18 years before being rescued.
*The cormorant was the disguise used by Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost. The cormorant was significant as a symbol of "true Life/ Thereby regain’d," and was ironically used by Satan. Satan sat on top of the Tree of Life as a cormorant in his first attempt to deceive and tempt Eve.
*The mythical Liver Bird symbol of Liverpool is commonly thought to be a cross between an eagle and a cormorant. (We played this song at our Liverpool shows last year.)
