Wherein My Musical Ignorance is Revealed
A couple of years ago, my sister gave me a CD with a bunch of (very good) music on it that I’d never heard before. Even after picking up albums from a couple of the artists represented (like Zero 7 and Venus Hum), however, a couple of basic facts has escaped my notice until very recently.
Fact the first: That half of The Postal Service, whose excellent “Such Great Heights” and “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” appear on that CD, is the lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie. This latter is my current trophy-holder for Band That is Far Less Cool Than Its Name. I mean, come on. “Death Cab” sounds like something out of Heavy Metal, not something junior high girls should be swooning over.
Other current contenders include Panic at the Disco and Thievery Corporation. This is a related category to Band Whose Name Criminally Misleads You, where past winners include such favorites as Barenaked Ladies and The Violent Femmes.
(A quick aside: whoever decided to put that crappy cover of “Such Great Heights” on the soundtrack album to Garden State deserves a swift kick in the junk.)
Fact the second: Only after doing some wiki-diving about Frou Frou did I discover that a) Imogen Heap is a member of that group, and b) that Imogen Heap is an actual person’s actual name. I mean, I’d heard this name before (she had a song on an Mac commercial), but never connected it to a specific person. I always figured it was just some crazy syllables someone stuck together to sound cool. Or maybe got from an old children’s book. I mean, has there ever been a name that is either more British or better suited to some Milne-esque volume of children’s verse?
Imogen Heap lived by the sea
in a cottage made of cheese;
down a little gravel path
lined with sycamore trees.Imogen Heap walked on the strand
beside the shining sea.
She carried a shell
and ‘waited the bell
that would call her home to tea.Imogen Heap lay in her bed
listening to the breeze.
Watching the waves through the walls
of her cottage made of cheese.
(Side note here: one of our local radio stations played an acoustic cover of “Let Go”. I will concede that it might be possible to arrange such a cover that did not suck. But this one… was not it.)