Friday, February 25, 2005

Mars Volta and your daily movement

The new Mars Volta album, Frances the Mute, is due for release March 1. It's 75 minutes of epic songs, complete with movements (the last song clocking in at 30 minutes!) Now I'm not against songs having plotlines and sweeping changes, but I'm pretty regular with my movements... just one please.[note]

So anticipation of the release this coming Tuesday, I'm going to profile a epic song with movements every day. Consider your a bran muffin in the morning.

Today's movement track is from Rush:

By-Tor And The Snow Dog:
I. At The Tobes Of Hades
II. Across The Styx
III. Of The Battle
IV. Epilogue



The song title came from their road manager, Howard Ungerleider, at a party where there were two dogs - a bite prone german shepard (thus nicknamed By-Tor, get it?) and an all-white (snow) dog. On the back cover of Fly By Night, Alex Lifeson is identified as "Snow Dog", and Geddy Lee is identified as "By-Tor".

This was also the first album with Neal Peart, the king of middle-earth lyrics. For example:
By-tor in defeat
Retreats to hell
Snow dog is victorious
The land of the overworld
Is saved again
Should I have given a spoiler alert? Just isnt' the same knowing ahead of time that By-Tor will be defeated, is it? 'Zat! What I'm wondering is, if Geddy is indeed By-Tor, does that mean Alex kicked his ass? I'm sure he could... I saw the smallish Geddy Lee in Pike Place Market this past July (in town for the 30th Anniversary tour) and it looked like Alex's Snow Dog would have pretty good odds in that fight.

Daily movement #2 - Genesis "The Colony Of Slippermen"
Your daily movement #3: Yes
Your daily movement #4: Sonic Youth
Your daily movement #5: Emerson Lake & Palmer

4 comments:

Robert Burke said...

Great, great stuff Drake.

Robert Burke said...

Ya know I think we could feature a hokey Neil peart lyric every week.. Maybe a Neil Peart translator like the Snoop Dog one.

Shawn Anderson said...

thanks for the comments...

I think I need to start a support group for people like myself still recovering from being a teen mullet.

Shawn Anderson said...

Just so you don't think I'm panning Frances the Mute, I've been listening to the album for the past week, and I like it. I'll give a proper review later... but nonetheless, think the separate naming of movements (or chapters, g) is a bit too 12-sided die for me.