More Cowbell (and cows)

COWBELL:  I was 23 the first time I heard of Saturday Night Live. Yes, I just admitted that. The first short I ever watched had Will Ferrell in it. Maybe some of you have seen it. It's about the band Blue Oyster Cult. They were a one-hit wonder. and Ttheir song: "Don't Fear the Reaper."* The clip has Jimmy Fallon, Will Farrell, Christopher Walken, and some other guy in it. JF is terrible, by the way - can't keep a straight face at all. In the scene, BOC is in studio, and a famous producer, Bruce Dickinson, is telling them how he thinks they can improve the record. Basically, Bruce is a fan of cow bells. He just thinks there needs to be more cow bell!

Off the top of my head, I can't actually think of another song that has any cow bell in it at all. But it made me think: if Bruce Dickinson (Christopher Walken) was right, then more cowbell is the prescription for every song ill. (Maybe if the Black Eyed Peas had put that in their Dysphemism song, it would have made it slightly more palatable to the oral auditory ear?**) Maybe if BOC had put more cow bell into their subsequent songs, they wouldn't have been a one three-hit* wonder. We'll never know.

The point is, it made me think about other things that make songs and life better.

WHISTLING: Except for one glaring exception I can think of (that I've already written about on this blog), I defy you to name a song where whistling in a song detracts from the song value.

Instead of listing all my favorite songs, I will instead post a link that will let you hear some of them.  I admit I didn't know all of the songs he put on here, but I know most of them. I think it missed "New Day in the Morning" and "Clancy's Theme" from the Man From Snowy River, but it hit a lot of other ones. yay!

BANJO: I'm convinced half the reason Mumford & Sons has made it so big is because they have a banjo player. No lie. Banjo makes everything better...more soulful, more homey, more comfy. I love everything banjo. Even those two guys in the Geico commercials they show on hulu are less annoying because one of them plays the banjo in the little tag theme thing at the end.

ANVIL: The first time I saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (which I wrote about on this blog already), I didn't like the version at the end of the dwarf theme...the mountain song. Then I heard it again the second time I watched it and I was hooked. I was too cheap to download it but I listened to it (legally!) over and over again, and read an article in Rolling Stone about the guy who wrote it and how his sons collaborated on it with him, and he said, "It needs more anvil. What song doesn't need more anvil?" In this case, hammering against anvils was used to great effect and I daresay I could use a bit more of it. Maybe I'll go take another listen right now.

COWS: You can't see a landscape that's green and obviously not growing crops without thinking pastoral, and you can't utter pastoral without thinking of cows.

I even go so far as to claim that every landscape painting that has a field of any sort in it -- that evokes the "pastoral" feeling at all - is more appealing - and dare I say  it? Better! than a similar scene without bovine life in it. Cows in pictures are calming. What's more homey and hum-drummy than a cow staring off into space chewing her cud? Of course since the cow is in the picture, and we do not have Harry Potter style pictures, we do not know if she is chewing her cud or not, but the calm nature of the beast seems to add a level of peace to a painting that is unmatched.

If you can't have a cow, then a sheep will substitute, but it's like eating tub margarine when you could eat butter. If a cow isn't available and a sheep isn't, either, a goat will do. This is the hierarchy.

May all your landscapes have cows in them, and may your life be full of whistling banjo songs. (Cowbell and anvil are optional.)

* I have definitely, most emphatically, been reprimanded about my lack of research for this post in the comments. I am rectifying the situation by retracting my statement that BOC was a one-hit wonder. It appears they actually had three hits. See comments for more details.

**This is It reference