“Potato’s in the Paddy Wagon”, one of the songs Michael McKean and Annette O’Toole wrote for “A Mighty Wind”, is, according to McKean, based on the nonsense rhythmic mnemonic he and Annette came up with when they first came up with the melody, as a sort of placeholder for where lyrics would eventually go.

They liked the silly phrase so much that they decided to make it the subject of the song, forcing them to come up with a character named Potato and a series of events which placed her in a paddy wagon.

And then there’s Mike (Ommadawn, Amarok, etc.) Oldfield, who usually doesn’t bother to take it past the phonetic gibberish stage when composing lyrics (”I think they might mean something in Gaelic” was the slightly puzzled comment of one of his singers).

This was either:
a) a harmless typo from powerline
b) proof that Joel Mowbray is too stupid to even spellcheck his name before getting an email address.
c) a strong suggestion that Joel Mowbray has many friends who refer to him as ‘Bra’ and felt it was a witty email address.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…..765/575892

sightunseen: I’m told that Canadians hate the Guess Who also, preferring even the Lenny Kravitz version of the song.

captphealy: The lyrics as phonetics first is an interesting way of writing songs. You can get the phrasing right with basic gibberish then it gets challenging when you need to convert them to something that people can understand. The Melvins did a lot of songs in the early days where Buzz just left the songs as gibberish. For example:

http://www.lyricsondemand.com/…..yrics.html

Sometimes they don’t even listen to that much of the lyrics, as evidenced by the fact that Ann Coulter was ushered onstage at the 2004 Republican convention to the three chords of “American Woman”.

American woman, said get away
American woman, listen what I say
Don’t come hangin’ around my door
Don’t wanna see your face no more
I don’t need your war machines
I don’t need your ghetto scenes
Coloured lights can hypnotize
Sparkle someone else’s eyes
Now woman, get away from me
American woman, mama let me be.

Are you singing along? Good, here comes the big finish:

Goodbye, American woman
Goodbye, American chick
Goodbye, American broad

Maybe next time you should try a little tenderness.

I suggest the boys at Power Bottom use this song as their anthem and sing it into the hairbrush in front of the bathroom mirror every morning.