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Was going through the archives on my brother’s blog – bighairmonkey.com – and thought y’all might enjoy this…
Musical History/Myth/Lore In The Heads of Knowledgeable-Ex-Hippie Unix/Linux Admins
Friday, January 8th, 2010
Had a particular guitar riff stuck in my head as I “walked” into a phone conference, and since there is rarely any conversation as people dial in to a conference call and things get organised, I left my phone off mute and did my best impression of the guitar riff with drum accompaniment, hoping someone might recognise it.What surprised me wasn’t that a couple of attendees joined in (if you foment that type of activity, you come to expect eventual passengers on the “entertain-me train”), but where they took it! One guy starts belting out lyrics in a high falsetto, and I’m suddenly thinking, “Hold on! That’s not the way it goes!”
Monkey: Hang on a sec’. What group is that?
TM1: Chicago
Monkey: Chicago? As in, “More Than a Feeling?” sung in a high, girly-voice and they-never-used-this-much-bass, Chicago?
TM2: You’re thinking of Boston.
Monkey: So my geography sucks.
TM1: Chicago was all over the bass in the 70’s!
Monkey: I’m pretty sure the riff I was “playing” was by Green Day.
TM2: Brain Stew
TM1: They TOTALLY stole that riff from Chicago! Like Vanilla Ice did to Paul McCartney!
Monkey: Vanilla Ice stole a Chicago riff from Paul McCartney?
TM2: Chicago originally stole it from Led Zepplin.
TM1: SHUT-UP! THAT IS SUCH A LIE!
Monkey: Sounds like you’re battling the last remaining Peter Cetera groupie.
TM1: PETER CETERA IS NOT CHICAGO! HE BARELY EVEN SANG ON THE FIRST FEW ALBUMS! THERE WAS ROBERT LAMM AND…
TM2: (cuts him off) Led Zepplin used that riff but much slower in “Babe I’m Gonna’ Leave You” which was released about a year earlier.
TM1: (practically screaming into the phone now) JUST BECAUSE THERE ARE SIMILAR NOTES, DOESN’T MAKE A RIFF A COMPLETE RIP-OFF!!
Monkey: So it was a partial rip-off?
TM2: (*patient sigh*) Jimmy Paige admits to being influenced by Joan Baez’ performance of a similar folk song which was later credited to Anne Briggs and thought to be “general use” since they were Folk Songs that were influencing numerous groups in the 60’s music scene. So really, Chicago only ripped off a riff that was already thought to be public use.
TM1: CHICAGO WERE MUSICAL GENIUS’!!
TM2: Genii
Monkey: Genies?That’s when the conference call host took over and put the discussion to an end.
At least, over the phone.
Starting the meeting had absolutely zero effect on halting the discussion from continuing in internal instant messaging and emails, and by the end of the day, I had YouTube links (which I’m not going to list here since you’ve got access to Google and YouTube and can find them for yourselves) to just about every possibly related song to the riff that had been stuck in my head and kicked it all off.I will however present the original song:
“Brain Stew” by Green Day.Posted in Enthralled in the Music Virus, Office Mayhem, Other Monkeys
twindragonsmum *chuckles* 😀
tdm
…and one more 😀
The Nerf Raider CS-35
Friday, January 15th, 2010
Long time partner in crime, co-conspirator and fellow office monkey Phil McCrevis raised the bar for the Nerf Gun standard this year when he brought in one of his Christmas presents: The Nerf Raider CS-35.The pump action Nerf Raider easily shoots twice as far as the Maverick, but the key to this arsenal is the 35 dart drum clip, allowing it to fire almost 6 times as often as the Maverick before reloading. The additional distance in firing range allows the user to stay well out of the range of return fire, accomplishing what I claimed the Maverick (intentionally) would not do in an office Nerf War:
…creating a complete dictatorship… Annihilating the competition with no chance of reply…
If you want to dominate in an office Nerf war, the Nerf Raider CS-35 is the gun for you. The pump action allows for a higher rate of fire than the belt-fed Nerf Vulcan, and the Raider is lighter weight and easier to lug around, plus there are no batteries. And the 35 dart drum clip ensures you can fire for quite a while without the worry of your next reload.
As we were running around the office this morning, a group of fourth graders walked past the front of the office on a class excursion down town. I grabbed Phil’s Nerf Raider, stepped out the front door, and commenced to rain down Nerf Dart Hell upon the unsuspecting crowd, switching back to my Nerf Maverick when the Raider’s drum clip ran dry.
“You know you owe me about 50 darts after this – we’re never going to get any of those back.” Phil commented as kids at the front and back of the line swarmed to the middle to act as targets, jumping up to knock darts out of the air and collecting the fired missiles as war trophies. A mosh pit of 9 year olds but without the black fingernail polish, piercings and mascara.
Funny enough, they returned all of them (except for the two original “targets” who asked if they could each keep one as a souvenir).
I was amazed.
We apologised to the teachers for disrupting their excursion.
They laughed and said it was a great distraction for the kids who were getting tired of walking.
The kids went off, laughing and talking, no doubt passing on the story later to other friends who weren’t there or parents.Planting seeds in the minds of future office monkeys to redefine future workplace etiquette.
Posted in Office Mayhem, Social Stimulus
twwindragonsmum 😀
tdm
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