Music for the Masses
I had a young lady come up to me today and ask me what a zephyr was. I found this rather intriguing; thinking her was a person interested in the atmospheric pressures of our fine world. But I was saddened to discover that her confusion was not from some passage in a literary novel of old, but from the radio. It seems the some one in the Red Hot Chili Peppers decided that they had not written a song starting with a “Z” and if they were going to do their Greatest Hits A-Z album in the future they better make that correction now. So dusting off their Webster’s dictionary they got when they opened a student visa card many years ago, they began thumbing through the “Z” section until the came across Zephyr.
My first thought on this was we should make a rule… you can’t use a word in the lyrics of a song if the average person in the age group you are aiming at have no idea what the word means. I think radio stations should have a contest where people call in and are asked what a Zephyr is… or better yet, how to spell it. I asked a co-worker today what a Zephyr was after we heard the song at the office; he was quite certain that it was a dirigible because it says “fly away on my zephyr”… the sad thing was if the Chili peppers had gone just one more entry down in the dictionary, my friend would sort have been right: “fly away on my Zeppelin…” it would make just as much sense. Hell more so because a zephyr is a gentle breeze… unless you are Kate Moss after purging your not flying anywhere on a zephyr. But would that lead us to Led Zephyr…
Now had the boys been a little more creative, we could have had songs involving these other “Z” words: Zaire, zany, zealot, zebra, zero, Zeus, Zionism, zipper, zirconium, zodiac, zombie, zone, zoo, my favorite zucchetto, zucchini, or zygote. I just don’t think they were really trying.
I had a young lady come up to me today and ask me what a zephyr was. I found this rather intriguing; thinking her was a person interested in the atmospheric pressures of our fine world. But I was saddened to discover that her confusion was not from some passage in a literary novel of old, but from the radio. It seems the some one in the Red Hot Chili Peppers decided that they had not written a song starting with a “Z” and if they were going to do their Greatest Hits A-Z album in the future they better make that correction now. So dusting off their Webster’s dictionary they got when they opened a student visa card many years ago, they began thumbing through the “Z” section until the came across Zephyr.
My first thought on this was we should make a rule… you can’t use a word in the lyrics of a song if the average person in the age group you are aiming at have no idea what the word means. I think radio stations should have a contest where people call in and are asked what a Zephyr is… or better yet, how to spell it. I asked a co-worker today what a Zephyr was after we heard the song at the office; he was quite certain that it was a dirigible because it says “fly away on my zephyr”… the sad thing was if the Chili peppers had gone just one more entry down in the dictionary, my friend would sort have been right: “fly away on my Zeppelin…” it would make just as much sense. Hell more so because a zephyr is a gentle breeze… unless you are Kate Moss after purging your not flying anywhere on a zephyr. But would that lead us to Led Zephyr…
Now had the boys been a little more creative, we could have had songs involving these other “Z” words: Zaire, zany, zealot, zebra, zero, Zeus, Zionism, zipper, zirconium, zodiac, zombie, zone, zoo, my favorite zucchetto, zucchini, or zygote. I just don’t think they were really trying.
