Semi OT: Nicely put!

[whitefang]

"Semi OT" in that this isn't ONLY about different ways to describe musical things.

 

For example, we here sometimes post things about "slide" guitar...

 

We all seem to know what's MEANT by that, but for many years and for many people, it had been referred to in other terms.

 

For example, back in "the day", we'd only call it "bottleneck", mostly because we'd heard or read somewhere about them old bluesmen using the neck off of a beer bottle slipped over their finger. I read somewhere that sometimes it was the neck of a WINE bottle!

 

However, in the liner notes of Bob Dylan's first album, writer Nat Hentoff refers to the style as "fretting"! Bob does this on his cover of "In My Time Of Dyin'" and does a FINE job!

 

He describes Bob as "sometimes 'fretting' the guitar with his girlfriend's lipstick tube, ot the back of a kitchen knife."

 

As I was 14, and haven't yet even heard of "bottleneck" guitar playing, I didn't know what Hentoff MEANT. for all the world, I thought he meant Bob Dylan REPLACED the frets of his guitar with the metal of his girlfriend's lipstick tube, or the steel from the back of a kitchen knife, and wondered how he managed to cut the metal OFF of each to accomplish this!

 

Incidentally, I imagine the term "fretting" could be used to describe the method used by Joni Mitchell and Ritchie Havens when THEY play.

 

But, I've heard odd, clever or amusing words or terms used to describe other things besides musical things. Recently(and what's probably inspired this thread) while watching "Driving Miss Daisy" on TV, Morgan Freeman's "Hoke" character used the phrase, "She done GONE AROUND THE BEND" to describe Miss Daisy's possible senile dementia. I thought it a simple and direct way to describe it. I've also heard someone call it "time skippin'", referring to the sometimes seeming the senile are "living in the past", and/or sincerely feel they ARE back somewhere 20 or more years ago...

 

Back about 40 years ago, I was invited by an African American co-worker to come to his house and jam. Seems he too, was "into" blues, and he and his brother and a couple of friends had a band they fooled around with. They really weren't too bad, and I enjoyed plugging my cheezy Kalamazoo into one of their "tuck and rolled" Kustom amps! One day when I showed up, they invited me to join them for dinner. I hadn't HAD dinner yet, as my new wife( I had only been married for a few months at that time)was still at work, so I took a seat.

 

His mother(yeah, he was still living at home) warned me----"Mind the STRING BEANS," she said, "They got a bit of SASS to 'em!" I found out she meant they were SPICY, and might be TOO HOT for my taste. They were OK, but SASS was, I thought, a clever and descriptive way to put it!

 

Children often display a lot of fancy footwork and body contortions when they need to go to the bathroom and one isn't available at the time. My grandmother always referred to this as "the RAIN dance"!

 

Got any? either way??

Whitefang

[desertbluesman]

I never heard of the term fretting for what we call slide or bottle neck playing. First time I ever read that was above..

[whitefang]

Ha! If you read further, you probably got a kick out of how I MISUNDERSTOOD it, myself!

 

My grandmother( to continue on topic), when having difficulty locating some item or other object in the locale she could SWEAR it should be, but somehow couldn't FIND just then, would say, "The DEVIL is sitting on it!" I asked her about that once, and she said SHE heard it from HER father( my great-grandfather!).

Whitefang