by EditorM

Illustrated songs Dept.

Hopefully a step above demonstrative-gestural lip syncing, the illustrated song comic can combine the best features of geezer nostalgia, punning, and comic drawing. A nice touch here is that Rubin combines the song’s key line that everyone remembers with its somewhat less-familiar title.

Bonus! On Twitter they provide a bit of animation with another line from the song. Actually, one in the tweet text, and another as an animated header – it may be lost to the crop here. But try clicking *once* on the “play” icon and it may show properly.

17 Comments

  2. Unknown's avatar

    Huh. I’d seen it several times – and every time, I thought the guy on the right was walking away (and the bridge had broken behind him). Only just now did I realize he’s heading for the bridge… Head and hands and body angle say away, only his feet really say towards.

  4. Unknown's avatar

    “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear”.

    A perfect slogan for this website!

  5. Unknown's avatar

    Thanks, jjmcgaffey, realizing he’s heading towards the broken bridge but not seeing it gives a point to the guys on the other side yelling and pointing “Stop!” and “Hey!”.

  6. Unknown's avatar

    One of those rare 60’s songs where the title doesn’t contain any portion of the lyric. Making it difficult in the record store to find and buy it.

  7. Unknown's avatar

    I’ve noticed a lot of songs that put the hook in parenthesis after the title of the song, to cover this problem (eg: “59th St. Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)”) — I’ve always wondered, are those parentheticals official parts of the titles, or just marketing’s efforts to make sure you can find the record? Was this single labeled “For What It’s Worth (Stop! Hey! What’s that Sound?)”?

  8. Unknown's avatar

    larK’s observation about the parentheses trick does indeed seem like a practical solution to the record-store problem Mark H. describes. Though that has it addressing a commercial problem, I’m not sure it should always be put down to marketing. Perhaps the artist has mixed feelings of “This is what I really want to give it as a special clever title” along with “But yeah, I want people to see it identified by the line they will all be singing along with”.

    BTW, in this case I don’t know if the single or the track listing used parentheses. BUT we may be in disagreement as to what the “hook” line is — I take it not as “Stop! Hey! What’s that Sound?” but rather “Something’s Happening Here”.

    There is maybe a literary equivalent in OR. I remember from childhood a book popular with teachers and parents called *Hans Brinker Or The Silver Skates”. I just now punctuated it misleadingly, but that is how I heard it. And while indeed it is an instance of that practice of indecisive alternate titles, I heard it as like a plot summary, where someone is required to make a choice between that boy Hans and a pair of skates.

  10. Unknown's avatar

    Another consideration about the “Stop…” line is that in some parts of the song, “Hey” is replaced by “Children”.

  12. Unknown's avatar

    Mark H., et al. – what is this “record store” of which you speak???

    Mitch4 – my favorite “or” is Dr. Strangeglove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

  13. Unknown's avatar

    Bob – As I have long said would happen – vinyl is making a comeback and we saw a store for same somewhere (back in 2019 when we were going out into the world as I recall).

  14. Unknown's avatar

    Meryl, there is indeed booming business in collecting and trading / reselling old LPs and even 45s. What remains rumored but not heavily promoted that I have seen, are new releases pressed on vinyl.

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