• Log In

The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog

Subscribe on Android Spotify Google Podcasts audible patreon
  • Home
  • Podcast
    • PEL Network Episodes
    • Publicly Available PEL Episodes
    • Paywalled and Ad-Free Episodes
    • PEL Episodes by Topic
    • Nightcap
    • Philosophy vs. Improv
    • Pretty Much Pop
    • Nakedly Examined Music
    • (sub)Text
    • Phi Fic Podcast
    • Combat & Classics
    • Constellary Tales
  • Blog
  • About
    • PEL FAQ
    • Meet PEL
    • About Pretty Much Pop
    • Philosophy vs. Improv
    • Nakedly Examined Music
    • Meet Phi Fic
    • Listener Feedback
    • Links
  • Join
    • Become a Citizen
    • Join Our Mailing List
    • Log In
  • Donate
  • Store
    • Episodes
    • Swag
    • Everything Else
    • Cart
    • Checkout
    • My Account
  • Contact
  • Mailing List

Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 23

June 4, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

Warning: foul language, juvenile humor, possible misogyny, and terrible sound quality. The song is called "Girl," and it is from fall, 1989, just a couple months into my college experience, recorded in the excruciatingly awful sounding method of tape-to-tape dubbing, which is what I used from 1987 or so through spring 1991.

This was my first collaboration of any sort with Steve Petrinko, whose MayTricks material has appeared in this blog before. I should say that due to its foulness, Steve has been against this ever seeing the light of day, despite his bitchin' guitar-solo and "bitch"-saying little sampling keyboard that we used. It was also my first, though very knocked off, co-writing effort, and I find it amusing that even for this piece of drivel, I was egotistic enough that I remember very clearly who wrote which lyric lines and felt the need to point that out whenever I would play this for anyone so that the lyrically inferior parts wouldn't be attributed to me. I will resist doing so now.

If someone wants to post a comment re. the line between humor and misogyny, be my guest. Later, in 1997 or so, I wrote (purely in my head; no tape was stained by this idea that I recall) an Elvis-ripoff song called "Rape My Life," which has irritatingly never left my memory. The joke of that song was that it was the opposite of euphemistic, meaning that whereas a euphemism expresses something offensive in less offensive terms that might not even be recognized as offensive by innocent parties, this song was making a bland, unoffensive point (about changing ones life for the better) by using over-the-top, needlessly offensive language. One of the verses went like this: "I want to rape my life, want to do it in the eyes; I want to f*#% that skull 'till it's paralyzed. I want to rape my life. I want to rape my life. I don't need a gun, I don't need a knife, I'm the man, I'm the one, I want to rape my life." (Procedural point: it's OK to say "fuck" in a blog post, but not when it's next to the word "skull.") My wife pretty much cried (not in a good way) when I sang it at her, even with my explanation of the subtle and complex humor involved, so away it went until now. Lucky fucking you.

Some technical crap: This was digitized from cassette with some processing back in 1994. My work on this just now was applying my bitchin' noise reduction plugin-in to it after bouncing it (along with a dozen other old recordings, some of which showed digital glitches and things) from my decrepit DAT machine, which I purchased in 1993 and looks like this:

It apparently no longer rewinds, so I need to open the little tapes and spool them back by hand (well, with a little screwdriver, actually). Luckily, most of my master mixes (I used this as the mix destination all the way up through 1998.) have already long since been bounced to PC (the DAT is digital storage, so it's just a matter of transferring the data, though you still have to actually play the tape while hitting "record" on the PC program), but I still have a small shelf of these tapes. I actually keep the DAT machine in my active stereo setup as a pass-through digital-analog converter for listening back to my computer and sometimes for digitizing cassettes; it's not strictly necessary, but it's convenient, and it doesn't require that the machine be able to rewind.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Filed Under: Nakedly Self-Examined Music

Trackbacks

  1. Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog: “Yours to Keep” | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    December 6, 2013 at 1:07 pm

    […] my case–as should be obvious if you read back into the history of my music blog posts here, like this one–I hoard every little thing I’ve ever worked on.) So there’s some little pressure […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Citizenship has its Benefits

Become a PEL Citizen
Become a PEL Citizen, and get access to all paywalled episodes, early and ad-free, including exclusive Part 2's for episodes starting September 2020; our after-show Nightcap, where the guys respond to listener email and chat more causally; a community of fellow learners, and more.

Rate and Review

Nightcap

Listen to Nightcap
On Nightcap, listen to the guys respond to listener email and chat more casually about their lives, the making of the show, current events and politics, and anything else that happens to come up.

Subscribe to Email Updates

Select list(s):

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.

Support PEL

Buy stuff through Amazon and send a few shekels our way at no extra cost to you.

Tweets by PartiallyExLife

Recent Comments

  • Jason Engelund on Ep. 318: Friedrich Schiller on the Civilizing Potential of Art (Part Two for Supporters)
  • Eric on Ep. 318: Friedrich Schiller on the Civilizing Potential of Art (Part One)
  • Vincent Czyz on Lucifer: How a Decent Deity Got a Bad Rap (Part 1)
  • Matt Kuenning on Ep. 310: Wittgenstein On World-Pictures (Part Two)
  • Sean Fournier on Not Episode 69: PEL Players Full Cast Audiobook of Plato’s “Gorgias” (part 1)

About The Partially Examined Life

The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we’re talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion

Become a PEL Citizen!

As a PEL Citizen, you’ll have access to a private social community of philosophers, thinkers, and other partial examiners where you can join or initiate discussion groups dedicated to particular readings, participate in lively forums, arrange online meet-ups for impromptu seminars, and more. PEL Citizens also have free access to podcast transcripts, guided readings, episode guides, PEL music, and other citizen-exclusive material. Click here to join.

Blog Post Categories

  • (sub)Text
  • Aftershow
  • Announcements
  • Audiobook
  • Book Excerpts
  • Citizen Content
  • Citizen Document
  • Citizen News
  • Close Reading
  • Combat and Classics
  • Constellary Tales
  • Exclude from Newsletter
  • Featured Ad-Free
  • Featured Article
  • General Announcements
  • Interview
  • Letter to the Editor
  • Misc. Philosophical Musings
  • Nakedly Examined Music Podcast
  • Nakedly Self-Examined Music
  • NEM Bonus
  • Not School Recording
  • Not School Report
  • Other (i.e. Lesser) Podcasts
  • PEL Music
  • PEL Nightcap
  • PEL's Notes
  • Personal Philosophies
  • Phi Fic Podcast
  • Philosophy vs. Improv
  • Podcast Episode (Citizen)
  • Podcast Episodes
  • Pretty Much Pop
  • Reviewage
  • Song Self-Exam
  • Supporter Exclusive
  • Things to Watch
  • Vintage Episode (Citizen)
  • Web Detritus

Follow:

Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | Apple Podcasts

Copyright © 2009 - 2023 · The Partially Examined Life, LLC. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy · Terms of Use · Copyright Policy

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in