Scott Walker "Bish Bosch"

Anyone got any ideas about deciphering the lyrics? I want to know what all the 'XI V I I X I' bits are referring to on Zercon for example. It seems Scott revealed only a tiny amount of information about the record in interviews.

aargh @ that cover. I want 30 secs of my life back.

I don't know about the roman numerals, but have you read Walker's explanation of the song's subject?

The title contains two brown dwarves: one, the coldest sub-stellar body in the universe discovered so far; the other, Zercon, was a real-life Moorish jester at the fifth century court of Attila the Hun.

“I was interested in this thing about someone trying to escape his situation – in this case Attila’s wooden palace, which he regards as an immense toilet – and achieve a kind of spiritual sovereignty, and a height beyond calculation. As the song moves forward he imagines himself at different stages of height: he imagines first that he escapes and finds himself surrounded by eagles; then there’s the mention of St Simon on his pillar; then he jumps to 1930s America where it’s become a flagpole-sitter…’ Flagpole-sitting – trying to spend several days alone on a platform at the top of a pole – achieved a brief craze status in the 30s.

At the end of the song he eventually becomes a Brown Dwarf, known as SDSS1416. As with the majority of my songs, it ends in failure, Like a brown dwarf, he freezes to death.”

Here's an account from Priscus, which has more about Zercon.

So that first part of the song seems to be the jester doing his job at Attila's court (near the Tisza river in Hungary, which is mentioned) & insulting various types - accusing women of being prostitutes (the opening crack) or going like a gynozoon (which is a female animal trained to have sex with a man, apparently), throwing some national slurs at greeks, Gauls etc. (Basically, It's the chaotic international court of a ruler who's been terrifying the established powers of Europe.)

At the same time there's the rise of ascetic christianity – so there are eunuch lines in there & of course the section about throwing your own mother's food back at her, which is directly about Simeon Stylites i think - it's Zercon, I guess, thinking with a kind of disgust/fascination about this religion, which might be showing him a way to climb up, but is also grotesque.

There's also lot of end of antiquity/dark ages stuff going on in the background - like telescoped northern invasions - Norsemen, Nibelung are Norse-Burgundian kings, 'Basel-cum-Strasbourg-cum-Frankfurt-cum-Speyer-cum' – which is historically later than Zercon/Attila, but all adds doomy living-in-collapse atmosphere.

Those are random thoughts on the opening section. I'd need to read closer (and google harder) to get further.

Still no idea about the numbers though.

hehe, I googled "gynozoon" recently and, well, yeah I kind of wished I hadn't.

I'd read the press release, woof, but not the second bit of your post which is a great help. Would be nice to get a bit more lyric dissection going on on this thread - after all, that's part of the latter-day SW experience really.

Good point about Simeon Stylites (who isn't explicitly mentioned in the lyrics or the accompanying texts), but yeah, he refused to see his mother during all the time he spent on his pillar and wasn't she eventually buried at the bottom of the pillar when she died?

Still no idea about the numbers though.

In the Radio 6 interview he says, in passing, they are supposed to represent telephone numbers, as would have been scrawled on the walls of a Roman khazi if telephones had existed

ha, ok, thanks, would never have worked that out

Send "SDSS1416+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)" Ringtone to your Cell

ohhh, so the insults and gags are toilet graffiti. I get it.

and the flatulence is flatulence..

The whole thing's just one big fart gag

we must make fart noises or else we become a cold dead lifeless star do u see?

ohhh, so the insults and gags are toilet graffiti. I get it.

The insults in "SDSS1416whatevea" are ripostes to hecklers... from the same Radio 6 interview

You have to do a gig to have hecklers.

I guess even Simeon Stylites had to do his business every now and again. Maybe he amused himself by carving out graffiti on the toilet area of his pillar while he was at it.

how the dwarf got brown

I still haven't gotten this album but i think i will soon, this lyric discussion is fascinating.

Anyone know what these refer to:

Adopocere
Maman Neigho

?

Right - that makes sense - it's sort of how I was seeing the earlier ones, the "the red light where you work", "you should get an agent" stuff - but then it's (Zercon-imagined) bog graffiti by the time you get to "flush hard, it's a long way to Athens", "do not eat the big pink mint".

I will listen to that interview when I get in, it sounds informative if I am going down this rabbithole.

(multi xps to Tom that)

the "big pink mint" is a toilet freshener!?!?!

YES

woof, you're the bwast!

I think it's a 'Norseman are thick savages' gag about a toilet freshener.

The 'flush hard' joke is ummmm, either saying 'greeks are shits' or thinking about it some more, 'greeks are homosexuals & likely to be found in your bottom'.

Or saying that Athens is a cesspit

From Wiki:

Adipocere (pron.: /ˈædɨpɵsɪər/), also known as corpse, grave or mortuary wax, is a wax-like organic substance formed by the anaerobic bacterial hydrolysis of fat in tissue, such as body fat in corpses. In its formation, putrefaction is replaced by a permanent firm cast of fatty tissues, internal organs and the face.

Adipocere in a zoot...? There are a lot of musical and lyrical references to late-40s/early-50s pop culture throughout Epizootics!. I kind of imagine it as West Side Story as viewed by someone who's having an extremely bad trip.

West Side Story South Pacific

Not an answer to dog latin's question, but I've just learned from Google that there's a racehorse with the charming name "Neigh O Me".

Other searches on the family name "Neigho" throws up... nothing much other than it's an ancient name.

wasn't she eventually buried at the bottom of the pillar when she died?

― besides Sunny Real Estate (dog latin), Thursday, January 24, 2013 7:48 AM (5 hours ago)

buried alive actually, the bastard still didn't come down

The Alfredo Garcia cameo in "Epizootics!" makes me very happy altho I have no idea what it's doing there

I pretty much assumed that this album would be my automatic BEST OF DECADE just based on the trailer + "Epizootics!" & the fact that I'm a massive scott stan (listened to the drift nearly every day for like a year after it came out). And then the release date came & I heard it and I just couldn't help feeling deflated, like yeah this is brilliant but none of the songs really get to me the way eg "clara" or "farmer in the city" do.

Happily I'm revising this position & now think that "zercon" especially is one of the most affecting things he's done. The central metaphor, though oblique, is just so elegant & moving: zercon moving to higher & higher peaks (across multiple eras/spaces) in order to escape his circumstances, but of course he can't, and even when he ascends to space he's still a dwarf and the universe is still cold & cruel & unfeeling - Walker's said in interviews that at the beginning of the song zercon is getting "heckled by silence", which is some kinda bergman-level angst right there. At its core it's not a zillion miles away from the 60s character pieces - poor zercon, like big louise, is looking for (fire) escapes in the sky.

I mean I wouldn't really claim to know what's ~going on~ in the song at all times but it seems to be "about" different kinds of human cruelty & the ways people have of coping with them. Hence the many references to past racisms &c. Zercon's defensive strategy against the society that treats him like shit is to give as good as he gets (all the classic putdowns at the start of the song); later, he just withdraws & withdraws until there's nothing left & he "drop[s] into the darkness" (this is how you disappear). The responses to heckles in the last part of the song aren't randomly chosen, they all point towards complete effacement: "I want to forget you just the way you are", "I think you've got nothing there","I hope your face clears up".

This is why I can't get with complaints about the humour - even the funny lines on this album aren't just there for the lolz. Plus there's always been humour in scott's work - on the drift he actually bursts out laughing ffs!

Brilliant post wins

Another thought I had:

ROOMFULLAMICEROOMFULLAMICEROOMFULLAMICEROOMFULLAMICE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6AjaS1adwk8

I laughed.

Hmm!

http://pitchfork.com/news/50048-scott-walkers-bish-bosch-becoming-multimedia-show-for-vivid-sydney-festival/

The Alfredo Garcia cameo in "Epizootics!" makes me very happy altho I have no idea what it's doing there

― castle grayscale (wins), Thursday, 31 January 2013 22:55 (1 month ago) Permalink

Garcia also gets a mention in Cockfighter on Tilt.

"eccentric, asburd"

still playing this. Also

Another thought I had:

ROOMFULLAMICEROOMFULLAMICEROOMFULLAMICEROOMFULLAMICE

― ☯ t (wins), Thursday, 7 February 2013 00:49 (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

me otm, although that may be the "jazz police" of this album

Some video of the Bish Bosch thingie at the Sydney Opera house:

http://youtu.be/M6gowakwh8A

looks neat!

Really hope they do this in the UK. The Sydney opera house thing is free to attend! Any ilxors going?

Contrast and compare:

"Take that accidentally in the bollocks for a start", Scott Walker, 'Epizootics!', 2012

"'ere, get this in the bollocks for a start!", Derek & Clive, 'You Cunt', 1976

It's all in the detais. Gary Barlow would not have made it so big in a boy band called "Ere, Get this"

?????

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7zXriGjAiM

"I don't come to where you work and punch your donkey on the streets of Galway."

― 5-Hour Enmity (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Friday, October 5, 2012 3:54 PM (1 year ago)

this might be the most i've ever laughed at a post on ILM. jus sayin.

i don't think there's been a point this year where I haven't had this album on some sort of rotation and i'm still noticing new things about it.

...such as?

mostly just little details, layers, a vocal section that i'd not really noticed before. really these albums are such a rollercoaster at first that you don't really take in the scenery - it's all hair-raising twists and turns etc.