where did the instrumental post-rock/math-rock tradition of goofy song names originate

I told you already, Erik Satie.

(xp)

indeed!

"Bride Stripped Bare" eventually mutated into a Bonzos song

The best Bonzos song tbrr

name of a brian ferry album too!

oops, bryan

approximately when did this trend crosspollinate with emo

Don't know Brian Bryan's stuff tbh

Bryan Emo?

for a recent example of this on a math-emo album with singing: https://tinyengines.bandcamp.com/album/uniola

I feel like in Emo it's a slightly different thing, a lot of the titles I think are about overdetermined specifity, trying to nail down an emotional mood but also slightly ironically undercut themselves, not goofs as such?

1. Ride Or Die, Remember?
2. Well, Kansas Ain't What It Used To Be.
3. You're Lucky You Didn't Lose Your Arm
4. I Even Got This Scar To Match
5. Next Time, Send A Limo
6. We Are Groot.
7. Ice? Yeah, You Could Chisel Some Off Your Heart, If You Could Find It.
8. Ok, Ok, I'll Turn Down The Music
9. My Superman Seat-Grab Barrel Roll? I'm Still Working On It.
10. I Was Raised With A Different Kind Of Loyalty, You Know What I Mean. I Vote No. (Remember The Second You Go Through That Door, Everything Changes. Our Old Life Is Done.)
11. That Was The Flame Thrower. Use The Rockets.

Wow OK that Look Mexico album. Still there's tons of self-aware angst/bravura in there tho

Anyway does this come via Connor Oberst at some point?

Aside from the song titles I already knew, people could be totally making this shit up on the fly itt and I'd be none the wiser.

...is the title of a Tortoise Japanese bonus track.

There was a touch of this on the first Telefon Tel Aviv album, maybe because they were really into the Chicago post-rock scene

What's the Use of Feet If You Haven't Got Legs?
Your Face Reminds Me of When I Was Old
John Thomas on the Inside Is Nothing but Foam

i guess you're right noodle, the look mexico titles are a little less outrageous and a little more self-conscious than "An Address That Was To Skip Ahead Of The Gallop Of Its Own Sperm And Eggs And Wait For Itself In The Future: Letter To 2096"

i always took it as a song that is meant to convey a very specific emotion or social instance. it's what i do in my own music. a title like 'alright boys let's go to lunch' has a very specific meaning and is about something that most anyone who has lived for longer than five years can relate to. but naming it just 'giving up' or 'i gave up' is boring, despite that it may send the message more clearly.

or maybe it's all just an attempt at attention-grabbing bs.

It's shite is what it is.

Back in highschool, it's year we would write a school play, and the students would write a bunch of songs for that, and the script would say things like 'lovesong' or 'fight song' or 'I am evil song' and most people would just name the songs that. And second year, me and my friends wrote the 'party song', and while the chorus was about sex, the bridge just went 'this is the paaaarty song!'. So when they wrote the program notes for the play, they asked us 'so is this called 'party song'?', and I said 'no, it's called 'The Green Volkswagen''. And that's why I had no friends in high school.

and yet, if you had just been like, "ya, 'party song'" someone would inevitably have sarcastically remarked, "wow, what an original title!"

you did a good thing, fred.

The earliest emo example I can think of is that ridiculously long Cap'n Jazz album title.

You guys get to write your own school plays over there? We have to license ours from Disney®.

Always dug The Fucking Champs track titles -- "Andres Segovia Interests Me," "These Glyphs Are Dusty," "Hats Off to Music," etc.

I went to a music school. I think most other Danish schools just do Grease as well. I volunteered for script duty as well two years, first time we decided on my idea to adapt Emir Kosturica's 'Underground'. It was a pretty incoherent script, none of us bothered to watch the film. It was a pretty pretentious school.

i feel like so many posts in this thread are like the equivalent of "why are computer files put in things called 'folders' - where does this come from?"

These bands' set lists must take up multiple sheets on multiple monitors

XP - to Tom D, it's funny because the ridiculous instrumental math-metal band I was in nearly 20 years ago had an album called 'Arm Yourself With Clairvoyance', taken from a quote by Satie. And yeah we did have some stupid song titles too, natch.

approximately when did this trend crosspollinate with emo

― american bradass (BradNelson), Wednesday, November 6, 2019 7:52 PM (fifty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Was literally going to post this exact thing! Many of these are uncomfortably close to Fall Out Boy song titles.

1. Dick Cheney Bleeding to Death on the Streets of Detroit
2. Paul Wolfowitz Boiled Alive in His Own Urine
3. William Kristol Raped in Prison
4. A Menstruating Condolezza Rice Dropped in the Amazon River, Eaten by Pirahna in 60 Seconds
5. Ari Fleischer Split Right Down in the Middle
6. Colin Powell Uncle Tom
7. Michael Powell Choking to Death on the Shattered Glass of My TV Screen
8. Donald Rumsfeld Buried Up to His Neck in Dogshit With Lawnmower on Top
9. Richard Perle Torn Apart by Jackals
10. Fuck John Cage
11. William Rehnquist Torn Apart by Six-Foot Bull Sharks
12. Bill Frist Kept Alive in a Persistent Vegetative State and Broadcast 24 Hours a Day on His Own Cable Network, Part 1
13. Bill Frist Kept Alive in a Persistent Vegetative State and Broadcast 24 Hours a Day on His Own Cable Network, Part 2
14. Clarence Thomas on the Wrong End of a Gay Porno
15. Bill O'Reilly's Face Sanded Off, Pureed, Injected Into an Enema Bag and Administered to a Willing Rick Santorum
16. John Ashcroft Flattened Under the Weight of a 5,200 Pound Replica of the Ten Commandments
17. Rush Limbaugh Sodomized by a 30-Pound Cuban Cigar
18. Trent Lott Asking for Directions in Brooklyn (aka Fuckin' Cracker)
19. Pat Robertson Plagued by Locusts
20. Tom DeLay Shoved in a Roach Motel, Poisoned, and Eaten From the Inside Out by Tarantulas
21. Jack Abramoff Scalped
22. Judith Miller Cut in Two by an Improvised Explosive Device
23. Michael Brown in the Superdome on September 4, 2005
24. Tony Blair Trampled by French Poodles
25. Jerry Falwell Meets the Children of the Corn
26. Anthony Scalia has a Hunting Accident in the Middle of the Wilderness, Gets Savaged by Wolves
27. Peggy Noonan Forcefed the Rotting Corpse of Ronald Reagan
28. Karl Rove Forced to Roam the Earth Forever as One of the Living Dead Feeding on Raw Sewage
29. Scott McLellan Wrapped in a Barbed Wire and Thrown Into a Press Room of Broken Glass, Part 1
30. Scott McLellan Wrapped in a Barbed Wire and Thrown Into a Press Room of Broken Glass, Part 2
31. Alberto Gonzales Wearing a Black Hooded Mask, Standing on a Crate With Electric Wires Taped to His Outstretched Hands
32. Paul Bremer at the End of Lynndie England's Leash
33. Brit Hume Scattered, Smothered, Tarred and Feathered
34. George W. Bush Go Straight to Fucking Hell
35. Silence Is Golden

"Fuck John Cage" seems to be a thematic outlier?

has anyone ever used an iphone's predictive text feature to churn out song titles?

these remind me of the spaceship names in the culture novels

Best Use of Parantheses (In a Song Title)

Nation of Ulysses - A Kid Who Tells On Another Kid Is A Dead Kid

this is a quote from the film "Over the Edge" FYI

or are we not distinguishing between things that are direct references/quotes of other works (I see "The Bride Stripped Bare" was also referenced upthread)? Cuz quotes/references don't seem very random to me.

From Japan’s post-rock-tuned reunion album (which contains more similarly titled instrumentals):

https://youtu.be/BKoTJ56ij4c

If we are talking origins, Soft Machine Volume Two from 1969 has

"Hibou, Anemone and Bear"
"Thank You Pierrot Lunaire"
"Have You Ever Bean Green?"
"Fire Engine Passing with Bells Clanging"
"Orange Skin Food"
"10:30 Returns to the Bedroom"

(the best titles, "As Long as He Lies Perfectly Still" and "Dedicated to You But You Weren't Listening" don't count as they are not instrumentals)

Think the root of this stuff was perhaps in psychedelia, West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band's 1968 LP "Volume 3: A Child's Guide to Good and Evil" has

"Eighteen Is Over the Hill"
"Our Drummer Always Plays in the Nude"
"A Child of a Few Hours Is Burning to Death"
"Anniversary of World War III"

(although I don't think these are instrumentals)

Think there are probably some goofy jazz titles from the early 60s, but really not an expert on those.

those WCPAEB songs aren't instrumentals e.g. "A Child of a Few Hours Is Burning to Death" is an anti-war song about napalm being dropped on civilians, albeit a somewhat surreal one ('we should have called suzy and bobby - they love to watch fires!')