BAFFLEGAB

"Bafflegab" is another word for Gibberish, which is yet another word for Jabber. In other words, unintelligble, made up nonsense. Gibberish is thought to have been first coined in the early 16th century, perhaps as a derivative of the word "jabber" with the "-ish" suffix. It may have also been used in an attempt to describe the eclectic mix of languages spoken in Gibraltar, which was apparently not understood by non-natives at the time of the word's inception. Every now and then, I ponder different interesting themes to "produce", and this is one that I came up with a long time ago. I found a way to work it out eventually after some hemming and hawing on how to feature it. For several reasons, this wasn't an easy list to create. Mostly, I wanted to try to stick as much as possible to "made up words" that had no meaning as titles of songs. That led me to some divergent avenues of thought though, so I decided to exclude any song titles that were acronyms (SWLABR by Cream), hybridized words (two words or partial words squished together - Anotherloverholeinyohead by Prince or Paranoimia by The Art of Noise), words that sound like phonetic distortions of other words (D'yer Mak'er - Zeppelin), and lastly, songs that are made up of phonetics that are separated into syllables (De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da by the Police or De Do Ron Ron by the Crystals). So, in essence, all that made my job a lot harder, but I thought it would be a good challenge. Everyone is probably familiar with "Jabberwocky", the famous Lewis Caroll poem, and there are a few songs on the list that happened to be inspired by that piece. The artwork this time is a smiling goat. I don't really know why. It just seemed to fit the theme to have a goat with a thought bubble. You can make sense of that however you'd like. Toodles.

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Jique (live) - Brazilian Girls
They broke up in 2011 (perhaps temporarily) but New York's darlings put out some kick butt tunes, including this gem, which was recorded live in 2005. None of the members are actually from Brazil and the only female in the band is Sabina Sciubba, the lead singer. She won't reveal what Jique actually means, but some secrets are best left to the imagination anyway...

Gobbledigook - Sigur Rós
A pretty good tune to represent this playlist I think. Although the lead singer Jónsi sings many of their tracks in "Vonlenska" (his own non-literal and unintelligible language he created,) this is not one of them. I tried to find out if any of their tracks are named with a gibberish title, but none are - they all seem to contain real Icelandic words while the lyrics are sometimes gibberish. I considered using a track off of () (their 2002 album) but none of the tracks are actually "named" on that release - so, this seemed like the best choice here. I like the way this song found a catchy way to "cycle" through the rhythms and sections. By the way, this record is entitled (Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust - which translates to: "With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly") and it was also produced by Flood - U2's producer during their heyday.

Heji - The Hidden Cameras
This band consists of a varying roster of musicians who play what singer-songwriter Joel Gibb once described as "gay church folk music". This track is off their album Awoo, and I don't know if that title means anything in particular. I'm also not sure if this song means anything in particular, because it just seems like a made up on-the spot instrumental piece. But it's kind of fun.

Vordhosbn - Aphex Twin
Richard D. James is Aphex Twin, and he describes himself thusly: "I'm just some irritating, lying, ginger kid from Cornwall who should have been locked up in some youth detention centre. I just managed to escape and blag it into music." He has a habit of making Albums and Songs with titles that really don't make a who lot of sense. He admits that the album this is from Druqks is "just a word he made up." Vordhosbn, even though it sounds random, is actually a Cornish word for "Sailboat". Sort of a comical war ensued when German musical ground-breaker Karlheinz Stockhausen commented on Aphex Twin's style in 1995, saying: " I think it would be very helpful if he listens to my work "Song of the Youth," which is electronic music, and a young boy's voice singing with himself. Because he would then immediately stop with all these post-African repetitions, and he would look for changing tempi and changing rhythms, and he would not allow to repeat any rhythm if it varied to some extent and if it did not have a direction in its sequence of variations." Aphex Twin, who was a fan of his retorted: "I thought he should listen to a couple of tracks of mine: "Digeridoo", then he'd stop making abstract, random patterns you can't dance to".

Barabajagal - Donovan
Backed by the Jeff Beck band, Scotland's pop sensation recorded this snappy little tune in 1969. The first United Kingdom pressings of the single use the full title ("Goo Goo Barabajagal (Love Is Hot)" But subsequent pressings (most UK copies) shorten the title to "Barabajagal".

Thela Hun Jingeet
The song name is an anagram of "heat in the jungle", which is a reference to crime in the city. (The term "heat" is American slang for firearms or for police.) During the end, Adrian Belew talks about his experiences with London Rastafarians and the police. For a while, he would ad lib this during live performances, but later they ended up relying on a verbatim track of the album recording played over the top of the band.

Too Shy - Kajagoogoo
The band coined their name by phonetically writing out a baby's first sounds (originally 'GagaGooGoo') and with a minor alteration, they settled on 'Kajagoogoo'. Limahl, the band's lead singer (who also seems to have a nonsense name, met Nick Rhodes (of the group Duran Duran) while he was working as a waiter at the Embassy Club in London, which led to their being discovered. After disbanding, he went on to perform the song "The NeverEnding Story" (from the 1984 film).

Ratatatay - Chumbawamba
Yes, Chumbawamba (unfortunately) released 15 albums in total. The song "Ratatatay" is off their 14th album and is about The Ursonate, a sound poem by Kurt Schwitters. . The poem was influenced by Raoul Hausmann's dadaist poem "fmsbw" which Schwitters' heard recited by Hausmann in Prague, 1921. You can watch it here.

Donimo - Cocteau Twins
Treasure (1984) is the third album by the Cocteau Twins. The album has been widely acclaimed by critics and it is considered by many fans to be the band's finest work. After a spacey intro Elizabeth Frazer eventually belts out some operatic vocals. Fraser's lyrics range from straightforward English to semi-comprehensible sentences and abstract mouth music, all of which are featured in this tune, so it fits the theme perfectly!

Sovay - Andrew Bird
Bird's lyrics incorporate portions of the English folk song "Sovay." It is a traditional English folk song about a young woman who dresses and arms herself as a highwayman in order to test her suitor. The name 'Sovay' is probably a corruption of 'Sophie' or 'Sylvie' - both of which appear instead in some versions of the original folk song. Bird broke into the music industry collaborating with the Band Squirrel Nut Zippers, but this is off his third solo album Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs. I originally wanted to include "Imitosis" off Armchair Apocrypha but this seemed to fit better in the end. This is also the crossover tune on this playlist, since the theme last time was "(singular) females".

Vahevala (live)- Loggins and Messina
Recorded in Santa Barbara in 2005 at one of the first performances of their reunion tour, this track starts off a little weirdly (with what is almost a sea chanty) but eventually the duo break into a rousing version of the song. This was their first hit from 1972. Loggins explains the tune's name thusly: "It caught my attention because it sounded like a place, so I made it up like a fantasy island".

Roggae - Phish
I think The Story of the Ghost is my favorite all-time Phish album. For two reasons. First, the album was almost entirely generated from improv sessions. Second, they teamed up with super-producer Andy Wallace, who is known for massive pop culture albums like Nirvana's Nevermind, Sonic Youth's Dirty, and Jeff Buckley's Grace. I think his influence led to them "succinctly" expressing their ideas without relying too much on overextending the concepts all the time like they began to rely on for live concerts. I like the concept that the ideas here are well executed album-wise, but they can be re-interpreted a bit live because the jams are somewhat cut off here. The lyrics make no sense, but I like the way this short song develops and has lots of different interesting moments. Perhaps this is a squeeze between "Rock" and "Reggae" but I don't think that's ever been explicity mentioned by the band - I could be mistaken though. Another song I considered putting on here is "Mock Song", since all the lyrics are in Mike Gordon's typical style (random weirdness) but I settled on this because it's catchier.

Sussudio - Phil Collins
The main lyric came about as Collins was improvising lyrics to a drum machine track he had programmed: "suss-sussudio" was a wording that scanned well. After trying to find an alternative word to fit the rhythm, the singer decided to keep "Sussudio" as the song title and lyric. Collins has said that this is the song people most often sing to him when they spot him on the street.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight - The Tokens
Also known as "Wimoweh" and originally as "Mbube", this is actually a cover of the South African song by Solomon Linda, which was written in 1920. Mbube became a hit and many people covered the tune, including the Tokens, who turned it into a #1 hit in America. In 1952, The Weavers recorded their adapted version of the song with brass and string orchestra entitled Wimoweh - a mishearing of the original song's chorus of "Uyimbube" (Which was Zulu for "You are a lion"). They also inserted the phrase: "In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight". In 1998, The Tokens were mentioned by the Guinness Book of World Records, for performing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at all 30 Major League Baseball stadiums in the United States and Canada.

Waka / Jawaka - Frank Zappa
According to Zappa, the title "is something that showed up on a Ouija board at one time." If you've never heard this you need to experience it once. When Frank Zappa found himself stuck in a wheelchair for most of the year 1972 (after a "fan" pushed him off the stage), one of the first things he tried was to write jazz fusion music scored for wider instrumentation than an average rock band. The tunes off the album of the same name were never performed live.

Uaoie - KMFDM
KMFDM is actually an acronym: "Kein Mehrheit Für Die Mitleid" which loosely translates as "no pity for the majority". The song name though, was intended by the band to be pronounced "like a scream or something". This is also the album name, and UAIOE began a tradition for KMFDM of using five-letter words as their album titles. The reason this is after Frank Zappa is because it's actually a rendition of his song I'm the Slime.

Bangarang - Skrillex
I'm not much for dubstep but I have to admit this is catchy as hell. It uses "chopped-up vocal hooks" performed by American rapper Sirah, with the last line of the song saying "I'm eating Fun Dip right now/Not givin' a f**k". The title is a reference to the 1991 film Hook, in which the Lost Boys' catch cry is "bangarang!"

Munchen - Merzbow
Merzbow (メルツバウ) is the main recording name of the Japanese noise musician Masami Akita. He has released over 250 "studio" albums. (Volume doesn't necessarily translate to quality i'm afraid...) The name "Merzbow" comes from German artist Kurt Schwitters' artwork, "Merzbau", who also influenced Chumbawamaba earlier. This was chosen to reflect Akita's dada influence and junk art aesthetic. In high school Akita was the drummer of various bands but he left due to the other members being "grass-smoking Zappa freaks". The executive producer of this album (entitled "1930") was avant garde composer John Zorn, so I felt compelled to pick a track from it.

Pyjamarama - Roxy Music
Britain's glam rock wizards made this single-only release, which climbed to #10 on the British charts. Pyjamarama was also a computer game for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64 systems.

Zooropa - U2
The title track from their 1993 album, the lyrics in the song were based on advertising slogans, and also featured the phrase "dream out loud", which has appeared in other U2 media. The song title seems like it doesn't make sense but it is actually a combination of the words "Zoo" and "Europa". Ok - maybe I cheated, but it's the only portmanteau that I included on this list because it didn't seem very obvious.

Abacab - Genesis
Genesis' 11th album took its name from an early structural arrangement of the title track sections. However, the eventual track does not use this structural form at all. This album was produced by Hugh Padham, who has produced records for many other superstar Brits.

Jabberwocky - Branford Marsalis Quartet
From their 2009 album Morphosen, it is apparent that the group feels that this is an abstract collage of phrasings, or they wouldn't have named it after the nonsense verse poem written by Lewis Carroll in 1871. It doesn't seem as random as that, but the piece certainly lives up to the name.

China Cat Sunflower - Grateful Dead
From the album Aoxomoxoa, which is not only gibberish, but also palindromic, this song actually references Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland in the lyrics.

Dusic - Brick
Atlanta based soul / funk outfit Brick makes you want to put on your boogie shoes. They coined their own term for disco-jazz, "dazz", which was also the title of their biggest #1 hit. It would appear that "dusic" stands for disco-music, but that doesn't really seem obvious unless you know this band well. This track from their self-titled second album. Good stuff.