Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

The Annotated Ball Of Twine In Minnesota

There's a (comedy) song by Weird Al Yankovic called The Biggest Ball Of Twine In Minnesota, which recounts a (fictional, I hope) family trip to see the famous, legendary, uh.. well, okay, well-known World's Largest Ball Of Twine Made By One Man. A little research reveals that this astonishing achievement (11 feet high, 40 feet in circumference, and an awful lot of string) can be seen in Darwin, Minnesota - population 276 in 2000. If you want to know where it is it's right here, and if you want to send it a letter then I guess "Twine Ball, Darwin, MN 55324" will get there.

What's also interesting is that a section of the song lists all the other weird and wonderful locations that this please-God-let-them-be-fictional family has visited, so I set myself the task of tying the lyrics to the attractions mentioned and I'm delighted to say they're all true. So here, without further ado, are the relevant lyrics. Annotated. I think I need more sleep if I'm doing things like this.

"There's Elvis-a-rama...
The Elvis-A-Rama Museum in (no surprise) Las Vegas, NV has live shows, exhibits, and, well, more Elvis stuff than I can bring myself to care about.

... the Tupperware Museum...
The Tupperware Museum, aka the Tupperware Awareness Center at Tupperware World HQ in Kissimmee, FL has, it appears, closed down. Shame.

... the Boll Weevil Monument...
Now here's one that is still there. After boll weevils ravaged the local cotton crop in 1915, local farmers had to diversity. The people of Enterprise, AL built a monument to this proud insect in gratitude, a statue of a woman looking surprisingly unrevolted at having to hold a giant bug. I am not making this up, and here's a picture to prove it.

... and Cranberry World...
You can "Imagine life from the point of view of a cranberry!" at Cranberry World Visitors Center in Plymouth, Mass. Sponsored by Ocean Spray, naturally.

... the Shuffleboard Hall Of Fame...
The National (no less) Shuffleboard Hall Of Fame is housed at St Petersburg Shuffleboard Club in St Petersburg, FL. No idea of opening hours, I'm afraid.

... Poodle Dog Rock...
Poodle Rock, also known as Poodle Dog Rock, is in the Valley of Fire State Park, NV. It's a rock that's shaped a bit like a poodle.

... and the Mecca Of Albino Squirrels."
Olney, IL has a lot of albino squirrels and claims this title. There are other pretenders to Olney's throne as the Mecca Of Albino Squirrels, though - both Kenton, TN and Marionville, MO dispute the title while Brevard, NC has white squirrels which are not albino. In Canada, Exeter, Ontario has an annual White Squirrel Festival. Roadside America covers the controversy in detail.

The song continues with some more generic attractions, so I'll be briefer from here.
"We've been to ghost towns, theme parks, wax museums and a place where you can drive through the middle of a tree,

We've seen alligator farms and tarantula ranches (Google came up with nothing useful there), but there's still one thing we got to see."

Right! Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get back to planning my visiting-weird-roadside-attractions road trip around the US.

The lion finally wakes up

There's an interesting article in the Guardian about new developments in the long, sad story of Solomon Linda, the Zulu who wrote one of the most famous songs in the world.

If you've never heard of him, that's not surprising - it's only been in the last few years that the wider world has started making moves toward giving him the credit he deserves as original creator of Mbube, better known as The Lion Sleeps Tonight or Wimoweh. With his band, The Original Evening Birds, Linda walked into a Johannesburg recording studio in the late 1930s and recorded Mbube, improvising the tune that would go around the world in the song's last half minute. Linda promptly signed away the rights to the song, as was then the usual practice. Mbube went on to become an enormous hit in Africa, selling 100,000 copies, and a copy found its way to Pete Seeger in the States. Seeger's band covered it as Wimoweh, and the Lion was on his way to global stardom.

To cut a very long story short, since then the various derivatives of Mbube have been recorded hundreds of times (most notably to British listeners of my age as Tight Fit's remarkably appalling The Lion Sleeps Tonight) and is currently most prominent as a song in Disney's The Lion King, which is making millions as a sell-out stage show. Linda himself ended up with nothing, dying penniless in 1962 to be buried in a pauper's grave. His children live in poverty in Soweto. While he hadn't been unaware of his song becoming a global hit, he hadn't known that by rights he should have been getting paid for it. While Pete Seeger, to his credit, did his best to get money to Linda and claims to have given instructions for the song's royalties to be sent to Soweto, other players in the story were less honourable.

Various people have claimed authorship of the song in order to claim songwriting royalties. Some of them have even sued each other over it. Many people have recorded it. REM used it as the backbone of The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight, and a quick glance at the sleeve notes of Automatic For The People indicates that they had permission from "Abilene Music, Inc." to do so. Another disc on my shelf contains The Guitar by They Might be Giants, credited to TMBG/Weiss/Creatore/Peretti. Weiss/Creatore/Peretti would, in a just world, get no credit for the song other than as arrangers. With the convenient lack of proper US copyright protection of Mbube at the time of their producing a recording of the song by the Tokens, however, they put the song out as their own and claimed songwriting credits and mechanical royalties. In summary, a lot of people have made a whole bucket of money out of Linda's tune, and Rolling Stone estimates derivatives of Mbube have clocked up three centuries of radio airplay. Which is a lot. In money terms, it is estimated that Linda and his descendents are owed at least $15 million. Which is also a lot.

Now, finally, after decades of abortive attempts to get Linda the financial and moral recognition he deserves, the lawsuits have finally started with the discovery of a piece of British colonial-era legislation, still in force in South Africa, under which the rights to a composition revert to the author after 25 years. The first target is Disney. If the Mouse has any morals at all, Disney will simply do the right thing and pay up without needing to be taken to court. Even a few percent of $15 million would improve the lives of Linda's family beyond recognition, and given the revenues the song has helped generate for Eisner's corporation it would be small change for them to do the right thing and pay the full amount.

It's one of the longest, most fascinating and saddest stories in the history of modern music, and it would be nice to see Linda's heirs finally getting the payment they deserve after so many other people and companies have made so much out of his thirty-second improvisation all those years ago in a hot Johannesburg studio.

(Sources: Guardian story, 3rdearmusic.com, The Rough Guide To World Music, Volume 1. The original version of Mbube is available on the rather excellent Rough Guide To The Music Of South Africa, RGNET1020CD, which appears to be deleted in the UK but may still be available from some outlets.)

Competition time!

Having been taking a good delve around the contents of the UK iTunes Music Store recently looking for things to spend those little impusive 79ps on, I've realised that just as every record shop has its dark corners where you find really awful stuff nobody in their right mind would ever want, so does the iTMS.

I think the worst thing I've found so far is - with apologies to any visiting Americans - this album, and if one track has to be picked out for particular horrendousness it's God Bless The USA.

But there must be worse things out there. With 700,000 tracks on the books there are bound to be some real, unutterable, unforgivable stinkers which only the truly deranged would ever consider dropping 79p on. So let's find them.

I hereby announce a competition. Just find what you think is the worst track on the UK iTunes Music Store (if you're already registered with the US store, you can browse the UK one as well via the link on the front page). You don't have to buy it to make your judgement - in fact, it's a positive bonus if the 30-second previews are enough to make you want to throw up - so it won't cost you anything unless you stumble across something you quite like on the way to finding your personal Worst Track.

Once you've made your choice, mail the link (PC users right click the track and select "Copy URL", Mac users control-click and do the same) to itunes@uffish.net. After a reasonable amount of time, and assuming I get enough entries (more than, ooh, 5, let's say) to make it worthwhile, I'll shortlist the worst of them and put the top few to the vote. The track which wins this vote will be declared the Most Dreadful, winning the person who suggested it what else but.. an iTunes gift voucher to the value of 10 pounds, 15 Euro or US$15, depending on the preference of the winner.

In the event of a tie, or two or more people nominating the winning song, the prize will be shared in some way or another or maybe substituted for something else. All decisions are final, my decisions are final, this is just a bit of fun with a small financial incentive, no correspondence will be entered into.

New this week in the iTMS..

I've just been browsing the list of this week's new additions to the UK iTunes Music Store. Among the highlights, Apple realise their fatal mistake in ignoring the crucial West Country market by adding two albums by the Wurzels, a move which will also appeal to the type of music pedant who enjoys pointing out that the title of their greatest hit is actually 'Combine Harvester (Brand New Key)' and not 'I've Got A Brand New Combine Harvester'. Other gems in this week's additions include The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber by The New World Orchestra (suitable for any hotel reception) , and - on a more positive note - The Best of Syd Barrett.

If you're after value for money for your 79p, however, Bat Out Of Hell is now there, and with a running time of 9'52" the title track clocks in at a mere 0.13 pence per second.

Albums of my life: Alchemy

There are some albums which feel like they've been with me my whole life, and I'm listening to one of them now. At the age of 11 or 12 I acquired (probably by pinching, sorry, borrowing from my brother) a TDK AD90 cassette tape holding a copy of Alchemy by Dire Straits and I've been listening to it regularly ever since. For those who don't know, Alchemy is a live album recorded at the Hammersmith Odeon in July 1983 using the Rolling Stones mobile and released in early 1984, just before the vast global success of Brothers In Arms (which conveniently coincided with widespread adoption of CD players) changed the band forever.

At one-and-a-half hours for a mere eleven tracks you might be forgiven for thinking it's some kind of experimental prog rock album or Eno-esque ambient noodle. It's neither - some tracks are simply very, very extended when compared with the studio recordings, but Knopfler and co manage to make them interesting, storming through a "greatest hits to date" set including an epic 11-minute Sultans of Swing. The whole thing's recorded without overdubs or remixing, and it's a shame that what was presumably the limits of the original release format (double LP) led to some tracks from the original gig being omitted from the album. If those tapes are still in the vault, whoever now owns them could probably make a great deal of money re-releasing the album with the missing tracks restored.

I think that by now I must know every note of this album and probably every random yell from the crowd as well, but it still sounds as fresh and, more importantly, as rocking as it was when it was first released. Just don't look at the photos in the CD booklet, in which a headband-wearing Knopfler wearing a pastel-coloured jacket straight out of Miami Vice makes it very clear what decade the album was recorded in.

I bought my own copy at some point in the past and more recently bought it on CD so that old AD90 is long gone, but all I have to do is dial up Alchemy on my iPod and I'm transformed back to being an awkward 14-year old who doesn't take enough baths and thinks that quoting lyrics is the ultimate in profound discourse. Not literally, you understand - the last thing I want to be is 14 again, but you know what I mean - it's one of those albums which I can hardly remember ever not having around.

Alchemy is definitely what people who spend too much time in record shops would call a seminal live album. As a bonus, it's also the only Dire Straits album which it's not necessary to be embarrased to confess to owning. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to hammering out the piano part to Romeo and Juliet on my desk.