In life there are two certainties: death and taxes. College, which is much like life except there is more duct tape involved, also has two certainties: poverty and frenzied smorgasbords of disregarding music copyrights.
Indeed, I am an Audiogalaxy dweeb. An innocent search for "Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf in the 10th grade escalated into random perusing on a multi-hourly basis through the various genres for songs whose titles simply sound interesting.
This is how I spend my Saturday nights.
Not only is it a fun, wholesome activity for the entire family, you can be assured it is on the same level, in terms of productivity, as licking self-adhesive stamps.
While browsing through the Europop collection, I came across a song titled "Beep Beep Cyberbaby" by Elks Skiffle Group that was placed, by the person who posted it, in the genre of - I kid you not - casiotone psychedelic twee.
"Twee?" Did Elmer Fudd write this post? I was less than thoroughly convinced that "twee" was an actual word, so I decided to conduct some highly scientific research. I asked my roommate, music major Kathleen Dishion, who is filled up to her musical eyeballs with the definitions of all sorts of useless words such as "clef."
ME: Kat? Do you know what "twee" means? Do you even know whether or not it is a word?
KATHLEEN (turning slowly from her game of Snood and looking at me with the stupefied expression commonly associated with cattle): "Twee?"
We joined forces and logged onto www.miriamwebster.com where we learned that "twee" is, in fact, a word. Sort of.
As it turns out, "twee" is British slang for affectedly or excessively dainty, delicate, cute or quaint.
Of course, this is coming from a country that subsides primarily on what seem like condensed balls of breaded ammunition left over from the Revolutionary War. Also, it associates the word "chap" with "fellow" while everyone else on the planet associates it with "stick."
Upon further investigation, we discovered that "casiotone" is not a word. After finding the official definition of "psychedelic" (imitating, suggestive of, or reproducing effects resembling those produced by psychedelic drugs), however, we concluded the author of this post must have had a little too much "casiotone psychedelic twee," if you catch our drift.
We could no longer stand the suspense, so I downloaded "Beep Beep Cyberbaby" to get a first-hand experience of casiotone psychedelic twee at its finest. Let me be the first to tell you that if this song is, by definition, "twee," then I am, by definition, "The Jolly Green Giant."
Though it may be viewed by some as affectedly cute, I view it as affectedly disturbing. This is probably because it is a song containing the words "beep" and "cyberbaby," just to take a shot in the dark.
As much as I wanted to put the whole sordid experience behind me, my curiosity got the better of me, and I did an Audiogalaxy search for Elks Skiffle Group.
I am sorry to break the collective heart of twee-lovers everywhere, but "Beep Beep Cyberbaby" is the band's only song in the database. Brace yourself: their album, "The Space Age Sounds of Elks Skiffle Group" is available for purchase.
I am sure it would make an excellent projectile.
Write to Aleshia at bari_girl@hotmail.com
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