Tuesday Tunes

Trigger Warning - The ‘Research ADDENDUM’ portion of this post contains potentially disturbing content.

Except for Star Wars, I tend to hang on the edge of fandoms. But on the odd occasion I find myself staring down the maw of a similar Sarlacc Pit (a term which I spelled correctly without looking, but still checked to make sure I was correct). These other science fiction and fantasy crowds that i could fall into I somehow avoid for a really long time. I’ve haven’t seen all the Star Treks, recent or otherwise, I’ve only seen an episode or two of Babylon 5, I missed comics entirely. I only played Dungeons and Dragons for the first time in just before fifth edition came out. But every so often, like with D&D, I fall into another fandom …

The Song(s)
Song: Blink
Artist: Chameleon Circuit
Album: Chameleon Circuit - 2009 - DFTBA Records
Method of discovery: Recommended by a Whovian

Theory: The song plays the chords I-bIII-bVII-IV, on repeat. The amount of time each chord is held varies, but it’s the same pattern. What I want to focus on - and I’m not sure I’ve discussed - is lyrical placement. There’s this line of thought stressed syllables of words belong on top of stressed musical beats, and that this ‘preserves’ the natural shape of language i.e. it makes it easy to hear the words. A great example of this happens in this song, and it’s a bit of a weird one.

Have a listen to the song once before reading the rest of this.

I can forgive you if there’s a line you didn’t understand. In fact, I bet you it’s the one with ‘Easter Egg’ in it. The reason you may not hear it as intended is that when we say this in everyday speech most people tend to emphasise ‘Easter’, where the song instead places ‘Egg’ on top of the beat (or near enough to count). This confuses the ear because it doesn’t preserve the shape of the phrase.

Research: Chameleon Circuit began life as a conglomerate of YouTubers began to write songs about the the Doctor Who series that had re-started in 2005 (The original show ran from 1963 to 1989). The band is named for the broken component of The Doctor’s time machine, which means the machine always appears as a British Police Box. Fans of Doctor Who call themselves ‘Whovians”, and this band of Whovians made two full albums out of their fandom, this one penned by Charlie McDonnell.

Research ADDENDUM: So, there is something I nearly missed. I never followed YouTube Drama, so it’s out of my sphere of awareness. And it’s easy when you know a subject, like I know Dr Who, to skim the surface for some additional facts to flesh out a blog, and leave it at that. I was very nearly going to hit publish before scrolling to the bottom of the Wikipedia page. Then I found old blogs detailing that some of the band-members and associated people had manipulated, or ignored, consent.

That kind of behaviour is not OK.

I still feel like sharing my fandom for Dr Who. But I’m only happy directing you to the original version of the song uploaded to YouTube by Charlie McDonnell, the original writer. As far as I can find, Charlie is an upstanding member of society, and has not done or been accused of anything dastardly. So this song won’t be on the Spotify Playlist, as only the band’s version exists on there.

Personal thoughts: I really like Doctor Who as a series, and this song is about one of my favourite episodes (along with Midnight). More than that - it’s the episode that I use to convince other people to watch Doctor Who. In my experience, being a fan of one thing means I am on the edge of several other things I may enjoy. “Blink” (Season 3 - Episode 10) features one of the coolest stories and is a great introduction to the series as a whole, and may just be that thing that tips you into a new fandom.

Give it a go: if you’ve never been into Dr Who

Give it a miss: If you think nothing got better after Pertwee

[links]
Spotify: Tuesday Tunes
YouTube: Blink by Charlie McDonnell
Wikipedia: Chameleon Circuit (Band),