Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 4:59 am
A rock that spoke a WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORD! (An animated mineral that can be heard.)Bob the rhyme master.
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Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 5:00 am
A rock that spoke a WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORD! (An animated mineral that can be heard.)Bob the rhyme master.John Linnell, and John Flansburgh are the masters, actually.Bob is a simple minion.
Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 5:00 am
A rock that spoke a WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORD! (An animated mineral that can be heard.)Bob the rhyme master.John Linnell, and John Flansburgh are the masters, actually.Bob is a simple minion.Like Taylin.
Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 5:01 am
The statue got me high (high)The statue got me high (high)The monument of granite sent a beam into my eyeThe statue made me die (die)The statue made me die (die)It took my hand, it killed me, and it turned me to the sky.The stone, it called to me (and now I see the things the stone has shown to me)A rock that spoke a word (an animated mineral, it can be heard)And though I once preferred a human being's companyThey pale before the monolith that towers over meThe statue got me high (high)The statue got me high (high)The truth is where the sculptor's chisel chipped away the lieThe statue made me fry (fry)The statue made me fry (fry)My coat contained a furnace where there used to be a guyThe stone, it called to me (and now I see the things the stone has shown to me)A rock that spoke a word (an animated mineral, it can be heard)And as the screaming fire engine siren filled the airThe evidence had vanished from my charred and smoking chairAnd what they found was just a statue standing where the statue got me highAnd what they found was just a statue standing where the statue got me highAnd now it is your turn (your turn to hear the stone and then your turn to burn)The stone, it calls to you (you can't refuse to do the things it tells you to)And as the screaming fire engine siren fills the airThe evidence will vanish from your charred and smoking chairAnd what they found was just a statue standing where the statue got me highAnd what they'll find is just a statue standing where the statue got you high
Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 5:01 am
A rock that spoke a WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORD! (An animated mineral that can be heard.)Bob the rhyme master.John Linnell, and John Flansburgh are the masters, actually.Bob is a simple minion.Like Taylin.Maybe if that made sense, you could be correct.
Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 5:02 am
A rock that spoke a WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORD! (An animated mineral that can be heard.)Bob the rhyme master.John Linnell, and John Flansburgh are the masters, actually.Bob is a simple minion.Like Taylin.Maybe if that made sense, you could be correct.Taylin is a simple minion, methinks?
Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 5:02 am
Interpretations:The Statue Got Me HighFrom This Might Be A Wiki"I remember seeing an interview with linnell once, and he explained that this song is about a guy who looks at a statue and his head blows up. No hidden meanings or anything..." (off Usenet) I thought it was about a microwave. Really. I thought it had something to do with politics. Hmm. --- I thought it was about being killed in an incident with an exploding space shuttle. It's about Don Giovanni. I heard it from some live recording. Linnell said something along the lines of "This song is about Don Giovanni... which I didn't know when I first wrote it." http://www.metopera.org/synopses/giovanni.html I've seen this opera... basically a statue burns this dude in the end. It matches up with the song. - Doctor Masonstein --------------------------------------------------------------------------------I dunno... it kind of sounds like some guy doing LSD or something and blaming it on the statue... 
-- StarkRG --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Stuff by Linnell is threaded with angst, guilt, and sex, and angst and guilt about sex. (Well, and history of the United States presidents. Maybe presidents turn him on, and he feels guilty about it.) In any case, this sounds like a guy with a secret sexual fixation on someone, and he is externalizing it, so the desire has a stone form of the object. Here's my thinking: 1. The object of desire "sent a beam into my eye" (Saw the object of affection and was transfixed by it. The paranoid idea that the object has special power over him. Also might be a biblical pun: cast out the beam in your own eye before attending to the mote in someone else's) 2. "took my hand" (romance begins), "it threw me to the sky," "made me die" (In French, orgasm is "the little death") 3. "though I once preferred a human being's company, they pale before the monolith that towers over me." (The desire for, the idea of, the object of affection has taken on huge dimensions in his mind, and even supercedes the object itself.) 4. "The truth is where the sculptor's chisel chipped away the lie." (The secret desire that wants to be revealed. Made me think of Michelango's famous comment that he sculpted by chipping away anything that wasn't statue. Gee, maybe Linnell has a homosexual fixation on the statue of David, or more likely, James K Polk.) 5. Climax to the song, if you pardon the pun: "And as the screaming fire engine siren filled the air, the evidence had vanished from my charred and smoking chair." (This is very heavily sexual - he is overwhelmed by the heat he has for the statue, it completely consumes him. "Evidence had vanished"; evidence is what you gather after a crime - in this case, the crime of desire by him and the damage it does to him, burning him to a crisp. Also, not just a siren, but a screaming siren, an alarm sound; it evokes an intense nerve-shattering feeling. Great sentence, John, truly. I think this guy is masturbating while worshipping the representation in his mind of object of his affection. The screaming fire engine siren is the sound in his mind. Awesome. Kind of disturbing.) 6. "And now it is your turn, your turn to hear the stone and then your turn to burn." (He resents the object for its effect on him, and he wants the object to return his affection - after all, the entire song is a way to present the secret desire in a cloaked fashion - and he wants the object to suffer as he has. He wants the object of affection to hear the call of desire personified and externalized, and capitulate. He wants the object to be consumed while worshipping before the alter of desire. "You can't refuse to do the things it tells you to" is a directive to the object of his affection and an excuse, as in, I couldn't refuse to do what it told me to.) And as long as I am being a wiki pig, I do see Don Giovanni here, but referenced because Don G. is about guilt and seduction and firey retribution for same. It's like referencing the resurrection of Christ in writing - literature isn't usually about Christ per se, it is alluded to because it is a powerful culturally shared idea. - Christina Miller --------------------------------------------------------------------------------I saw a congruence between this song and 2001: A Space Odyssey (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/) which is pretty obvious: the statue is the reappearing artifact in the film. There's nothing wrong with the statue - in fact, it's perfect in its right angles and smooth texture which foils the dirty apes in the beginning of the film. The conflict is the reaction characters have to it which brings about change. It'll kill them like it killed the apes, and replace them with something better. Man made it to the moon but the statue showed them it wasn't far enough. HAL, a piece of perfect technology himself, actually does kill a bunch of humans (I'm assuming HAL could substitute the statue since they're both high-end technologies but the statue lacks the instruements for murder). Afterward, they're replaced by something better again, a space-baby or something. So the song follows: the monolith is introduced. Here it is, it's going to bring a change. Next, it takes effect and the old start dying off, apparently starting with the singer. Finally, it ends as we fall from its effects - if we don't, it'll just wait until we die to start the change. I could get into the changing, relating it to extinction, the collapse of great empires, Darwinism and social entropy but that would be more like interpretation of the movie and not the song (you could even get psychoanalytical and see the artifact as a big phallic symbol). If you havn't seen the movie and like this song, I recommend it. - sheep --------------------------------------------------------------------------------QUOTE: It's about Don Giovanni. I heard it from some live recording. Linnell said something along the lines of "This song is about Don Giovanni... which I didn't know when I first wrote it." http://www.metopera.org/synopses/giovanni.html I've seen this opera... basically a statue burns this dude in the end. It matches up with the song. - Doctor Masonstein One of them said a similar thing about Metal Detector at a show or on Soundcheck, I forget which. Which would make this comment useless. Gotta love wikis. -underscore --- If Linnell said he didn't know it was about Don G when he wrote it, then it is only about Don G. if you buy the whole Jungian thing about universal unconscious and archetypes, and even then, you could say that John dug into our shared bag of images and pulled out one that Mozart already used for his opera. It's not like he was sitting around the pool one day and said, mm, gotta write me a song that rips off Mozart - what would make a good pop song? The Magic Flute? Y'know, Don Giovanni needs to be taken down a peg. If I write a song about a guy who avenges his father's murder by his uncle, that doesn't mean it's about Hamlet. I like the 2001 comparision better. The problem is that the monolith doesn't kill anyone, it is an agent for change, for evolution. It causes primates who come into contact with it to evolve to a higher level. The killing is secondary. HAL didn't evolve, he was making the best he could of being given conflicting instructions, remember? The killing was secondary to the problem, an adverse side effect of bad programming, and in fact, Dave "de-evolves" him in the famous Daisy, Daisy scene. HAL would have gotten unbalanced even if he were not near the monolith. The monolith certainly didn't make anyone burst into flame, as the singer in "Statue" does. It's a clever comparision, though. All my opinion, of course. Gotta love wikis, and I do. - Christina Miller --------------------------------------------------------------------------------I believe that this song is about being ensnared by American captialism. "The statue" is the Statue of Liberty, the symbol for the United States. Let's go through it line-by-line, shall we? VERSE ONE: It got him high, it empowered him by blinding him ("sent a beam into my eye"). Then it destroyed him, but made him see the good by doing so ("took my hand" - supported him, "killed me" - brought him crashing down, "turned me to the sky" - made him look at heaven). CHORUS: The allure of money was too much for him to resist ("the stone, it called to me" - the stone is money, but now he sees what money really means). "The rock that spoke a word" parallels with the old saying of how money talks. The line after that involves "animated mineral", which means that money is the moving force, extremely powerful and unshakable (like a rock), and reiterates the money talking bit: "Though I once preferred a human being's company" - He once liked to be with people, now he just wants money and the power of "the monolith that towers over me". VERSE TWO: "The truth is where the sculptor's chisel chipped away the lie" - Study of the way the country was MEANT to be made (the way the "sculptor" wanted it) caused him to see the truth after chipping away the lie, therefore showing the ugliness of the statue. All the reference to burning may be talking about hell, burning in hell for his greed, etc. "coat" implies riches. The screaming fire engine part I interpret two ways. 1. The fire engine kept coming to save him from hell, but he burned up and disappeared so that he could continue to be greedy. 2. The fire engine might be the engine that MAKES fire, and he burns into insignificance and poorness to escape from it. INSTRUMENTAL BREAK - END: Linnell goes on to say that everyone will be tempted by greed. One more thing: the video for this song depicts large, very plain stone objects, perhaps a statement about the blandness of culture that greed brings about. This also adds relevance to the line "The truth is where the sculptor's chisel chipped away the lie." --Chuckie --- These are all elaborate interpretations of the symbolism of the song, which has such a seamless narration that, most likely, there exists no symbolism. In essence, any hypnotic impulse that one feels leads to destruction can be the "statue" (a lover, a pusher, an obsession, a religion, or any seven deadly sin) in the listener's mind--no one "explanation" is any more canny than the other. On that note, the song certainly has no more to do with "2001: A Space Odyssey" than it does with "Pygmaelion." The common use of a "monolith" as a symbol is purely coincidental. Additionally, the nature of Linnell's gag about "Don Giovanni" would indicate that that the song was not written with the opera in mind. It's simply another TMBG mind control anthem, along the lines of The Bells Are Ringing and Spiraling Shape. - wittytirade
-- StarkRG --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Stuff by Linnell is threaded with angst, guilt, and sex, and angst and guilt about sex. (Well, and history of the United States presidents. Maybe presidents turn him on, and he feels guilty about it.) In any case, this sounds like a guy with a secret sexual fixation on someone, and he is externalizing it, so the desire has a stone form of the object. Here's my thinking: 1. The object of desire "sent a beam into my eye" (Saw the object of affection and was transfixed by it. The paranoid idea that the object has special power over him. Also might be a biblical pun: cast out the beam in your own eye before attending to the mote in someone else's) 2. "took my hand" (romance begins), "it threw me to the sky," "made me die" (In French, orgasm is "the little death") 3. "though I once preferred a human being's company, they pale before the monolith that towers over me." (The desire for, the idea of, the object of affection has taken on huge dimensions in his mind, and even supercedes the object itself.) 4. "The truth is where the sculptor's chisel chipped away the lie." (The secret desire that wants to be revealed. Made me think of Michelango's famous comment that he sculpted by chipping away anything that wasn't statue. Gee, maybe Linnell has a homosexual fixation on the statue of David, or more likely, James K Polk.) 5. Climax to the song, if you pardon the pun: "And as the screaming fire engine siren filled the air, the evidence had vanished from my charred and smoking chair." (This is very heavily sexual - he is overwhelmed by the heat he has for the statue, it completely consumes him. "Evidence had vanished"; evidence is what you gather after a crime - in this case, the crime of desire by him and the damage it does to him, burning him to a crisp. Also, not just a siren, but a screaming siren, an alarm sound; it evokes an intense nerve-shattering feeling. Great sentence, John, truly. I think this guy is masturbating while worshipping the representation in his mind of object of his affection. The screaming fire engine siren is the sound in his mind. Awesome. Kind of disturbing.) 6. "And now it is your turn, your turn to hear the stone and then your turn to burn." (He resents the object for its effect on him, and he wants the object to return his affection - after all, the entire song is a way to present the secret desire in a cloaked fashion - and he wants the object to suffer as he has. He wants the object of affection to hear the call of desire personified and externalized, and capitulate. He wants the object to be consumed while worshipping before the alter of desire. "You can't refuse to do the things it tells you to" is a directive to the object of his affection and an excuse, as in, I couldn't refuse to do what it told me to.) And as long as I am being a wiki pig, I do see Don Giovanni here, but referenced because Don G. is about guilt and seduction and firey retribution for same. It's like referencing the resurrection of Christ in writing - literature isn't usually about Christ per se, it is alluded to because it is a powerful culturally shared idea. - Christina Miller --------------------------------------------------------------------------------I saw a congruence between this song and 2001: A Space Odyssey (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/) which is pretty obvious: the statue is the reappearing artifact in the film. There's nothing wrong with the statue - in fact, it's perfect in its right angles and smooth texture which foils the dirty apes in the beginning of the film. The conflict is the reaction characters have to it which brings about change. It'll kill them like it killed the apes, and replace them with something better. Man made it to the moon but the statue showed them it wasn't far enough. HAL, a piece of perfect technology himself, actually does kill a bunch of humans (I'm assuming HAL could substitute the statue since they're both high-end technologies but the statue lacks the instruements for murder). Afterward, they're replaced by something better again, a space-baby or something. So the song follows: the monolith is introduced. Here it is, it's going to bring a change. Next, it takes effect and the old start dying off, apparently starting with the singer. Finally, it ends as we fall from its effects - if we don't, it'll just wait until we die to start the change. I could get into the changing, relating it to extinction, the collapse of great empires, Darwinism and social entropy but that would be more like interpretation of the movie and not the song (you could even get psychoanalytical and see the artifact as a big phallic symbol). If you havn't seen the movie and like this song, I recommend it. - sheep --------------------------------------------------------------------------------QUOTE: It's about Don Giovanni. I heard it from some live recording. Linnell said something along the lines of "This song is about Don Giovanni... which I didn't know when I first wrote it." http://www.metopera.org/synopses/giovanni.html I've seen this opera... basically a statue burns this dude in the end. It matches up with the song. - Doctor Masonstein One of them said a similar thing about Metal Detector at a show or on Soundcheck, I forget which. Which would make this comment useless. Gotta love wikis. -underscore --- If Linnell said he didn't know it was about Don G when he wrote it, then it is only about Don G. if you buy the whole Jungian thing about universal unconscious and archetypes, and even then, you could say that John dug into our shared bag of images and pulled out one that Mozart already used for his opera. It's not like he was sitting around the pool one day and said, mm, gotta write me a song that rips off Mozart - what would make a good pop song? The Magic Flute? Y'know, Don Giovanni needs to be taken down a peg. If I write a song about a guy who avenges his father's murder by his uncle, that doesn't mean it's about Hamlet. I like the 2001 comparision better. The problem is that the monolith doesn't kill anyone, it is an agent for change, for evolution. It causes primates who come into contact with it to evolve to a higher level. The killing is secondary. HAL didn't evolve, he was making the best he could of being given conflicting instructions, remember? The killing was secondary to the problem, an adverse side effect of bad programming, and in fact, Dave "de-evolves" him in the famous Daisy, Daisy scene. HAL would have gotten unbalanced even if he were not near the monolith. The monolith certainly didn't make anyone burst into flame, as the singer in "Statue" does. It's a clever comparision, though. All my opinion, of course. Gotta love wikis, and I do. - Christina Miller --------------------------------------------------------------------------------I believe that this song is about being ensnared by American captialism. "The statue" is the Statue of Liberty, the symbol for the United States. Let's go through it line-by-line, shall we? VERSE ONE: It got him high, it empowered him by blinding him ("sent a beam into my eye"). Then it destroyed him, but made him see the good by doing so ("took my hand" - supported him, "killed me" - brought him crashing down, "turned me to the sky" - made him look at heaven). CHORUS: The allure of money was too much for him to resist ("the stone, it called to me" - the stone is money, but now he sees what money really means). "The rock that spoke a word" parallels with the old saying of how money talks. The line after that involves "animated mineral", which means that money is the moving force, extremely powerful and unshakable (like a rock), and reiterates the money talking bit: "Though I once preferred a human being's company" - He once liked to be with people, now he just wants money and the power of "the monolith that towers over me". VERSE TWO: "The truth is where the sculptor's chisel chipped away the lie" - Study of the way the country was MEANT to be made (the way the "sculptor" wanted it) caused him to see the truth after chipping away the lie, therefore showing the ugliness of the statue. All the reference to burning may be talking about hell, burning in hell for his greed, etc. "coat" implies riches. The screaming fire engine part I interpret two ways. 1. The fire engine kept coming to save him from hell, but he burned up and disappeared so that he could continue to be greedy. 2. The fire engine might be the engine that MAKES fire, and he burns into insignificance and poorness to escape from it. INSTRUMENTAL BREAK - END: Linnell goes on to say that everyone will be tempted by greed. One more thing: the video for this song depicts large, very plain stone objects, perhaps a statement about the blandness of culture that greed brings about. This also adds relevance to the line "The truth is where the sculptor's chisel chipped away the lie." --Chuckie --- These are all elaborate interpretations of the symbolism of the song, which has such a seamless narration that, most likely, there exists no symbolism. In essence, any hypnotic impulse that one feels leads to destruction can be the "statue" (a lover, a pusher, an obsession, a religion, or any seven deadly sin) in the listener's mind--no one "explanation" is any more canny than the other. On that note, the song certainly has no more to do with "2001: A Space Odyssey" than it does with "Pygmaelion." The common use of a "monolith" as a symbol is purely coincidental. Additionally, the nature of Linnell's gag about "Don Giovanni" would indicate that that the song was not written with the opera in mind. It's simply another TMBG mind control anthem, along the lines of The Bells Are Ringing and Spiraling Shape. - wittytiradePosted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 5:03 am
The Statue Got Me Low.
Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 5:05 am
There are apparantly two versions of this video. One depicts Linnell engulfed in flames. The other, presumably for air on British TV, does not show the fire. Linnell states on the Direct From Brooklyn DVD commentary that fire and ninjas are not permitted on British TV.
Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 5:06 am
There are apparantly two versions of this video. One depicts Linnell engulfed in flames. The other, presumably for air on British TV, does not show the fire. Linnell states on the Direct From Brooklyn DVD commentary that fire and ninjas are not permitted on British TV.What fucking communists.