"So he sent his doting mother up the stairs with the stepladders to get the Subbuteo out of the loft"
From "All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit" by Half Man Half Biscuit.
For the benefit of the one person on the planet who doesn't already know the story, the inventor of the football game 'Subbuteo', Peter Adolph, wanted to call his invention 'Hobby' but they wouldn't let him register 'Hobby' as a trademark. So, he took the scientific name of a small bird of prey called the Eurasian Hobby, Falco subbuteo, and used the second part of it as the name for his invention.
Yes, I know I'm clutching at straws now but I really am running out of names of birds in songs!
Originally posted by Stringy Bob: How about a really tenuous one? ...
For the benefit of the one person on the planet who doesn't already know the story, the inventor of the football game 'Subbuteo', Peter Adolph, wanted to call his invention 'Hobby' but they wouldn't let him register 'Hobby' as a trademark. So, he took the scientific name of a small bird of prey called the Eurasian Hobby, Falco subbuteo, and used the second part of it as the name for his invention. ...
Cheers, now I know.
Night Owl - Gerry Rafferty
Saint Etienne - Like the Swallow
howzabout doing a round-up Martin? .. titles with names of birds proper.
This will more than likely be my last post on this subject and any scratching noises you hear will be me scraping the bottom of the barrel.
"Oh for the wings of any bird, other than a battery hen" - Hawkwind - Spirit Of The Age.
Haircut 100 - Pelican West (album title).
"Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch" - They Might Be Giants - Birdhouse In Your Soul (missed that one in my earlier posts about that song).
"Agony aunt if I had the @rse of a crow and the wings of a sparrow and you were below" - Half Man Half Biscuit - PRS Yearbook (Quick The Drawbridge).
Ivor Cutler has a couple in "Life In A Scotch Sitting Room, Vol 2." In episode 1 there is "..showers of buttery, spitty crumbs flew out our mouths like starlings..." and in episode 3 there is "The stonechat lay under a leaf". Strictly speaking these are spoken monologues but they are accompanied by Mr. Cutler on the harmonium so I'm counting them as music (this is where the barrel scraping noises start).
And finally, some music-related people with bird-related names:
Robin Simon Andy Partridge Anne Nightingale John Peel (his real surname was Ravenscroft)
I found this one as a cassette last year, and as an owlman who never has observed Tyto alba (barn owl, the cover bird), just had to buy the thing. Learned that Gerry Rafferty -sadly- passed away last year.
Gentlemen Without Weapons made 1990 a pop album using sampled animal voices as instruments.
The most innovative example of using bird sounds in music is Montreal Ornithological Orchestra:
My band Beta5 nowadays uses samplers with animal voices in all stuff. Here's a Finnish eighties synth anthem translated in English, with all instrument sounds originally being animal voices: Feast of beasts Here's the original by Organ:
Here's a song we did with Everglade1 (of Florida): The bird that flies backwards There are three birds performing a solo. First one is North American favourite, second one rated as the best Finnish songbird by birders, and the last one scientifically proven best songbird on Earth (from Australia). Try to identify them
Here's B5's latest output, a disko version of an old Finnish church hymn:
Besides the obvious Phylloscopus trochilus (willow warbler, the most common bird in my country) intro & outro, the triangle sound is an edited animal voice.
There are tons of examples using bird voices on records, and must admit that John Foxx has used them in delicious ways.
Last edited by Karwin; 05/08/1207:35 AM. Reason: 42
