The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Arts & Entertainment => Topic started by: pmcd9 on October 14, 2006, 04:50:22 am
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Steely Dan have a song, Any Major Dude, where I always thought they said "Have you ever seen a squonks tears well look at mine." I've been listening to this song for years and I never really thought about it too much, but I just acquired their Pretzel Logic album recently (yesterday actually) from a friend and I heard this song for the first time in probably 10 years. I got to wondering am I hearing this right? If I am, what a squonk? So I decided to find out. First I looked up the lyrics to the song and yes, they do in fact say squonk, ok, what the fuck is a squonk? Here's what wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squonk) has to say. I don't know why I posted all of this. I guess just to say that it's fun to learn something new about a song you've been listening to since small times. Any Major Dude was the B side to Rikki Don't Lose that Number which is one of the first 45 records I bought when I was about 11 years old. Jough, have you ever seen a squonks tears?
~Paul
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Seen 'em? Paul, I have caused a squonk to cry.
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Whenever I can't decipher a lyric, I prefer to listen to the line over and over instead of taking the easy way out and actually checking the booklet. For this song I managed to convince myself it was 'squads'. It made no fuck*ng sense whatsoever, but I seriously doubted the existence of the word 'squonk'. How foolish of me that was!
Paul, thankyou for the correction. Education.
EDIT: I also considered 'squaws' at one point.
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Oddly enough that song came up on my random rotation just yesterday.
I always thought they were saying a shark's tears.
My guess would be that a squonk is akin to a geek.
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Funnily enough, first listen left me certain it was 'a Scot's tears', which I thought must be it until I realised Becker and Fagen are extremely American. 'Course, everyone know Scottish tears are Laphroaig's secret ingredient.
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Judy I usually don't question lyrics, but I have heard this song probably more than a thousand times and it's pretty clearly squonk they are saying and I just got curious as to what a squonk is. Sometimes I'll decipher a lyric that I had mistaken, maybe here it on a live album or a remastered version and it'll totally change the meaning of the song. In this case, it only made the meaning of the song more clear.
~Paul
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Judy I usually don't question lyrics, but I have heard this song probably more than a thousand times and it's pretty clearly squonk they are saying and I just got curious as to what a squonk is. Sometimes I'll decipher a lyric that I had mistaken, maybe here it on a live album or a remastered version and it'll totally change the meaning of the song. In this case, it only made the meaning of the song more clear.
~Paul
Don't worry Paul, I wasn't doubting you in any way! Pointing out my own misguided guesses was the only idea I was getting across.
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What I like best is the idea that this is also now a chemistry term. I love linguistic cross-pollination.
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Seen 'em? Paul, I have caused a squonk to cry.
I've no doubt this is true.
On the chemistry tip, squonk sounds like it would be a very powerful ingredient in a witches potion. Eye of newt, tear of squonk, etc...
~Paul