Your favorite descriptions of a character in a song

[Peanuthead]

Ol' Flat Top with his juju eyeballs.

And Alley Oop. He's a mean motor scooter and a bad go getter.

[Zeldar]

Originally Posted by Peanuthead

Ol' Flat Top with his juju eyeballs.

And Alley Oop. He's a mean motor scooter and a bad go getter.

Alley Oop reminds me of half a dozen Ray Stevens characters:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLB15kBvn_c
Ahab the Arab - Ray Stevens

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI-TX...eature=related
Ray Stevens - The Streak

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=293Ir...eature=related
Ray Stevens - Gitarzan

... and others nearby

[terentii]

Her hair is Harlow gold
Her lips sweet surprise
Her hands are never cold
She's got Bette Davis eyes

[terentii]

You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht
Your hat strategically dipped below one eye
Your scarf it was apricot
You had one eye in the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte
And all the girls dreamed that they'd be your partner
They'd be your partner, and...

[Marley23]

Another reminder, everybody: unless you're quoting from a public domain song, please don't quote more than one verse, or about five lines total.

[hogarth]

Originally Posted by Zeldar

Alley Oop reminds me of half a dozen Ray Stevens characters:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLB15kBvn_c
Ahab the Arab - Ray Stevens

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI-TX...eature=related
Ray Stevens - The Streak

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=293Ir...eature=related
Ray Stevens - Gitarzan

... and others nearby

Including "The Ballad of the Blue Cyclone", with some memorable characters like the narrator (But I laid in bed three weeks just thinkin' I believe I coulda took him if I hadn't been drinkin'!) and his friend Bill (It all happened so quick when that car door slammed, It musta broke something, 'cause the door locks jammed!) and their buddies (who would take on a grizzly with a switch in the woods at night).

[An Arky]

Originally Posted by Marley23

Another reminder, everybody: unless you're quoting from a public domain song, please don't quote more than one verse, or about five lines total.

Cite for copyright law specifying one verse/5 lines?

[NoClueBoy]

Originally Posted by An Arky

Cite for copyright law specifying one verse/5 lines?

Ask Fenris and Eutychus.

[DfrntBreign]

Like father like son
Not flesh nor fish nor bone
A red rag hangs from an open mouth.
Alive at both ends but a little dead in the middle
~Squonk - Genesis

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by An Arky

Cite for copyright law specifying one verse/5 lines?

This is SDMB policy, not copyright law.

Originally Posted by C K Dexter Haven

Our sponsor, the Chicago READER, has a strict policy on respecting copyrights and copyrighted material. They don’t want their stuff used by others without permission, and so we don’t use stuff created by others without permission. Basically, The policy is : don't do it.

It is okay to post a small snippet of song lyrics or poems or whatever, and include a link to another site which contains the complete text. But posting any material completely and verbatim is a violation of our rules and a potential violation of copyright laws.

With regard to song lyrics under copyright we've said for a long time that the limit is a verse or five lines.

[An Arky]

Ok, no problem; just wanted to be clear.

My example takes more than that to illustrate the characters, so I'll just post the link:

Song for a Deck Hand's Daughter by James McMurtry (scroll down to #5).

Actually, that whole album (Too Long in the Wasteland) is loaded with great character descriptions.

[Sunshine and Smiles]

There's something really evocative about the language and descriptions in the Smashing Pumpkin's Annie Dog - a certain alchemy that I like:
"She is Venus. She is Mars.
She's electric, and the struggle of.
Upon her face we leave no trace,
but in her stomach, mercury aged."


"She came from Greece; she had a thirst for knowledge,
She studied sculpture at Saint Martin's College,
That's where I caught her eye.
She told me that her Dad was loaded,
I said "In that case I'll have a rum and coca-cola."
She said "Fine.""
~ Pulp, Common People

[TreacherousCretin]

Originally Posted by Bill Door

A mountain is something
You don't want to fuck with

I've always considered this to be Zappa's environmentalist credo.

[Annie-Xmas]

Well. duh.......Annie Christmas

She lived in these parts, she was a big old girl
Miss Annie, what a wonder
Three hundred pounds and six foot eight, in her bare feet
Annie Christmas

[Mr. Excellent]

They Might Be Giants, "Damn Good Times":

I'm not much of a natural dancer
But I've got a friend who's a natural dancer
You could call her a jumpin' bean
She's got ants in her pants and she's gonna dance
I know a girl who's a jumpin' bean
She's got keys and a token when she hits the scene
Yeah I know a girl who's got a record machine
She acts like David Lee Roth when he turned 21

Always makes me think of the girl I was with when I heard this song live.

[gaffa]

A character in the song describing himself:

I'm very well acquainted with the seven deadly sins
I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in
I'm proud to be a glutton, and I don't have time for sloth
I'm greedy, and I'm angry, and I don't care who I cross

Mr. Bad Example - Warren Zevon

[Mona Lisa Simpson]

My first thought was "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen, but that's already been mentioned.

"Tangled Up in Blue" has always been one of my favourite Dylan poems/songs because of the intense description of characters, particularly the woman and also her husband "he started dealing in slaves (drugs?) and something inside of him died".. so vivid.

And Taxi especially his description of himself:

Oh, I've got something inside me,
To drive a princess blind.
There's a wild man, wizard,
He's hiding in me, illuminating my mind.

Tell me you don't get an idea who that man is, from those four lines alone, never mind the rest of the song.

Why yes, I do love singer/songwriters, how can you tell?

[Bozuit]

Originally Posted by Mr. Excellent

They Might Be Giants, "Damn Good Times":

Always makes me think of the girl I was with when I heard this song live.

I thought of that song.

But I came here to post this:

Originally Posted by Particle Man by TMBG

Universe Man, Universe Man,
Size of the entire universe, man.

And to a lesser extent:

Originally Posted by Particle Man by TMBG

He's got a watch with a minute hand,
Millennium hand and an eon hand.

I could probably come up with a lot more great TMBG descriptions. "...His face, which was a paper-white mask of evil..." comes to mind.

[Novelty Bobble]

Prince, "Little Red Corvette" pretty much all of it but particularly.

Guess I should've known
By the way you parked your car sideways
That it wouldn't last

[mbh]

From Doctor Hook's "Queen of the Silver Dollar":

She's the queen of the Silver Dollar, she rules a smoky kingdom
her scepter is a wineglass, a barstool is her throne.
the jesters flock around her, they fight to win her favors,
to see which one will take the queen of the Silver Dollar home.

From Harry Chapin's "Shooting Star":

He was the sun, burning bright and brittle.
She was the moon, shining back his light a little.
He was a shooting star, she was softer and more slowly.
He could not make things possible, but she could make them holy.

[cjepson]

Originally Posted by mbh

From Doctor Hook's "Queen of the Silver Dollar":

She's the queen of the Silver Dollar, she rules a smoky kingdom
her scepter is a wineglass, a barstool is her throne.
the jesters flock around her, they fight to win her favors,
to see which one will take the queen of the Silver Dollar home.

I was thinking about posting that one. And I'd like to point out that it was written by Shel Silverstein (as were most of Dr. Hook's early songs).

[Rocketeer]

George Thorogood's Luanne:

My oh my, she's classy;
She's put together like an Austin Healey chassis
with a tan

[burpo the wonder mutt]

He was short and fat and rode out of the West
With a Mogen David on his silver vest
He was mean and nasty right clear through
Which is kind of weird 'cause he was yellow, too
They called him Irving...

-The Ballad of Irving (The 142nd Fastest Gun In The West)

[SaharaTea]

The first two lines of "She Belongs to Me" by Bob Dylan are so perfect that I feel like I know this girl already:

She's got everything she needs
She's an artist, she don't look back.

[Beware of Doug]

My old man
He's gonna end in the garbage can
If there's a bottle of gin there
He'll stay in there
My old man

-Johnny Mercer, 1933

[sherrycherie]

Loggins & Messina - Danny's Song


"Love the girl who holds the world in a paper cup.
Drink it up.
Love her and she'll bring you luck."

[Ranchoth]

I gotta admit, I'm rather fond of the description of Billy Joel's "Angry Young Man," lately...



And there's always a place for the angry young man,
With his fist in the air and his head in the sand.
And he's never been able to learn from mistakes,
He can't understand why his heart always breaks.
His honor is pure and his courage as well,
He's fair and he's true and he's boring as hell!
And he'll go to the grave as an angry old man...

(That's one verse/stanza, for the record...s'not my fault he sings so fast!)

[Becky2844]

Elinor Rigby.

More recently, Son of a Ladies' Man by Father John Misty.

[Icerigger]

From The Lovin Spoonful:

"Sometimes there's one with deep blue eyes, cute as a bunny With hair down to here and plenty of money....."

[Fugazi]

From ZZ Top - I'm Bad. I'm Nationwide

Well I was movin' down the road in my V-8 Ford,
I had a shine on my boots, I had my sideburns lowered.
With my New York brim and my gold tooth displayed,
Nobody give me trouble cause they know I got it made.

[AClockworkMelon]

Mordin Solus

I am the very model of a scientist salarian
I've studied species turian, asari and batarian
I'm quite good at genetics as a subset of biology
Because I am an expert which I know is a tautology
My xenoscience studies range from urban to agrarian
I am the very model of a scientist Salarian!

[Johanna]

OK, more Dylan-- "Black Diamond Bay"

Up on the wide veranda
She wears a necktie and a
Panama hat
Her passport shows a face
From another time and place
She looks nothing like that

Cinematic type lyrics, and these are the opening lines setting the scene.

[elbows]

"She's a summer storm, I'm a hurricane.
One just blows through town,
The other blows the town away,
I'm wilder than her."
-'Wilder Than Her' Fred Eaglesmith

[Mean Mr. Mustard]

The name she gave was Caroline
Daughter of a miner
Her ways were free
It seemed to me
That sunshine walked beside her


"Tecumseh Valley" by Townes Van Zandt


mmm

[Maeglin]

The first thing I thought of was Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' Stagger Lee.

It was back in '32 when times were hard
He had a colt .45 and a deck of cards
Stagger Lee
He wore rat-drawn shoes and an old stetson hat
Had a '28 ford, had payments on that
Stagger lee

[Tara57]

Beck, Lord Only Knows

You only got one finger left and it's pointing at the door

[cjepson]

Can the character be a city?

Dallas is a rich man with a death wish in his eyes
A steel and concrete soul with a warm hearted love disguise
A rich man who tends to believe in his own lies
Dallas is a rich man with a death wish in his eyes

(From "Dallas" by the Flatlanders)

[Sitnam]

We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who
Comes on at five
She can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam
In her eye
It's interesting when people die-

Katie Couric, Don Henley's talking about you.

[SnakesCatLady]

Another Jethro Tull: Cross-Eyed Mary

Laughing in the playground gets no kicks from little boys
Would rather make it with a letching grey
Or maybe her attention is drawn by Aqualung
Watching through the railings as they play...


David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust

Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Gilly
And the Spiders from Mars
He played it left hand but made it to far
Became the special man; then we were Ziggy's band.

[denquixote]

[u]50,000 Names[/U by Jamie O'Hara

"There's teddy bears & high school rings
And old photographs that mamas bring
That daddies with their young boys, playing ball.
There's combat boots that he used to wear,
When he was sent over there.
There's 50, 000 names carved in the wall"

Classic George Jones

[PeacePlease]

Originally Posted by terentii

You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht
Your hat strategically dipped below one eye
Your scarf it was apricot
You had one eye in the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte
And all the girls dreamed that they'd be your partner
They'd be your partner, and...

Yup...perfection!

[quote=Mona Lisa Simpson;15204201]"Tangled Up in Blue" has always been one of my favourite Dylan poems/songs because of the intense description of characters, particularly the woman and also her husband "he started dealing in slaves (drugs?) and something inside of him died".. so vivid.
/QUOTE]This is my favorite Dylan tune....very awseomeness!!!!

Originally Posted by Ranchoth

I gotta admit, I'm rather fond of the description of Billy Joel's "Angry Young Man," lately...i]
And there's always a place for the angry young man,
With his fist in the air and his head in the sand.
And he's never been able to learn from mistakes,
He can't understand why his heart always breaks.
His honor is pure and his courage as well,
He's fair and he's true and he's boring as hell!
And he'll go to the grave as an angry old man...[/i]

(That's one verse/stanza, for the record...s'not my fault he sings so fast!)

And this is just the BEST! Describes me, unfortunately, to a T.

[Icerigger]

Chantilly Lace and a Pretty Face with a pony tail hanging down, a wiggle in the walk and a giggle in the talk makes the world go round.

[Scarlett67]

Joe Jackson, Stranger Than You:

At 83rd and Amsterdam there's an Indian Jew
Who pierced all his private parts with a permanent screw
He sleeps on a bed of nails
Which came from outer space
And in my taller tales
I gave him pride of place

Until you came along . . .

[si_blakely]

Originally Posted by Brooke Fraser, Something In The Water

I wear a demeanor made of bright pretty things
What she wears, what she wears, what she wears
Birds singing on my shoulder in harmony it seems
How they sing, how they sing, how they sing

It just sounds so cool, and a really catchy song as well.

Si

[Sinisterniik]

He was not in the least bit scared to be mashed into a pulp
Or to have his eyes gouged out and his elbows broken
To have his kneecaps split and his body burned away
And his limbs all hacked and mangled, brave Sir Robin

[Gestalt]

More Dylan
"She takes just like a woman/she makes love like just like a woman/she fakes just like a woman/but she breaks just like a little girl"