A few songs that I have on my Ipod do something that I’m not so sure I would have noticed “in the wild”.
On [Eric Johnson’s (?)] “Cliffs of Dover” and on Incredibad’s “Space Olympics”*, the song’s VERY first two seconds or so will be something completely un-related to the rest of the song. I know other songs do this as well, but these are the first two examples that to mind for me. [Yes, I have an eclectic Ipod mix, who doesn’t ? ]
**What is the purpose of having the first two seconds of music being “And now for something completely different” ? ** I’m almost inclined to say it serves as a palate cleaner of sorts, but I’m not sure.
I STILL can’t understand what is being said and/or going in the first few seconds of Space Olympics. I assume that it has to do with the end of the song.
The entire “I know my love will send me to hell” / Nothing can [something] my love Then again, I bet it’s something attempting at humor. Not surprising coming from something related to the later years of SNL
Your second artist’s name is The Lonely Island, not Incredibad. Incredibad is the title of an album by The Lonely Island which includes songs titled “Incredibad” and “Space Olympics.” (I think “Jizz in My Pants” and “I’m on a Boat” were the best-known cuts.)
I was all prepared to tell you that the thing you’re talking about is an “intro.” But listening to it, you seem to be talking about something much smaller than what I’d think of as an intro, just a… moment. If there is a real term, it’s going to be something more esoterically technical.
I’m not familiar with the OP’s songs, so I don’t know if this is what he’s talking about, but I have noticed that some songs have brief “audio quotations” or samples at the beginning, and also that some albums have little random bits interspersed throughout the album between the songs. When the album is divided into tracks, those bits show up at the beginning (or end) of some of the songs. One example that springs to mind is the album Psionic Psunspot by The Dukes of Stratosphear (XTC’s psychedelic alter-ego): here’s an example.
I don’t know whether there’s a name for this practice.
In the ‘Cliffs of Dover’ example the song in preceded by the title track ‘Ah Via Musicom’ (doing this from memory so wish me luck). AVM is a spacy, synth heavy piece and was meant, on the original vinyl, to have no break between it and CoD. Unfortunately, when CDs are mastered, the track breaks have to go SOMEwhere and whoever did this one didn’t quite get it right. So what you’re hearing is likely the very end of AVM and unintentional on the part of Eric Johnson.
Not necessarily. The Clash did it on “Wrong 'Em Boyo,” making it sound like one song, but stopping and playing another. Neal Sedaka quoted from one of his earlier songs in one of his 1970 singles (don’t recall which one).
The Beatles pioneered the idea of an irrelevant lead-in to the song with Help, which has a a James Bond Pastiche opening (at least, in the album version) before seguing into the song.
But in that case you can’t say that the intro is unrelated to the main song. The intro is a snatch of “Stagger Lee,” and the lyrics of “Wrong 'Em Boyo” include a verse referring to the story of Stagger Lee.
One intro example is Def Leppard’s “Rock of Ages” (“unter glieben glauben globen”). In that case, it serves as a nonsensical count-off. However, when the Offspring sampled it for “Pretty Fly for a White Guy”, they didn’t use it to count off the beat. But then they did use the odd count-off “uno, dos, tres, quattro, cinco, cinco, seis” a bit later in the song.
The sample in “Space Olympics” (part of which seems to be saying “Help Me” - possibly Leia in Star Wars?) may be influenced by some Techno/House/Trance Electronic music, which may mix in voice samples or have spoken intros.