Ow!

I'm not familiar with (or cannot call to mind) the particular vocal exclamations you refer to. Maybe I'm viewing it simplistically but noises of this kind are surely linked to a view of Rock music as primitive/instinctual, and its having a capacity to over-excite both the performer and listener.

Two of my favourites are David Bowie's shriek towards the end of "John I'm Only Dancing" and Roger Daltrey's final "yeahhhhh" in the Who's "Won't Get Fooled again". They are probably both rehearsed but manage to convey real excitement.

I can't imagine the song "Candy" by Cameo without Larry Blackmon's trademark "Ow!". It just reinforces the vibe of the song for me. Similarly, "Smooth Criminal" is one of the few post-_Thriller_ Michael Jackson songs where his trademark grunts reinforce rather than distract from the song (ie, "The Way You Make Me Feel").

Another great example are the screams in Ministry's "Stigmata". The first thing you hear after the high-hat intro is an eight-bar howl of fury. If that doesn't set the stage for a menacing song, I don't know what does!

I find that non-verbals fall into two categories:

- The Good Kind: These utterances flow with the song, enhancing the mood/message and working themselves in as integral parts.

- The Bad Kind: These are those annoying yelps that are shoehorned into completely inappropriate places. They usually detract from the rest of the song and often sound like they're happening because someone told the singer that a good "Yalp!" would be simply MAAAHVELOUS on beat 3 of measure 16.

David, I fully agree with you that whelps / whoops / screams in pop are often used as signifiers of rock music being an aggressive, primal force, although all three of the examples listed by the Pinefox don't conform to this description, being the work of decidedly anti-rockist performers, people who made virtues out of, respectively, sexual repression / supposed celibacy, middle-class suburban politeness, and self-concscious literacy.

I'm afraid I'm not familiar with "John, I'm Only Dancing", though "Won't Get Fooled Again" is one of the few early 70s tracks by significant 60s bands that ranks with their previous work. It is certainly one of the defining songs of 1971, capturing the feeling of "what next after the 1960s? What can top it? We must surely sink into cynicism" perfectly, and as it turned out prophetically. A shame that British music, *on the whole*, declined so rapidly after its 1971-72 peak, into a trough that it would not leave until 1977.

Morrissey's (possibly partly Pete Shelley-derived) yelp on "This Charming Man" has always been a favourite of mine, as an indication of the sexual potency waiting to burst out of repression (all part of Moz's self-mythologisation in terms of late 50s / early 60s Britain, etc). Harriet Wheeler's mumble on "Can't Be Sure" - I've always liked it, though it's equally a part of her prim, well-mannered vocal delivery (which I love on "Reading, Writing and Arithmetic"; easily up there with Kate Bush and pre-MOR Kit Hain as a great middle-class Englishwoman's pop voice).

This is a really interesting question. I've been scraping around my hard drive for a copy of an unfinished piece I wrote on pretty much exactly this subject (with special reference to Moz, actually) but I can't find it. My general idea was that these kind of wordless cries, stutters, gasps etc., and the odd unnatural inflections indie singers sometimes use, were 'glitches' in the song, designed both to throw you out of the song (by their incongruity) and remind you that you were listening to a sung performance, and also to pull you back to the song by being fascinating.

I think I didn't finish the piece because I couldn't make that idea make very much sense, but there we are. I still think there's something nicely incongruous about the use of the 'ow!' in indie music, maybe because it's such an accepted part of soul rhetoric that you're always a bit surprised when Harriet Wheeler does it.

Even more than an ACCEPTED part of soul rhetoric, Tom - maybe an EXPECTED part, I think. I've been relistening to James Brown _Live at the Apollo_ lately and it seems like, once he really gets going and the band is vamping, letting him work the crowd, they're hanging on his every grunt, shriek, howl - they want MORE.

Josh, you're absolutely right to point out the extent to which "Uh", "Ow", etc. have become soul cliches, part of the music's self-protective, almost self-parodic litany. Of course "Live At The Apollo" is from 1962 and so predates any such descent, but listen to all those sad late-period live LPs from Atlantic / Stax artists who descended to the chicken-in-a-basket circuit, and hear the audience positively whooping and urging the performer on to his next lethargic "Uh" or "Ow". It's one of those instant familiar signifiers that is cheered on, encouraged, almost *required*.

Like Tom, I always feel a sense of surprise (though a very pleasant one) when I hear Harriet Wheeler's exclamations. I suspect it'd be the difference between the rock / soul ideas of "grit" and "realness" with which we associate such noises, and the politeness and calmness of her own voice and general persona.

nick cave on almost every track of from here to eternity

Jennifer Herrema of Royal Trux does the best Ows, Ughs and Yeahs! ever. That's also one of the reasons why they are now offically The Greatest Rock Band Ever (well in my head somewhere they are ;). Of course you just can't grunt freely, the beauty is in the timing, the rhythm. And smoking a lot helps too. Not forgetting the question of pupose: because it sounds so damn cool and then when you sing along you feel cool. Yeah!

Which me reminds me of Abel Ferrara's The Addiction were at the end Annabella Sciorra goes on a monologue about sin and evil (while smoking of course) and then ends it with a deadpan: yeah!

The 'woo!' on 'Daystar' by The Foxgloves is the most important part of the song. I really mean that.

There's probably no death metal fans in here, but Obituary's vocals don't include to many intelligible lyrics, at all. And for the genre they're prime

straight up now tell me / is it gonna be you and me forever? / OH OH OH / or am i caught in a hit and run?

he's a cold-hearted snake / look into his eyes / —OH OH / he's been tellin lies / he's a lover boy at play / he don't play by rules / —OH OH / girl don't play the fool, now


and to think that at one time i wondered why "opposites attract" was not the smash these two were.

Revive.

All the whoops and burps and stutters of david Byrne from Talking Heads 77

just seen har mar superstar on 'rise' - he didn't do any vocal sounds but he should have - the sound would've worked better

i. Morrissey is supreme here: sometime reciting his wails as if casting a spell: leaking out of his actual syllables into groans and moans (see: 'Late Night, Maudlin Street', 6m30s; and countless others): post-verbal noise: where's the line, the leak?: embellishments added to spin out the stories and sadness he loves so much?

ii. 1570-80: Mughal emperor Akbar constructs his famed Gang Mahal : no civilized sounds reach in, tongue-tied wetnurses are admitted: to the Dumb House: speech can be magical: words meaning 'meaning'? no, speech has the power to destroy: sound has the power to create an impression of order: how do these Ow sounds relate?

iii. who else?