Emily: "You put the lime in the coconut and drink it all up." That line has become a part of popular culture, but how many people actually know where it comes from? Frankly, before today I had zero idea. I thought it came from a movie or TV show, or perhaps a commercial advertising Jamaican resort vacations. In fact, the line comes from a kitschy song, Coconut, off of Nilsson Schmilsson, a 1971 album by Harry Nilsson. The song is written by Nilsson himself, but Wikipedia isn't exactly clear on why or how. While Coconut has a novelty island flavor, it doesn't really fit with the adult-contemporary pop-rock of the rest of Nilsson Schmilsson. Nilsson's style draws on R&B and blues as equally as rock & roll and '60s pop. Although Nilsson doesn't really do anything new with this combo of influences, the result is a pleasant collection of radio-friendly drive-time pop and soft rock songs - along with a 4-minute escape to the Caribbean.
Favorite Tracks: Gotta Get Up; Jump Into the Fire; Without You
Zack: We got that 300 award post up just in time for
each of our lives to be swallowed up by our respective post-undergrad education
hells. Last semester, I was able to remain semi-productive in the blog endeavor
by listening to albums while I graded. Unfortunately, my grading requirements
for this semester are a little less mindless than for an intro stats course, so
that route may be out. So today I tried out listening to a blog album while
working on my Maximum Likelihood Estimation homework. Big mistake. I don’t know
if any of either of you readers have ever used Stata, but it can be kind of a
frustrating experience, no matter how much experience you have. Pretty much
once a song, some command wouldn’t work for some stupid reason and I’d end up
shouting obscenities at Harry Nilsson’s stupid voice for obviously jinxing me.
In retrospect, he does not in fact have a stupid voice. But it’s become clear
to me that MLE homework time is Zack-blasts-rap-into-his-earholes time, and
it’s a shame that poor Mr. Nilsson and his stupid name and stupid album title
had to suffer because I made such an innocent mistake. I don’t think I can
revisit the album without rage washing over me like some sort of abused
Pavlovian dog, so he’s not getting a second chance. But maybe if I did, I would
stop thinking that that stupid fucking Coconut song was the dumbest few minutes
ever committed to record.
Favorite Tracks: Down; Jump Into the Fire; Gotta Get Up
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