FPSHOT
Mar 15, 2010, 02:35 AM
Some of you may not have been able to see this
--Mo Ostin Chairman Emeritus Warner Bros. Records 2007
The only known surviving members of this once great nomadic tribe of wandering musicians - whose ancestry goes back so far that their exact origins have become extremely difficult to retrace or separate from the legends and myths that have grown around them throughout the centuries. It is understood, however, that they have their roots deep in the obscure civilization of Asiatic Pygmies (called Travelians), whose musical intrigue was well renowned at that time.
In the more recent past, The Traveling Wilburys as we now know them, with their songs of colour and free expression, come to us marked with 221 years of pain, suffering and nightmarish domination by nightclub owners, tour operators, record company executives, wicked agents and managers - not to mention wives, road crews and drummers.
These popular songs, laments and epic heroic tales fuse together into a rhythmic and harmonic trifle that will leave a taste in your ears for days after the last diaphonic interval has departed from your CD player.
Let Thy Wilbury done!
Ted Ashenbecker (M.A.), Berlin University 1988
The etymological origins of The Traveling Wilburys have aroused something of a controversy amongst academic circles. Did they, as Professor "Bobby" Sinfield believes, originate from the various Wilbury Fairs which traveled Europe in Medieval times, titillating the populace with contemporary ballads, or were they rather derived from, "YE TRAVELING WILBURYS", who were popular locksmiths during the Crusades and used to pick or unlock the jammed chastity belts (rather like today's emergency plumbers).
Dr. Arthur Noseputty of Cambridge believes they were closely related to the Strangling Dingleberries, which is not a group but a disease. I think this can be discounted, not only because of his silly name but also from his habit of impersonating Ethel Merman during lectures. Some have even gone on to suggest tenuous links with The Pillsburys, the group who invented Flour Power.
Dim Sun, a Chinese academic, argues that they may be related to "THE STROLLING TILBURYS", Queen Elizabeth the first's favourite minstrels, and backs this suspicion with the observation that The Traveling Wilburys is an obvious anagram of "V. BURYING WILL'S THEATRE", clearly a reference to the closing of Shakespeare's Globe theatre by Villiers during an outbreak of the plague. This would account for the constant traveling. Indeed, many victims of the plague and St.Vitus' dance literally danced themselves to death, and it is this dancing theme that resurfaces with The Wilbury Twist. Not a cocktail but a dance craze, reminiscent of The Wilbury Quadrille made famous at Bath in 1790 by Beau Diddley, and the Wilbury Waltz, which swept Vienna in the 1890's.
One thing, however, remains certain. The circumambulatory peregrinations of these itinerant mundivagant peripatetic nomads has already disgorged one collection of popular lyrical cantata, which happily encapsulated their dithyrambic antiphonic contrapuntal threnodies as a satisfactory auricular experience for the hedonistic gratification of the hoi-polloi on a popular epigraphically inscribed gramophonic recording. Now here's another one.
Professor "TINY" Hampton is currently leading the search for Intelligent Life amongst Rock Journalism at the University of Please Yourself, California.
The original Wilburys were a stationary people who, realizing that their civilization could not stand still forever, began to go for short walks - not the "traveling", as we now know it, but certainly as far as the corner and back. They must have taken to motion, in much the same way as penguins were at that time taking to ledges, for the next we hear of them they were going out for the day (often taking lunch or a picnic). Later, we don't as yet know how much later, some intrepid Wilburys began to go away for the weekend, leaving late Friday and coming back Sunday. It was they who evolved simple rhythmic forms to describe their adventures.
A remarkable sophisticated musical culture developed, considering there were no managers or agents, and the further the Wilburys traveled the more adventurous their music became, and the more it was revered by the elders of the tribe who believed it had the power to stave off madness, turn brunettes into blondes and increase the size of their ears.
As the Wilburys began to go further and further in their search for musical inspiration they found themselves the object of interest among many less developed species - nightclub owners, tour operators and recording executives. To the Wilburys, who had only just learnt to cope with wives, roadies and drummers, it was a blow from which many of them never recovered.
A tiny handful survived - the last of the Traveling Wilburys - and the songs gathered here represent the popular laments, the epic and heroic tales, which characterize the apotheosis of the elusive Wilbury sound. The message of the music travels, as indeed they traveled and as I myself must now travel for further treatment. Good listening, good night and let thy Wilbury be done . . .
--Mo Ostin Chairman Emeritus Warner Bros. Records 2007
The only known surviving members of this once great nomadic tribe of wandering musicians - whose ancestry goes back so far that their exact origins have become extremely difficult to retrace or separate from the legends and myths that have grown around them throughout the centuries. It is understood, however, that they have their roots deep in the obscure civilization of Asiatic Pygmies (called Travelians), whose musical intrigue was well renowned at that time.
In the more recent past, The Traveling Wilburys as we now know them, with their songs of colour and free expression, come to us marked with 221 years of pain, suffering and nightmarish domination by nightclub owners, tour operators, record company executives, wicked agents and managers - not to mention wives, road crews and drummers.
These popular songs, laments and epic heroic tales fuse together into a rhythmic and harmonic trifle that will leave a taste in your ears for days after the last diaphonic interval has departed from your CD player.
Let Thy Wilbury done!
Ted Ashenbecker (M.A.), Berlin University 1988
The etymological origins of The Traveling Wilburys have aroused something of a controversy amongst academic circles. Did they, as Professor "Bobby" Sinfield believes, originate from the various Wilbury Fairs which traveled Europe in Medieval times, titillating the populace with contemporary ballads, or were they rather derived from, "YE TRAVELING WILBURYS", who were popular locksmiths during the Crusades and used to pick or unlock the jammed chastity belts (rather like today's emergency plumbers).
Dr. Arthur Noseputty of Cambridge believes they were closely related to the Strangling Dingleberries, which is not a group but a disease. I think this can be discounted, not only because of his silly name but also from his habit of impersonating Ethel Merman during lectures. Some have even gone on to suggest tenuous links with The Pillsburys, the group who invented Flour Power.
Dim Sun, a Chinese academic, argues that they may be related to "THE STROLLING TILBURYS", Queen Elizabeth the first's favourite minstrels, and backs this suspicion with the observation that The Traveling Wilburys is an obvious anagram of "V. BURYING WILL'S THEATRE", clearly a reference to the closing of Shakespeare's Globe theatre by Villiers during an outbreak of the plague. This would account for the constant traveling. Indeed, many victims of the plague and St.Vitus' dance literally danced themselves to death, and it is this dancing theme that resurfaces with The Wilbury Twist. Not a cocktail but a dance craze, reminiscent of The Wilbury Quadrille made famous at Bath in 1790 by Beau Diddley, and the Wilbury Waltz, which swept Vienna in the 1890's.
One thing, however, remains certain. The circumambulatory peregrinations of these itinerant mundivagant peripatetic nomads has already disgorged one collection of popular lyrical cantata, which happily encapsulated their dithyrambic antiphonic contrapuntal threnodies as a satisfactory auricular experience for the hedonistic gratification of the hoi-polloi on a popular epigraphically inscribed gramophonic recording. Now here's another one.
Professor "TINY" Hampton is currently leading the search for Intelligent Life amongst Rock Journalism at the University of Please Yourself, California.
The original Wilburys were a stationary people who, realizing that their civilization could not stand still forever, began to go for short walks - not the "traveling", as we now know it, but certainly as far as the corner and back. They must have taken to motion, in much the same way as penguins were at that time taking to ledges, for the next we hear of them they were going out for the day (often taking lunch or a picnic). Later, we don't as yet know how much later, some intrepid Wilburys began to go away for the weekend, leaving late Friday and coming back Sunday. It was they who evolved simple rhythmic forms to describe their adventures.
A remarkable sophisticated musical culture developed, considering there were no managers or agents, and the further the Wilburys traveled the more adventurous their music became, and the more it was revered by the elders of the tribe who believed it had the power to stave off madness, turn brunettes into blondes and increase the size of their ears.
As the Wilburys began to go further and further in their search for musical inspiration they found themselves the object of interest among many less developed species - nightclub owners, tour operators and recording executives. To the Wilburys, who had only just learnt to cope with wives, roadies and drummers, it was a blow from which many of them never recovered.
A tiny handful survived - the last of the Traveling Wilburys - and the songs gathered here represent the popular laments, the epic and heroic tales, which characterize the apotheosis of the elusive Wilbury sound. The message of the music travels, as indeed they traveled and as I myself must now travel for further treatment. Good listening, good night and let thy Wilbury be done . . .