This is the third in a very occasional series of posts explaining all the oblique references in all those favourite albums so beloved of the indie world, yet so packed with perplexing references.
Remember, knowledge is power!
1. The AvalancheIn Asthmatic Kitty's press release, they proudly inform us that:
In his rummaging through old musical memorabilia, Sufjan began to use this song as a meditation on the editorial process, returning to old forms, knee-deep in debris, sifting rocks and river water for an occasional glint of gold. "I call ye cabin neighbors," the song bemuses, "I call you once my friends." And like an avid social organizer, Sufjan took in all the odd musical misfits and gathered them together for a party of their own, like good friends.
The title is also a reference to the
Chevrolet Avalanche, which appears on the cover of the album. It was designed by a child. Wow!
2. Dear Mr. SupercomputerA disco-jazz ode (in 7/8 timing) to the Supercomputer hosted at the
University of Illinois at Champaigne-Urbana. The university is the site of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), which created Mosaic, the first graphical Web browser, the foundation upon which Microsoft Internet Explorer is based. And although it is a supercomputer, it does not fight crime. It doesn't even wear a cape.
3. Adlai Stevenson
Adlai Stevenson was a governor of Illinois in the forties, and ambassador to the UN during the Kennedy administration in the sixties. His most famous moment came on October 25, 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, when he gave a presentation at an emergency session of the Security Council. He forcefully asked the Soviet representative, Valerian Zorin, if his country was installing missiles in Cuba, punctuated with the famous demand "Don't wait for the translation!" in demanding an immediate answer. Following Zorin's refusal to answer the abrupt question, Stevenson retorted, "I am prepared to wait for my answer until Hell freezes over." In a diplomatic coup, Stevenson then showed photographs that proved the existence of missiles in Cuba, just after the Soviet ambassador had said they did not exist.
Peter Sellers claimed that his portrayal of President Merkin Muffley in Dr. Strangelove was modelled on Stevenson.
4. The Vivian Girls Are Visited in the Night by Saint Dargarius and His Squadron of Benevolent ButterfliesHenry Darger was a reclusive American writer and illustrator who worked as a janitor in Chicago, Illinois. His major claim to fame is a 15,143-page fantasy manuscript called 'The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion', along with several hundred
watercolor paintings and other drawings illustrating the story. It was only after his death in 1973 that Darger's extraordinary
work was discovered.
The Story of the Vivian Girls postulates a large planet around which Earth orbits as a moon and where most people are Christian (mostly Catholic). The majority of the story concerns the adventures of the daughters of Robert Vivian, seven sisters who are princesses of the Christian nation of Abbiennia, who assist a daring rebellion against a regime of child slavery imposed by the "Glandelinians". The latter resemble Confederate soldiers from the American Civil War (Darger, like his father, was a Civil War expert). Children take up arms in their own defense and are often slain in battle, or after vicious torture by the Glandelinian overlords.
In 1968 he wrote 'The History of My Life', a book that spends 206 pages detailing his early life before veering off into 4,672 pages of fiction about a huge twister called "Sweetie Pie."
The cover art of Animal Collective's album Feels is purportedly an homage to Darger's visual style, and 'Lost Girls,' a song by Tilly and the Wall, is based on his work.
5. Chicago (Acoustic Version)"Hog butcher for the world,
Tool maker, stacker of wheat,
Player with railroads and the nation's freight handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the big shoulders."
Carl Sandburg
6. The Henney Buggy Band
The
Henney Buggy Company produced sturdy carriages for privileged Illinois residents in the late 19th century - it was founded by John W. Henney in Stephenson in 1879, and the company was liquidated before the US entered World War 1. In 1877 the Henney Company organized its first
band, and used hand written music books - by 1886 the band had been fully equipped with instruments, uniforms and a banner.
Henney went back into business afterwards, with a large factory located in Freeport, Illinois, employing over 300 workers in 1939. In the early days it was a buggy factory, but it became a hearse and ambulance factory associated with Packard. It also made equipment for the US Government in both wars, as well as ambulances.
I'm not too sure who Father John is, but I'd like to think it's
this guy, a big Michigan Wolverines fan. The
Ronald Reagan Memorial Tollway, originally known as the East-West Tollway, is a toll road in northern Illinois, renamed in 2004 after his death. Interestlingly, Reagan once forgot Princess Diana's name, and referred to her as Princess David instead.
7. Saul BellowSaul Bellow (1915 – 2005), was an acclaimed Canadian-born American writer of Jewish descent. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976, and was best known for writing novels that investigate isolation, spiritual dissociation, and the possibilities of human awakening. His early works earned him the reputation as one of the foremost novelists of the 20th century, and by his death he was regarded by many as the greatest living novelist in English. He lived in Chicago, a city which became the setting of many of his novels.
He was sometimes criticised for having a biased view of Israel, and for having praised Joan Peters's fraudulent book, 'From Time Immemorial', which denied the existence of the Palestinian people. In his later years, Bellow could be very curmudgeonly, as for example when he said, "California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. You can quote me on that."
8. Carlyle LakeCarlyle Lake is the largest manmade lake within Illinois, with more than 26,000 acres of water and 11,000 acres of land. It is located just 50 miles east of St. Louis, Missouri. They have games too - like
Battleship!
9. Springfield, or Bobby Got a Shadfly Caught in His HairSpringfield is the capital of the U.S. state of Illinois and the county seat of Sangamon County. Abraham Lincoln began his career there, as did the Simpsons, but that could be a different Springfield.
A shadfly is a kind of mayfly that lives only a few days to reproduce, and then dies. It spend most of its life underwater as a larva. It is sometimes also called a Canadian soldier.
10. The Mistress Witch From McClure (Or, The Mind That Knows Itself)Sufjan: "The Mistress Witch of McClure" song is based on some...[pause] experiences that I had.
Pitchfork: Would you care to elaborate on that at all?
Sufjan: "Probably not, it might be a little incriminating. [laughs]"
McClure is a town in Illinois, you can read about it
here.
11. Kaskaskia RiverThe Kaskaskia River is a tributary of the Mississippi River, approximately 320 mi (515 km) long, in central and southern Illinois in the United States. The second largest river system within Illinois, it drains a rural area of farms, as well as rolling hills along river bottoms of hardwood forests in its lower reaches.
12. Chicago (Adult Contemporary Easy Listening Version)Chicago Nicknames:
The Windy City
The Second City
Chi-Town
Beirut By The Bay
13. Inaugural Pop Music for Jane Margaret ByrneJane Margaret Byrne (born May 24, 1934) was the first female Mayor of Chicago, Illinois. She served from 1979 to 1983. As of 2005, no other woman has been a mayor of a larger American city. Byrne made some progressive moves as mayor, such as hiring the first black school superintendent, and she was the first Mayor to recognize the gay community. Hurray for Irish-American politicians! Except you Joe McCarthy. You shut up.
14. No Man's LandA rare song in a 17/4 time signature. Sufjan had to pay the estate of socialist folk-musician legend
Woody Guthrie to use the lines; "This land is made for you and me," and "This land is yours, this land is mine." Guthrie's lyrics are:
In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;By the relief office, I'd seen my people.As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,Is this land made for you and me?As I went walking, I saw a sign there,And on the sign there, It said "Private Property"But on the other side, it didn't say nothing!That side was made for you and me.Jo Daviess is a county in Illinois. Panola is a village in Woodford County, Illinois, United States. The population was 33 at the 2000 census.
15. The Palm Sunday Tornado Hits Crystal LakeThe first Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak occurred on April 11, 1965. Forty-eight tornadoes (38 significant, 19 violent, 21 killers) hit the Midwest, making it the second (or third depending on the final tally of the March 12, 2006 tornado outbreak) biggest outbreak on record. A tornado occurred at Crystal Lake, Illinois, where it destroyed several subdivisions and a golf course. It grazed a junior high school then destroyed several homes in a community called Colby's Home Estates. 145 homes were damaged -- 45 beyond repair as well as a shopping centre. Five people were killed.
16. The Pick-UpSufjan used to be a kid, you know.
17. The Perpetual Self, or 'What Would Saul Alinsky Do?Saul David Alinsky (1909 - 1972) is generally considered the father of community organizing. Many important community and labor organizers worked and studied with him.
Author of Reveille for Radicals, Alinsky encouraged controversy and conflict, often to the dismay of middle-class activists who otherwise would sponsor his activism. Alinsky is often credited with laying the foundation for confrontational political tactics that dominated the 1960s, but late in his life he encouraged holders of stock in public corporations to lend their votes to "proxies" who would vote at annual stockholders meetings in favor of social justice. While his confrontational style took hold in American activism, for a while at least, his call to stock holders to share their power with disenfranchised working poor never took hold in U.S. progressive circles.
18. For Clyde TombaughClyde William Tombaugh (1906 – 1997) was an American astronomer born in Streator, La Salle County, Illinois, who discovered the planet Pluto in 1930. Some of his ashes are carried on the New Horizons spacecraft which is travelling toward Pluto.
Tombaugh was an active
Unitarian-Universalist.
19. Chicago (Multiple Personality Disorder Version)More Chicago Nicknames:
The Chi
The City by the lake
City of the Big Shoulders
City on the Make
Paris on the Prairie
20. Pittsfield"The most personal one is "Pittsfield". That one's based on a lot of memories from my childhood, and I sort of transplanted them into this miserable little town in Illinois. Pittsfield is very similar to some of the small towns we grew up around in Northern Michigan."
Pittsfield is a city in Pike County, Illinois. It is the self-proclaimed "Pork Capital" of the Midwest, owing to the long history of pork production in the region, which fed into the large meat-packing industry of Chicago. Though agriculture in the region is no longer so dependant on pork, the town still hosts a yearly "Pig Days" festival.
The theme of family and a difficult childhood is a recurrent one for Sufjan, especially in his short story, 'My Mother, King Tut', which you can read
here, and buy
here.
21. The Undivided Self (For Eppie and Popo)Esther "Eppie" Pauline Friedman Lederer, better known as Ann Landers (1918 – 2002), was best known for writing the famous syndicated advice column "Ann Landers." For some 45 years, it was a regular feature in many newspapers across North America. In it, people wrote the columnist for advice and she answered. Lederer's writing style was direct, but often witty and sometimes acerbic.
Landers was an identical twin: her sister, Pauline Esther Friedman Phillips, who was 17 minutes younger than Esther, wrote the Dear Abby column as Abigail Van Buren. As children, they grew up in Sioux City, Iowa, the daughters of Russian Jewish emigrants, and went by the nicknames "Eppie" and "Popo", respectively. They were very close and even had a joint wedding ceremony in 1939 at the age of 21.
As competing columnists, however, the sisters did not have a happy relationship. The sisters publicly reconciled in 1964, although some suggest the acrimony lasted. Just a few years before Lederer's death, they were not on speaking terms; it is said that they reconciled before her death, although that may be subject to question considering that Popo (Abby) was and is suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
Previous Explanations:
Illinois,
He Poos CloudsDear Mr SupercomputerOpie's Funeral SongWolverineChicago (original version)All Good Naysayers, Speak Up! Or Forever Hold Your Peace!"BorderlineNow you know, and knowing is half the battle.
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