Maria Brumm has a Master's degree... in Earth Science! She lives in Seattle, WA, where she works in environmental consulting.
I am frequently earwormed by the alt-country band Uncle Tupelo's song New Madrid
Come on do what you did
Roll me under New Madrid
Shake my baby and please bring her back
So for Valentine's Day, I thought I'd poke around the iTunes store and see if I couldn't find something else to be earwormed by. Something a little less relentlessly cheesy than The Earthquake Of Your Love
.
As it turns out, geological love songs are hard to find - and when you do find them, they're likely to be depressing (or else they're a "hot lava" orogeny). Plate tectonics for some reason always moves us apart, never together.
- Top of the Fair's The San Andreas Fault
is breaking me it's breaking me away from you oh
- Blair Tefkin's melancholy Geology
uses deep time to emphasize the impermanence of love
... can anyone think of some better ones?
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
Ahaha! I guess I'm not the only one who gets relentlessly earwormed by "New Madrid"! I found it purely by accident, and immediately was taken by both the melody and the refrain. The more times I listen to it, though, the more I realize that the entire song is all about geek lurve, and there's a reason for its intraplate setting. I'm trying to convince the bluegrass group in which I play (badly, but I play!) that we should adapt it.
As for others... The Sundowners also did a song called "San Andreas Fault": Hello, operator, can you get me someplace else? Anywhere but here would be all right. It feels like we are standing on the San Andreas Fault, and you and I are running out of time.
And there's a geeky Spanish and English song by Kevin Johansen, called "La falla de San Andres" (are we sensing a trend here?), that involves an anniversary date getting trashed by an earthquake, with comedic sound effects and puns.
If you wanted to go the "referential in context" route, there's also Carole King's "I Feel the Earth Move."
Posted by: Julian | February 14, 2008 11:01 AM
A reason for the intraplate setting? Is it that California isn't hicksville enough that you need an earthquake to get any attention to your town from snotty New Yorkers, or is there a geekier reason?
Posted by: Maria Brumm | February 14, 2008 11:14 AM
"Dinosaur of Love" by Eva Moon is my top choice (no MP3 but lyrics are available). Plenty of geology in there. And there's nothing sexier than prancing around the bedroom in one's smalls, singing "I'm gonna get me some of that Tyrannosaurus sex"...
Posted by: Julia | February 14, 2008 11:15 AM
There's the line "though continents divide" from "Wherever You May Be" off Bonnie Raitt's 2002 album Silver Lining. It's just the one line, but it was the first geologic reference I actively noticed in a song. Maybe not the best song for Valentine's day, since it seems to be more about love lost (or at least separated).
Posted by: Rebecca | February 14, 2008 12:12 PM
My first thought was Elvis in 'Beyond Belief', because I felt it was such a sly reference that it stuck in my head. I might make it California's fault Be locked in Geneva's deepest vault Just like the canals of Mars or the great barrier reef I come to you beyond belief
Posted by: Cyrano Jones | February 14, 2008 1:22 PM
My ultimate favorite (which was the theme of many undergrad field trips) is Hot Lava, by Perry Farrell & D.V.D.A. (from South Park, I believe). It actually contains these lyrics:
Magma flowing into a subaqueous environment Produces pillow lava Hydrostatic pressure of seawater Tends to inhibit the vesicle size of the basalt! Ooh, baby, every time we kiss, hot lava...etc.
Aside from the amusing raunchiness of the lyrics, this part is actually scientifically correct. Beautiful.
Posted by: Tuff Cookie | February 14, 2008 3:55 PM
I think it gets even geekier.
The reference to Iben Browning is what made it clearer to me - his prediction of the next New Madrid Big One in the early 1990s brought a ton of media people and scientists down to the area, just in case. (The media people believed it, the scientists not so much, but some felt kind of obligated to be there.) To me, the first stanza ("All my daydreams are disasters," to "rivers burn and run backwards, to her, that's enough.") implies that the girl is excited by this kind of mayhem, and the fact that she came from New York City to New Madrid when Browning was spewing his prediction in turn implies that she's either a media person focusing on natural disasters, or a seismologist. The singer is daydreaming of disasters because news of another one would bring her back to New Madrid.
I'm also wondering if they know about the whole breaking-plate-Reelfoot-Rift-filled-in thing, since they came up with those lines about the "landfill" and "buries us all in its broken back." But I may be reading too much into it there, at least.
Posted by: Julian | February 14, 2008 6:10 PM
Yeah, but none of that storyline is really about the fact that it's an intraplate earthquake (unless you're right about the landfill thing - and that seems like a stretch, but it's not like I have a better interpretation).
Posted by: Maria Brumm | February 14, 2008 6:25 PM
True, true. The love story aspect doesn't change based on whether the quake is interplate or intraplate. There's a reason why they're both in New Madrid, so I made the mental leap that intraplate is important. (I am probably still analyzing too much!)
...and now I'm tempted to try and write a love song that's specifically related to intraplate quakes, or maybe normal faulting. (Since you've listed some strike slip ones already, and a song about megathrusts could only do bad things...)
Posted by: Julian | February 15, 2008 5:54 PM
a song about megathrusts could only do bad things
I dunno about that... do they teach bow-chicka-wow-wow composition in fancy art music programs?
Posted by: Maria Brumm | February 15, 2008 6:12 PM
Only avant-garde bow-chicka-wow-wow composition.
Posted by: Julian | February 15, 2008 8:57 PM
Hi Maria, "I wanna Rock" - Twisted Sister? lol
Anyways, I wanted to drop by to let you know, I regularly write geeky science folk songs (even to the style of uncle tupelo even, my like OMG teh fave band!).
I think with my little undergrad (UC-Davis, Go Aggies!) geology training, I can muster up something. Maybe "Without You, Clay, I'm Feeling Porous Tonight"?
If you want to write any song lyrics, I'm put it to music!
Posted by: kevin z | February 18, 2008 11:07 AM
Can't "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" be co-opted? I notice that, for "New Madrid" to scan, you'd have to pronounce it as though it were in Spain. I've never heard the song; maybe they don't make it scan. We say it with the stress on the first syllable, though, in New Madrid territory.
Posted by: Rebecca | February 19, 2008 7:15 AM
They actually make it scan with the stress on the first syllable. It's not a very rigorous rhyme scheme.
Kevin, clay is actually very porous, it's just not very permeable (holds lots of water, does not allow the water to go anywhere). Can you make the rhythm fit with "permeable"?
Posted by: Maria Brumm | February 19, 2008 1:26 PM
I always think of the Newark Supergroup and the breakup of Pangaea when I listen to the song "Transatlanticism" by Death Cab for Cutie:
The Atlantic was born today and I'll tell you how... The clouds above opened up and let it out.
I was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere When the water filled every hole. And thousands upon thousands made an ocean, Making islands where no island should go.
I know alot of paleontologists who think the song "Scar Tissue" by RHCP includes the line "the Burgess Shale is a lonely view" (tragically the actual line is "with these birds I share a lonely view").
Posted by: Randy | February 19, 2008 8:46 PM
This may be a little off-topic, but music and geology always makes me think of my favourite late-eighties band: Thin White Rope: http://moonhead.linklord.com/geologic.htm
Good question!
Posted by: SimonB | February 21, 2008 9:58 AM