Apostrophe (')

Tracks

• Don't Eat The Yellow Snow (02:07)
• Nanook Rubs It (04:38)
• St. Alphonzo's Pancake Breakfast (01:50)
• Father O'Blivion (02:18)
• Cosmik Debris (04:15)
• Excentrifugal Forz (01:33)
• Apostrophe' (05:51)
• Uncle Remus (02:44)
• Stink-Foot (06:33)

Background

The use of the word “boring” as a verb is discussed in the Lumpy Gravy section of this Wiki. We might now consider its more prominent meaning as an adjective. The circular repetitiveness of menial work and its striving to meet the bottom line (cf. Motorhead’s stories about jobs) is boring. Pop music has circular, repetitious beats. We can think back to the empowered people’s “vicious circle,” also mentioned on Lumpy Gravy; this round thing’s dull in its closed-minded (dark-clouded) pattern. Here, we can think of the round zeroes that refer to the frozen, empty tundra inhabited by Nanook (each of the first few lines of “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” ends with the “o” sound) as being boring, due to their indication of a cultural wasteland (a “dangerous premonition,” mentioned in the Money liner notes -- engineer Gary Kellgren whispers “Blank, empty space” on that same album -- or society as it currently is?). Speaking of vicious round things, there’s also the “vigorous circular motion” performed by Nanook as he rubs urine into the fur trapper’s eyes. The reduction of society into a creatively barren plain is relentless. It’s also a reference to masturbation, which myth says will make you blind, as Nanook does indeed become. Sexual repression contributes to the cultural demise.

“St. Alfonzo’s Pancake Breakfast” and “Father O’Blivion” mock religious figures who denounce sex; the priest tries to raise money by feeding his parish the pancake-shaped fruits of his masturbation, blaming his hypocritical perversions on a “leprechaun” (possibly the severed hand of a leper with which he jerks himself off, the leper being a common biblical figure). It’s an update on the reference to masturbation and Nanook’s resulting blindness (although a “vigorous circular motion” pertains more accurately to female self-pleasuring). The song at the end of the original side 1, “Cosmik Debris,” pokes fun at pseudo-holy entrepreneurs (L. Ron Hubbard types on the street corners, to hearken back to “Billy the Mountain,” which contains some altered “Pancake Breakfast” lyrics).