TERMINAL SEGMENT
Bug Songs are Rarely About Bugs
JOHN ACORN
D
uring the time that I was working
in television, I wrote quite a bit of
music—goofy music, but music
just the same. Each episode of Acorn The
Nature Nut contained a feature song, and
when the show was about a particular
group of insects, the song was too. As a
result, I struggled some 25 times to write
original, creative, arthropod-related music,
and I watched my friend and musical partner, the late Michael Becker, write an additional half-dozen bug tunes as well. What
I learned will not surprise musicians, but
it may not be immediately apparent to
most entomologists: bug songs are rarely
about bugs.
For example, the other day, I finally got
around to recording a song I wrote for a
local public education event, the annual
Bug Jamboree at a lovely facility called the
Ellis Bird Farm, near Lacombe, Alberta (the
song is now on their Web site, at http://
tinyurl.com/nw3ky2r). In a trivial sense
only, it is a song about insects, since most
of the lyrics are about people’s exaggerated fears of insects, and about the Bug
Jamboree itself. I am most proud of the
rhyme “Talk to bugsters from all around
Alberta / Learn the bugs in your yard and
the ones you never hearda.”
Let’s face it: most musical lyrics are
about people, and specifically about the
emotions that we feel. So it makes perfect
sense that it would be easier to write a
song about entomologists than to write a
song about insects. That is what I did when
former ESA president Marlin Rice asked
me to write a song for the plenary session
of the annual meeting in 2009 (http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Beebb8jXFnQ). That tune is about entomologists
as everyday folk, with everyday human
emotions. It hasn’t exactly gone viral, but
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My heart began to simmer, then my hands went numb/I’d been bitten by backswimmers on my
teenaged thumb” (from the song “Waterbug” by John Acorn)
with more than 3,600 views on YouTube,
it is doing better than most of my offerings. A close second, with about 3,300
views, is a version of the theme song for
my television show, recorded with two
junior high school students for a school
video project (http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=GVxvONQnR-g).
There are other songs about entomologists, but not many. I have one that I have
performed many times but never recorded, called “Butterfly Collector,” in which I
make the point, “the world don’t understand you, but you’re a friend of mine.” If
you do an online search for “entomology
song,” however, you will find a few compositions in which the word “entomology” is used mostly as a decoration, for its
value as imagery. Leo Kottke’s “Spanish
Entomologist” is a wonderful instrumental
guitar piece, but with no more entomological content than any other instrumental
music, with the possible exception of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee.” Another example of music that
is entomological in name only (although
I’m sure there is some symbolism in there
somewhere) is the album Entomology by
Reginator (Reggie Barnes), at http://reginator.net/, in which each track bears the
name of a different arthropod.
I must admit to a bit of meaningless
entomomusic (do you like that term?) of
my own, in the form of “Music for Moths,”
a song I wrote in my undergrad years,
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American Entomologist • Spring 2014
Terminal Segment, from page 64
based on the silly premise that moths are
attracted to music as well as light. It’s an
upbeat, bluesy tune, but I’ll admit that it
does lack meaning. You can listen to the
song (as arranged by Michael Becker) at
http://tinyurl.com/lhazzyn under “moth
music downloads,” along with the remarkable composition “Enargia decolor” by my
friend and fellow entomologist Greg Pohl
(and his former band, Dead City Radio).
Greg’s approach was to empathize with
the moths, and he thereby created a bug
song that is actually about bugs. A few of
my songs for television were of this sort
(songs about click beetles, aphids, dragonflies, and yucca moths, for example), and
I’m sorry that these songs are not up and
available on the Web quite yet.
In a similar vein, I quite like the tune
“Baby You’re an Arthropod,” by the “singing zoologist” Lucas Miller (http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=UFe3cZLuhUs).
Like him, I have tried to make my lyrics
accessible to everyone, always throwing
in a few tidbits of real biology to make
them digestible at perhaps the undergrad
level. Far too many bug songs are aimed
at very young children, often with oversimplified lyrics and kindergarten-style,
condescending delivery. While I hate to
be critical of my fellow musicians, here’s
one example that I think is typical of the
problem: the “What is an Insect Song”
by Twin Sisters, available at http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=gwsLzxL4inU. The
only value this song might have for older
entomologists might be as an exercise in
listing exceptions to the so-called rules
listed in the lyrics (for example, not all
insects lay eggs). Perhaps, though, I am
especially sensitive to such things after my
last column, on the difficulty of counting
“main body parts.”
How about songs about nostalgia? A
few of my own tunes were based on this
premise, and the link between insects and
fond childhood memories. One especially bizarre example of the insect nostalgia
category is the tune “Apple Maggot Quarantine Area” by Alan Denke (http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=clBg4IrqOGk).
Once you have had a listen, you’ll agree
that it is a bit of an earworm. The description reads, “This is a cold war era community pride song about the Pacific NW. Long
live the apple maggots,” and the following
sample lyrics pretty much give the flavor
of this song:
American Entomologist • Volume 60, Number 1
We’ve got an airplane factory, building MX Missiles here
If the Russians drop the big one,
there’ll be no more apple maggots
to fear
So appreciate them while you’ve
got ’em
And I’m proud to live in an Apple
Maggot Quarantine Area!
Yes, I’m proud to live in an Apple
Maggot Quarantine Area!
You have probably noticed that most
musicians who write about arthropods
are not exactly Top-40 artists. Some might
be called alternative, but others qualify as
“outsider musicians”—those who perform
with a straight face, but it’s difficult to
know if they mean their music as a joke.
A legendary outsider, Mark Gormley, has
achieved true Internet virality (with many
million views online) with “Little Wings,” a
song I like to think might be about monarch butterflies, although to be honest,
your guess is as good as mine: http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=x9J65j2GNzw.
Outsider music has featured some
remarkably unusual talents, and another
of its classics is “Cousin Mosquito #1” by
Congress-Woman Malinda Jackson Parker
of Liberia. It is, beyond a doubt, one of the
strangest tunes ever recorded, and a worthy
comedic break in every lecture ever given
on the subject of insect-borne disease. If you
doubt me, have a listen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHeeYDwYqZs (where
it appears along with the equally dizzying
“Cousin Mosquito #2), and try to count the
number of times she says the word “cousin.”
Some say 204. I’m really not sure, but I get
the main point: “beware Cousin Mosquito
and his solo.” Even with all of its biological
errors (and promotion of DDT), this song
serves well to introduce what may be the
most popular of all bug song categories:
the insect pest hatred ballad.
There is, of course, no way to come even
close to cataloging all bug songs in the
space I have here, but I really should mention a few more insect pest hatred ballads,
the greatest of all being the traditional
American folk song, “Boll Weevil” (http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boll_Weevil_(song).
For Canadians, two more need to be listed
here, beginning with “Black Fly Song” by
Wade Hemsworth, which was famously
made the subject of a National Film Board
animated short, featuring the superb musicians Kate and Anna McGarrigle (http://
www.nfb.ca/film/blackfly). And for those
of us who are still getting over the loss of
Canadian country music legend Stompin’
Tom Connors, I have to mention “The Bug
Song,” a marvelous tune that is, unfortunately, based on the mistaken premise
that we would all be better off in a world
without “bugs” (http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=7j75Uxjm-L8):
Bugs, bugs, bugs, if I had them all
in jugs,
I’d dig, dig, dig, till a big, big, hole,
Was dug, dug, dug, dug, dug,
And that would be the end of the
bug song.
The final category of bug songs should
not surprise anyone, since we all know
that love is the most popular subject for
music, and always will be. Insect love songs
are rare, but they come naturally to those
of us who need to write insect-themed
music. Michael Becker, when we worked
on the television show together, wrote a
total of four, all of which either brought
the romantic couple together because of
bugs, or used insects in symbolism to represent relationship woes. My most successful composition in this vein was a
tune called “Waterbug,” in which a young
man meets a young woman while pond
dipping. I have been told that it is also the
only song in which the lyrics contain the
word “backswimmer.”
She was looking so cute, in her rubber boots,
Her name was Annette, and she had
one too,
Down by the beaver pond, with the
swampy smell,
We searched for water bugs, and in
love we fell.
I played that song as part of an after-dinner talk at an entomology meeting, and
afterward a professor came up to me, and
shook my hand warmly. “That was beautiful,” he said, “did that happen to you?” I
had to admit that it was a bit of an imaginary fantasy on my part, but that didn’t
diminish his enthusiasm. “That,” he told
me, “is how I met my wife.”
John Acorn lectures at
the University of
Alberta. He is an entomologist, broadcaster,
and writer, and is the
author of fifteen
books, as well as the
host of two television
series.
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