i.e.

It's a song about vowels! After calling my first album disemvoweled, I realized the second should be called i.e., and it needed a song called that too to toy with the ideas. (If you think about it a bit, i.e. is both the pair of vowels missing in bllklly and the English expression meaning that is, Latin id est.) I gathered random ideas over time and tried to work out a few lyrics while on vacation in Yucatan peninsula, but it didn't really work until we were back home in May 2023. I also tried to translate "lass" into Welsh via Google and came up with "gwniadur", but later found out that it really means "thimble", after recording the song. I left it that way for now - it's kind of cute to talk about your "thimble". Enjoy the results, if you share my taste for odd themes!

By the way: there are 10-20,000 Bill Kellys in the world, but only one bllklly!

Click here for audio only:

i.e.
[Verse]
I am a man of literacy
A lover of the letters
And I count them six and twenty, more or less
With those letters I loved words
With the words a hundred stories
And a thousand heavy tomes
Yet my feelings turned out mixed.

[Chorus]
I.e. I banish thee
Without you I am proud
But I can show no pride 
That is to say
And say it loud
I have long since made the choice to be disemvoweled

[Chorus]
Fuckin' A
It feels OK
Elated by a vowel that is so pure
Aglow with O's
Jubilant with U's
But I feel no glee with I and E.

[Verse]
Sometimes Y
The wise will tell you
Can join the other five
Bleakly and bulkily 
And certainly with bllklly
It comes alive

[Verse]
I am a man of literacy
A lover of the letters
But I'll take a fricative
Before a foul-mouthed vowel
Cause in my fantasy
I'll bring back Alan Ginsberg
And together we may howl
Aooo!  Oo Uu!

[Verse]
I.e. I banish thee 
Without you I am proud
Thought I cannot write that pride 
That is to say
And say it loud
I have long since made the choice to be disemvoweled

[A sort of bridge]
Hey, I got an idea.  
If we want to get away from A, E, I, O and U,
Let's go to Wales!
There are a lot of places we can go over there!
Let me tell you, here are a few: [all written without aeiou]

[Verse]
From Bwlchgwyn [Bull-ch-gwin] to Ysbyty Ystwyth [Uss-butty Uss-twith]
You're the gwniadur [gwun-ia-door] [lass] I would travel with
When I tire of Ynysybwl [Un-niss-uh-bull]
You'll probably find that I'm unkissable

[Chorus]
Fucking A
It feels OK
To sing a tune of only vowels and such
About my tales of disemvoweledness
But I believe that I have now said too much!