Take the rag off the bush

[James A. Landau]

On Fri 10/20/06 12:08 AM an insomniac Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote

<q>
This reminds me of a bit of patter (I've been using "rap" in this
sense, but it seems to me that what people actually said in those days
was "patter") used by Saint Louis's original black DJ, "Spider" Burks
(of course he had shows entitled "Spinning With Spider" and "The
Spider's Web"!): "They (the musicians who developed what was then
known as "modern" jazz) _took the ship out of the bottle_ and made it
stand for a brand-new sound."
</q>

I find it difficult for anyone, black or white, to consider "rap" and "patter" to be synonyms.

"Patter" means a stream of words with the connotation that there is little or no content, e.g. "a carnival barker's patter", "a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song".  A synonym would be "blarney".

"Rap" on the other hand always implies content to the words, e.g. in 1969 a black soldier told me "and I had a [newspaper] column in which I could rap as much as I wanted".  It is no surprise that "rap music" is frequently controversial for its content.  Also "patter" can mean any stream of words, whereas "rap music" has a very strong beat that makes the words stand out so that it is difficult for the listener to ignore them.  "Patter" could imply a hypnotic effect; rap music is just the opposite.

"Take the ship out of the bottle" is a good piece of imagery because model ships are placed in bottles.  What Mr. Spider is saying is that these musicians took an obscure "little" musical form and made it widely available and popular, or in other words, "big".  Rags are not normally found on bushes so there is no such obvious imagery to "Take the rag off the bush."  The best guess I can come up with is that, since a woman "on the rag" is having her period, "take the rag off the bush" means for a woman to remove the pads from her crotch because her period is over and hence she is more something-or-other.  But I admit I'm reaching for that one.

     James A. Landau
     Test Engineer
     Northrop-Grumman Information Technology
     8025 Black Horse Pike, Suite 300
     West Atlantic City NJ 08232 USA

Hmmm.  Looking at my signature block I am reminded of an eggcorn I once saw:
"Grumman's Chinese Theater".  Must have been where "Tog Gun" premiered.

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