Quote: Writing about music is like dancing about architecture (close variant attrib Martin Mull 1980 July)

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:35 PM -0400 10/25/10, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>I just thought I should point out that, if Martin Mull said it and lots of
>people heard it, he may have said it on one of his albums from the 70s.
>
>DanG

He probably *didn't* say it on Mary Hartman Mary Hartman.  It doesn't
sound like Garth Gimble.

LH

>
>On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 6:37 PM, Garson O'Toole
><adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
>>  Subject:      Quote: Writing about music is like dancing about architecture
>>               (close variant attrib Martin Mull 1980 July)
>>
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  The saying "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture"
>>  has previously been traced back to 1983. Numerous individuals have
>>  been credited with this popular saying, e.g., Laurie Anderson, Martin
>>  Mull, Frank Zappa, and Thelonius Monk. And one plausible candidate
>>  with an early attribution, Elvis Costello, has oddly vociferously
>>  denied connection to the maxim. Here is a new citation in 1980:
>>
>>  Cite: 1980 July, Black Music and Jazz Review, Volume 3, Issue 3, Page
>>  24, IPC Specialist & Professional Press, London.
>>
>>  I'm not going to attempt to describe the magic here, you'll have to
>>  check the record yourself, cos to write about this level of music is
>>  (as Martin Mull so aptly put it) like dancing about architecture.
>>
>>  http://books.google.com/books?id=vitLAAAAYAAJ&q=Mull#search_anchor
>>
>>  A kind librarian at the University of Virginia has examined issues of
>>  Black Music and Jazz Review on paper and verified that the snippet
>>  displayed by the Google Books database (that contains the sentence
>>  above) appears on page 24 of the July 1980 issue.
>>
>>  There was a discussion on the ADS list about this adage in January
>>  2010. Here is a link to my previous post initiating the thread:
>>  http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1001C&L=ADS-L&P=R28874
>>
>>  Thanks and appreciation to the magnificent librarians of the world,
>>  Garson
>>
>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org