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

[Garson O'Toole]

The website everything2.com lists the following audio recordings for
Martin Mull before 1980. He usually mixed music and comedy in his
albums:

Martin Mull (1972)
Martin Mull and His Fabulous Furniture in Your Living Room (1973)
Normal (1974)
In the Soop (1974) As part of the comedy troop Soop
Days of Wine and Neuroses (1975)
No Hits, Four Errors (1977)
I'm Everyone I Ever Loved (1977)
Sex and Violins (1978)
Perfect/Near Perfect (1979)

http://everything2.com/title/Martin+Mull

Fernwood 2Nite transformed into the TV series America 2-Night which
ran in 1978 with Martin Mull as Barth Gimble according to IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076976/

Circuitously indirect evidence suggests Martin Mull claims authorship
of the adage. There is a blog posting at
theonlinephotographer.typepad.com. A photographer named Mike Johnston
contacted Carl P. Hammer, the art dealer of Martin Mull. Mull
confirmed to Hammer that the saying was his. Hammer emailed this
information to Johnston who posted it on the web. Well, this is better
than Elvis Costello's denial.

(Begin excerpt)
So one of the lines I threw into the water was an email to Martin's
art dealer, Carl P. Hammer of Carl Hammer Gallery in Chicago. Carl
contacted Martin for me, and Martin confirmed that he is indeed the
originator of the famous one-liner.
(End excerpt)

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/07/ot-we-hear-from-martin-mull.html

Garson


On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 10:57 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Quote: Writing about music is like dancing about architecture
>              (close variant attrib Martin Mull 1980 July)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
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