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Topic: 'Gutterflower'? (Read 2635 times) |
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Lea
Goo God
RogueUK
 
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'Gutterflower'?
« on: Mar 1st, 2005, 9:36pm » |
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I don't know why it never occurred to me to ask this until now. But I've always had a kind of fascination with just the word: 'Gutterflower'. Now maybe I'm being really dumb...there's probably some interview (maybe even several) where the guys have explained all this in great detail...probably just after they got asked how they named the band...and I've somehow missed it and you're all gonna think I'm (more) dumb.
But...well...WTF IS a gutterflower?
For various reasons it's a word I relate to myself a lot...to me it suggests coming from a bad situation and (to extend the flower analogy) managing to 'blossom' despite difficult circumstances. So that's what it means to ME, but does it have an ACTUAL meaning that I'm not aware of?
Also, in several interviews, before the album came out, I heard the title referred to as 'GutterflowerS'. Was the title originally meant to be in the plural, or was this just a slip on behalf of the interviewers?
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gooberrygirl
Goo God
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Re: 'Gutterflower'?
« Reply #1 on: Mar 1st, 2005, 9:57pm » |
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John said that Pablo Neruda's poem "The Beggars" inspired him to name the album Gutterflower. The word gutterflowers or street flora is in the translated form from the spanish flora de la calle...I think it was Pablo describing beggars as gutterflowers ...
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| « Last Edit: Mar 1st, 2005, 9:58pm by gooberrygirl » |
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Lea
Goo God
RogueUK
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Re: 'Gutterflower'?
« Reply #2 on: Mar 1st, 2005, 10:49pm » |
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on Mar 1st, 2005, 9:57pm, gooberrygirl wrote:| John said that Pablo Neruda's poem "The Beggars" inspired him to name the album Gutterflower. The word gutterflowers or street flora is in the translated form from the spanish flora de la calle...I think it was Pablo describing beggars as gutterflowers ... |
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WOW...that's awesome...thank you so much! 
And look what a little Googling can dig up:
The Beggars (Los Mendigos)
Translated English Version
by Pablo Neruda
By the cathedrals, clotting
The walls, they deploy
With their bundles, their black looks, their limbs
Ripped tins of provender,
The livid increase of the gargoyles;
Beyond, on the obdurate
Unction of stone
They nurture a gutter-flower , the flower
Of legitimized plague, in migrations.
The park had its paupers
Like its trees of extortionate
Foliage and root-forms:
At the garden's margin, the slave,
Like a sink at the verge of humanity,
Content with his tainted dissymmetry
Supine by the broom of his dying.
Though charity bury them
In the pit of their pestilence,
They suffice for human conditions: they prefigure us.
Our wisdom is this: to trample them under,
To harry the breed in the sties of contempt,
Servility's creatures, wearing servility's livery-
We may show them our bootsoles
Or interpret their lack in the order of nature.
American panhandlers, '48's
Offspring, grandsons
Of church doors, I do not commend you.
I will not invest you with ivory usages,
The rhetorists' figure, monarchical beards,
Or explain you away with a book, like the others.
I efface you, and hope-
Who never will enter my discipline's love,
Neither you nor your pieties, nor pass to my pity.
I exile your dust from the earth
And those who contrived you to soil
A contemptible image-
Till metals remake you
And you issue and blaze like a blade.
I took a look at the original...makes me wish I still knew Spanish as well as I once did. This guy seems to have been awesome though...he won a noble prize during the 70s...he was part of Allende's government in Chile and died right after the coup to overthrow Salvador Allende...he was also close friends with the playwright Lorca...
Isabel Allende is one of my favourite authors. She is Salvador Allende's...um...niece, I think...
Pablo Neruda's Bio for anyone who's interested... 
See, never underestimate the powers of Goo to bring education and culture to the masses!
It seems like John reads a lot. I read an interview which stated that the title 'Ego, Opinion, Art and Commerce' came from another book John was reading. Gotta respect a man who's well read
I'm guesssing John was reading the English translations, not the original Spanish versions...? I did Spanish A-level and had to read two texts in the original Spanish versions...it was tough! But it was also very rewarding...
I should have kept up my Spanish lessons. *sighs*
Well there's always French! 
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| « Last Edit: Mar 1st, 2005, 10:51pm by Lea » |
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girlnamedgrace
Dizzy
He's the stone fox......
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Re: 'Gutterflower'?
« Reply #3 on: Mar 2nd, 2005, 6:45am » |
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ooooh, I wish John did speak spainish. 
I'm such a sucker for foreign languages.
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who art in Buffalo,hallowed be thy 'name,'
Thy concerts gone to,thy cds bought,in Europe as they are in America,
Give us this day our daily goo and forgive us for liking other bands,
just as we forgive those who do not appriciate good goo, lead us not into temptation,with your hair and toxic songs,
Ah, men!!!
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Walter
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Re: 'Gutterflower'?
« Reply #4 on: Mar 2nd, 2005, 10:05am » |
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Thanks for posting that poem. I knew the name "Gutterflower" came from a poem, but had never read the poem itself.
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Walter Rowe
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tkc1989
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~...Tonight's the night the world begins again...~
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Re: 'Gutterflower'?
« Reply #5 on: Mar 2nd, 2005, 10:18am » |
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i always thought of it as a sort of oxymoronic word like with flowers being 'things of beauty' but being in a gutter lol- i'm not explaining it very well...
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Lea
Goo God
RogueUK
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Re: 'Gutterflower'?
« Reply #6 on: Mar 2nd, 2005, 4:09pm » |
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on Mar 2nd, 2005, 6:45am, girlnamedgrace wrote:ooooh, I wish John did speak spainish.
I'm such a sucker for foreign languages. |
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Speaking of Goo and foreign languages, I've often idly wondered how much Japanese Robby knows. You'd think he'd know quite a lot. I guess Miyoko is pretty fluent in English, but he's got to have picked up some Japanese, surely?
Random thing to wonder maybe. I just find languages interesting. Hence the reason I study them...
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gooberrygirl
Goo God
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Re: 'Gutterflower'?
« Reply #7 on: Mar 2nd, 2005, 4:25pm » |
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on Mar 2nd, 2005, 4:09pm, RogueUK wrote:
Speaking of Goo and foreign languages, I've often idly wondered how much Japanese Robby knows. You'd think he'd know quite a lot. I guess Miyoko is pretty fluent in English, but he's got to have picked up some Japanese, surely? |
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umm, I remember, Robby once said he knows enough to say get me a beer lol 
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Lea
Goo God
RogueUK
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Re: 'Gutterflower'?
« Reply #8 on: Mar 2nd, 2005, 5:05pm » |
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on Mar 2nd, 2005, 4:25pm, gooberrygirl wrote:
umm, I remember, Robby once said he knows enough to say get me a beer lol
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The man has his priorities right, ROTFL! 
There was a Daily Goo where a Japanese fan wrote to them and Robby thanked her in Japanese (Arigato...that's thank you, right?) and then wrote a couple more words of Japanese towards the end. No idea what it said, haha. I've always wanted to learn Japanese. I think it would be really hard though. It's the different alphabet thing that really gets me. I speak pretty good French, a bit of Spanish, but when I tried to learn Russian the different alphabet totally threw me!
Although I did wonder if Robby didn't cheat and just got Miyoko to type for him on the Daily Goo entry, heh heh...
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SassyMay
Goo God
~Feb. 20, 1967-April 5, 1994 R.I.P.~
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Re: 'Gutterflower'?
« Reply #9 on: Mar 2nd, 2005, 7:54pm » |
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Over at ragdollsworld.com umm the moderstaor (ragdoll)
and posted to interviews (actually one in two parts) and he explained it all butr go over there monday cuz it won't be on there on monday.
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