Chooglin'!

January 22, 2009 2:18 PM

Choogle on!
posted by serazin (25 comments total)

Perhaps you feel that WFMU has been too often linked here on the blue. To you I say, get chooglin!
posted by serazin at 2:19 PM on January 22, 2009

Agreed - WFMU keeps impressing me. Maybe I should pay more attention to it.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:26 PM on January 22, 2009

I was with him until the cramps. I love the cramps but they wouldn't know a choogle if they googled the choogle. Cue Xzibit...

Now Johnny Thunders...there was a true blue choogler, and chooglee if you believe the stories.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:32 PM on January 22, 2009

tl;mjf

Too long; mentioned John Fogerty
posted by Pastabagel at 2:35 PM on January 22, 2009 [2 favorites]

That distinction has its parallel in Fogerty’s politics, which are less apocalyptic (and revolutionary) than activist (and liberal)

this man has never set ears on a CCR song.
posted by klanawa at 2:41 PM on January 22, 2009

That article is longer than a choogle.
posted by rageagainsttherobots at 2:42 PM on January 22, 2009

More little known Choogle Facts

Lionel Richie used to choogle, but he stopped around 1981 under mysterious circumstances.

The Jesus and Mary Chain choogle more and more every year despite a burgeoning white blood cell resistance to choogle-boosting medications.

Van Morrison: No. Jim Morrison: No. STERLING Morrison: Ah oh hell yes.

If you play New Order's Temptation backwards it says "I CHOOGLED WITH JERRY" obviously referring to Jerry Garcia's closeted choogleism.

Mick Ronson taught Jarvis Cocker how to choogle by writing it out on a napkin and he passed it on to the Wave Pictures who had it sewn into the elbow patches of a corduroy jacket.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:54 PM on January 22, 2009 [2 favorites]

Chooglin : Riff-Raff, ArgleBargle, or FooFerRa?
posted by mannequito at 2:56 PM on January 22, 2009

I'm going to throw in the words chew, ogle, bugle, boogie, fugue, and wiggle for added contextual sparkle.

Chewglin'? Sure. Buglin'? While chooglin'? Why not?

But I refuse to Chogle. Whether you pronounce it "oh-gle" or "ah-gle", I don't care, but "ogle" does not rhyme with "bugle."

Great word. Poor article.
posted by explosion at 2:57 PM on January 22, 2009

While reading this article, one must mentally pronounce all instances of Chooglin' or Choogling as Choo-ga-lyne or none of it makes sense.
posted by sageleaf at 2:58 PM on January 22, 2009

I like the discussion of what choogling is, and WFMU is generally awesome. But I don't think I'm going to be satisfied with just accepting that Fogarty coined the word. He might've, but Steve Miller didn't coin "pompitous" exactly, and almost every time I attribute something stylistic to a 60s/70s blues-rock outfit I soon find that they were appropriating something heard (or misheard) in some old 1920s or 30s recording.
posted by Miko at 3:01 PM on January 22, 2009

Miko, in my research I did find some early usages of teh choog:


1.The Big Band Recordings 1930 - 1932 Louis Armstrong
Just a Gigolo


There will come a day youth will pass away
Then what will they say about me?
When the end comes, I know, they'll say, "Just a gigolo"
As life goes on without me.
MooglybigglyshigglybooglyshimmlybiggilychooglyBOP

2.Holy Modal Rounder ST 1964
Hesitation Blues

Got my psycho-delic feet,
in my psycho-delic shoes,
I believe lord and mama got the psycho-delic blues,
tell me how long
do I have tell to wait,
...can I get choogleee, or must I hesitay-ay-ay-ate".

3.Legendary Stardust Cowboy, Psycho Suave Records, 1968
Paralyzed

I got a girl way crosstown, won't come to see my less I pull my shades down
Paralyzed, paralyzed, I choog my arms around her she make me paralyzed.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 3:22 PM on January 22, 2009 [2 favorites]

Mike Doughty (previously of Soul Coughing and peer-to-peer networks) refers to a particular rhythm he uses when he plays guitar as choogling. He mentioned in an interview that he'd do these two moves that he'd taken to calling a gang-a-dank and a choogle or choogler, and he'd strum with those patterns. A gang-a-dank (sometimes gangadang and sometimes gdankadank) you can probably determine how it sounded from the word, it being an onomatopoeia, but choogler was more difficult to determine. It amounts to a quick succession of upstrokes with the pick, normally in a triplet or some other tuple.

He mentioned in this interview that the drummer for Soul Coughing hated it, because it was a rhythmic device on a non-rhythm-section instrument. Also, he mentioned that he'd invented it.

The term and the method.

I'm a fan of CCR, but I swear I'd never seen the word "choogler" until that Doughty interview. So now I know not only the proper ill-defined definition, but I also know that Doughty is a lying bastard, and maybe Yuval didn't hate the gang-a-dank and choogler, maybe he just hated Doughty.
posted by blixco at 3:33 PM on January 22, 2009

tl;dc
posted by DU at 4:44 PM on January 22, 2009 [1 favorite]

Choogle Ron Paul?
posted by anazgnos at 4:56 PM on January 22, 2009

There is a band in Minneapolis called Chooglin', but I haven't seen them so I'm not sure if they do, in fact, choogle.
posted by louche mustachio at 5:22 PM on January 22, 2009

I'd much prefer to ramble-tamble, thank you.
posted by LionIndex at 5:33 PM on January 22, 2009

The energy implied by coinages like 'choogle' and 'ramble tamble' has more to do with vigor than with potency, more to do with simple activity than with sexuality. That distinction has its parallel in Fogerty’s politics, which are less apocalyptic (and revolutionary) than activist (and liberal) - the politics of agape rather than the politics of Eros

I'll concede the point, Dr Christgau, but only if you'll permit me to further elucidate this hypotenuse - sorry, hypnosis.

*thin dry cough*

Yes, for if Fogerty is the personification of the politically agape and Steve Miller's pompitous of love a kind of broad caricature of the politically erotic, then I find it significant that both were laments for the passing of the Sixties aesthetic even as they presaged the nihilistic bacchanal of the Seventies. And it follows, post hoc ergo procter hoc, that "Wango Tango" marks the ascendency of the politics of Dionysus, a kind of gun-fetishizing libertarian fanfare at the dawn of Reaganism. It might be further argued, though perhaps somewhat speciously, that the Nuge's second career as a hunting-rights activist is itself a sort of elaborate piece of self-satirizing performance art in the Chooglin' vein. But perhaps that overstates the case, and I wouldn't want to veer into the baroque in such an otherwise earthy discussion . . .
posted by gompa at 5:58 PM on January 22, 2009 [6 favorites]

That was probably parody but I still want to subscribe to your newsletter.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:22 PM on January 22, 2009

I, for one, would much rather Choogle than Google.
posted by wendell at 9:58 PM on January 22, 2009

I have always wanted to record an album called More Songs About Chooglin'.
posted by Paid In Full at 6:03 AM on January 23, 2009

From the article: If anything is likely to confirm the Copenhagen interpretation of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, it may be John Fogerty's chooglin.

Yes, yes, quite.

What gompa said.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 6:24 AM on January 23, 2009

Screw this. I'd rather wang chung instead.
posted by slogger at 8:51 AM on January 23, 2009

Was that written by why the lucky stiff?
posted by Songdog at 5:29 PM on January 23, 2009

The article is like one of those bad fever dreams: long, twisted and only semi-comprehensible.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 7:58 PM on January 23, 2009