Woodcrock
What is real?
Dandelion Fiction is.
What’s Dandelion Fiction?
I had no idea, but someone in the universe wanted me to find out.
As I stepped off the subway car onto the dingy and dirty Fort Hamilton Parkway station in Brooklyn the other day, I absent-mindedly stared at all the graffitied advertisements that desperately clung to its walls. I paid no mind to most of them, unamused by the artistic improvements made by passersby – the usual mustaches, the blacked-out teeth, the devil horns and obscenities. But then I stopped, and did a double-take; one ad was ripped out, leaving behind a sad little frame with blank paper. On the paper were the words, “Dandelion Fiction is Real.”
So, of course I took a picture and looked it up. Whoever was the campaign designer was genius, all it took to spread the word was a sharpie and a message.
Typing in the words “dandelion fiction”, I got some strange results. But the first two or three were links to music sites, and a myspace for a band by the name.
Dandelion Fiction, as I found out, is a strange, strange band consisting of a man named Daniel F, who proclaims to play “daxophone, electric bass, singing, loops, pencilina, washboard, clackers and whackers, wizard of fuzz, dad’s old classical guitar (painted red with black spongemarks for a reason no one can fathom), etc etc.”
I wish I could say I listened to a few tracks. I couldn’t get through a single one. I sampled a few, but could not bear to sit through three minutes of Daniel F. singing “of course/off course” on a loop in his Weird-Al Yankovic voice with a backdrop of eery animal screeching, bad clarinet playing and demonic yelling. The words and the anger do not connect or make any sense.
Well, atleast they have some great advertising team.
8 comments
A fun post. I like the way you traced the subway words.
Haha, I love your statement “Whoever was the campaign designer was genius, all it took to spread the word was a sharpie and a message.” I think I would’ve been intrigued the way you were since I normally would ignore the professionally glued advertisements in the subway stations.
This is very interesting! I always passed by -not exactly the same one you’ve mentioned- some weird and random ads everywhere in NY, but never tried to figure out their hidden meanings. COOL!
notes:
1) there’s no clarinet here, only daxophone, a bowed wooden idiophone which is responsible for the mammalian wails you’ve heard.
2) in 4th grade, i waited for 4 hours outside tower records to get weird al yankovic to sign my t-shirt.
3) http://www.archive.org/details/dandelionfiction-youreastrongone for posterity’s sake.
4) for more pathos—or familiarity— try “Northampton, MA” or “Williamstown, MA”, some bass guitar songs
5) access/accessibility—where do you draw the line?
6) “i think of you of course, off course—without course—never coarse—of course coarse because you’re off course.”
7) i have been in love
8) avant garde: the foremost soldiers marching into battle
9) pop music has told me “love is a battlefield”
10) i am wary of assimilating another person’s emotions through pop music— it happens so swiftly; and anyway, i think love is just a complicated thing i don’t understand
11) *time* is a battlefield, her lines always advancing
12) but wait, who’s fighting? and are the avant garde the first soliders to go?
13) time is *like* a battlefield
14) time is like a battlefield
15) dandelion fiction is real
There’s nothing Cagean about this.
To D.Fiction Eternal:
To each his own. It was not my taste, but I wish you the best of luck. Keep doing what you’re doing, don’t worry about those who don’t appreciate it. You’re not singing for them (me), anyway.
D Fiction is amazing.
i love him.
I have to say I’m disappointed. I’ve been meaning to look this up for some time now and honestly, I was expecting some cool conspiracy theory or some good read. blah and boo all over this.