David Lowery has maintained a healthy career as a split musical personality. When he isn’t playing laconic country-tinged pop with his band of 25 years, Camper Van Beethoven, he’s thrashing away at his guitar as the frontman for Cracker, the rock outfit that’s releasing its 10th studio album, Sunrise In The Land Of Milk And Honey, this week. Lowery adds another line to his resume as he guest edits magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with him.
Lowery: “Yalla” is a common Arabic expression, loosely meaning “hurry up” and often used by American soldiers in place of “hurry up” or “let’s go.” Like every war, Iraq War soldiers have developed their own unique slang based on their experiences. Oftentimes, these slang words creep into our nation’s vocabulary many years after the original conflict. “Yalla” and “Yalla Yalla” may not become as common as RADAR, AWOL or SNAFU, but they will certainly be used by soldiers for many years to come. When I was writing Camper Van Beethoven’s 2004 album New Roman Times, I got fascinated with all this military slang. (The protagonist in New Roman Times is a soldier.) I discovered all these chat rooms and forums where soldiers and marines talk a lot of shit. This is where I got most of the slang and TLAs (three-letter acronyms). This Cracker song is an echo of the subjects I was exploring on that record. This song takes no position on the war in Iraq*. It is a exploration and a celebration of a certain kind of bravado and swagger one finds in the speech of soldiers. I find it nicely matches the kind of swagger often exhibited by rock, blues and hip-hop singers. I suppose that is why it was so much fun (and relatively easy) to take this arcane slang and acronyms and build a song out of it. A note to servicemen and women: If I got some of it wrong, well, I apologize. There seemed to be some disagreement among my small sample of soldiers (and marines) about the pronunciation or precise meaning of some of the terms I use. Case in point is whether anyone really refers to Camp Anaconda as Bombaconda, or the precise definition (and spelling!) of a “pogue.” My questioning at the Atlanta airport set off a heated argument between two servicemen. It’s all in good fun, so don’t kick my ass. Please. Finally, most of this footage was taken from YouTube. Who knew the Internets were full of soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen dancing, lip-synching and headbanging to their favorite music? If you are in this video and don’t want to be, politely write us; we will edit you out.
*Due diligence: I opposed the war in Iraq. I viewed it as a distraction from the fight in Afghanistan. However, now that we are in Iraq, I believe we shouldn’t leave until there is a stable and humane government in that country. I’ll leave the notions of timetables, troop levels, etc. to the professionals.
This concludes “David Lowery Week” here at magnetmagazine.com. Thanks to David for all of the interesting stuff he covered. Be sure to check out Cracker’s Sunrise In The Land Of Milk And Honey.
One reply on “From The Desk Of David Lowery: “Yalla Yalla””
A little over a year after the fact, but I just wanted to put my 2 cents in. I’ve been a Cracker fan and head banger since high school. Now I’m a Major in the Air Force and pilot with 11 years in (I guess technically a pogue, though). Who knew? From my perspective, you got it right and I want to thank you for writing the song. I think it captures a little piece of what life has been like for a lot of us since 01. I wouldn’t worry about a lot of the subtleties, if we (in the service) can’t even agree on them. Keep playing it and I’ll keep listening.