Split Enz

Image: Nambassa Trust & Peter Terry, nambassa.com, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

The New Zealand band Split Enz was very popular during the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was founded in 1973 by Tim Finn and Phil Judd, but had a number of band libeups during its existence. In the APRA Top 100 New Zealand Songs of All Time poll, the band led all bands with 8 songs. They released 7 studio albums.

In its earliest incarnation (1972), "Split Ends," was two university friends Tim Finn and Phil Judd writing original songs and their sound was eclectic and mostly acoustic. This Auckland band had Finn on vocals and piano, Judd on guitar and vocals and Mike Chunn on bass, Miles Golding on violin, and Mike Howard on flute.

After their November 1973 EMI NZ second single, "129" / "Sweet Talking Spoon Song" was when the group altered its name to Split Enz. The NZ can be seen as a reference to New Zealand.

Their debut LP Mental Notes (1975) did well on its first release, though sales were mostly in New Zealand and Australia. It hit #19 on the Australian album chart and #7 in New Zealand.

Band members came and went, breaks were taken and after a tour supporting Conflicting Emotions, Paul Hester joined on drums. Things were tense between brothers Tim and Neil (Neil having solo success) and it led to Tim's decision to leave Split Enz so that he could promote the release of his solo Escapade (1983) in Europe.

When it was decided to really end the band, Tim came back and the "Enz with a Bang" Australasian farewell tour happened in late 1984. Split Enz played its last show on 4 December 1984 in Auckland and a double album recorded on the farewell tour, The Living Enz, was released in December 1985.

Eventually, Neil Finn and drummer Paul Hester founded a new band, Crowded House. Tim Finn briefly joined Crowded House later. They also recorded two albums together as the Finn Brothers.

   

Chicago and "25 or 6 to 4"

A collage used to promote Chicago in concert at the Chumash Casino Resort in Santa Ynez, California, 2005, Source

Chicago is an American rock band formed in Chicago, Illinois, in 1967. The group was initially billed as The Big Thing. They are a self-described "rock and roll band with horns" but also used elements of classical music, jazz, R&B, and pop music. They produced numerous top-40 hits over two decades and continue to record and perform live.

The band logo which appears in many styles
 on their album covers, Public Domain, Link

There had been a Chicago-based rock cover band with six members called the Big Thing that played in Chicago nightclubs and covered Top 40 hits. When the group began working on original songs in 1968, their manager, James William Guercio, wanted a name change. They became the Chicago Transit Authority but changed it after their first album to the shortened Chicago to avoid legal action being threatened by the actual mass-transit company of the same name.

Their first record (April 1969), Chicago Transit Authority, is a double album, which is rare for a band's first release. It made it to No. 17 on the Billboard album chart and sold over one million copies by 1970, and was awarded a platinum disc. The album included a number of FM radio hits – "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?", "Beginnings", "Questions 67 and 68", and "I'm a Man." The band was nominated for a Grammy Award for 1969 Best New Artist of the Year.

Amazon lists an incredible 186 albums under their name, which includes studio albums, live recordings and many compilations in different formats.

Chicago II

One song on their second album is "25 or 6 to 4." It was written by Robert Lamm, a founding member of the band. The song title has confused many listeners.

In a 2013 interview, keyboardist Robert Lamm said he composed it on a twelve-string guitar missing the two low E strings. He said the song is about trying to write a song in the middle of the night. The song's title is the time at which the song is set: 25 or 26 minutes before 4 AM. But other interpretations emerged. One was that it meant a quantity of illicit drugs. Another was that it was the name of a famous person in code. 

         

canard

I heard a TV newscaster say that there is a group of Republicans who "have bought into Trump’s canard that the election was stolen from him." I have heard that word before and assumed it meant a hoax. My wife, a French speaker, said that the word canard in French means "duck." What's the connection?

She looked in one of her dictionaries and found a 16th-century French expression - vendre des canards à moitié. It literally means "to half-sell ducks" but this was possibly a proverb meaning "to fool" or "to cheat." The origin story isn't known but may have come from someone trying to cheat a customer in the sale of a duck at a market. Can you pass off half a duck as a whole duck and so half-sell it? We don't know. 

English speakers adopted this hoax or fabrication meaning of canard in the mid-1800s. 

There is also an aeronautical use of canard which has nothing to do with a hoax. In aeronautics, a canard is an arrangement wherein a small forewing or foreplane is placed forward of the main wing of a fixed-wing aircraft or a weapon. 

XB-70 Valkyrie experimental bomber

The term "canard" may be used to describe the aircraft itself, the wing configuration, or the foreplane. You find canard wings used in guided missiles and smart bombs.

This use of "canard" arose from the appearance of an aircraft called the Santos-Dumont 14-bis of 1906, which was thought to look like a duck with its neck stretched out in flight.

1906 Santos-Dumont 14-bis  CC BY-SA 3.0, Link