Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Slag
Date: 16 Sep 10 - 02:06 AM

"Your Honor, my client pleads 'NOT GUILTY' by reason of insanity!"

"Uh, let's see...Oh this is the bango, er, banjo assualt case, right?"

"Well, yes, er no, it wasn't the case he assualted your Honor."

"What?"

"No your Honor, it was a banjo."

"Oh, I see, he assualted a banjo? That doesn't seem to serious."

"No your honor. My client is accused of using a banjo to assault another person."

"Oh? Who's banjo was it?"

"It belongs to my client, your Honor."

"Alright then: Not guilty by reason of insanity. Next case please."

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 08:24 PM

More banjo violence - but this is self-defense.

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 06:39 PM

At a jam when my friend Lindsey the banjo player finds himself sitting next to another banjo player in the circle, and says "we should split up the banjoes."
"Wouldn't it be easier," says I, "to just take them out in the parking lot and run over them with a truck?"

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Artful Codger
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 05:31 PM

Why a banjo and guitar for "Dueling Banjos"? OSHA wouldn't allow them to have two banjos in the same studio.

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Cool Beans
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 05:17 PM

Maybe the banjo beater had a breakdwon.

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: GUEST,999
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 03:52 PM

The guy's thinking, "I don't know what it is, but I'd like to be three hundred miles away when it hatches."

(That's from a Herman cartoon, but I couldn't find it on the web.)

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 01:58 PM

You can beat this.
It's an egg banjo

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: GUEST,999
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 01:44 PM

I'm still tryin' to figure out why "Dueling Banjos" in the movie 'Deliverance' featured a banjo and guitar. Like, ya know?

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: katlaughing
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 01:29 PM

She might've survived if he'd only been a pole-axer. I've heard poles are not considered deadly weapons.

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Cool Beans
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 01:08 PM

So the guy who killed his wife with banjos would be both a wife beater and a banjo beater?

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: GUEST,999
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 01:08 PM

I think banjo playing is a mild social deviation and that the players of banjos should come home carrying them or on them.

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: GUEST,Songbob
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 11:54 AM

"did the guitar player tune thusly: BAGDAD? "

No, the tuning is DADGAB (Arabic reads right-to-left).

And Framus instruments are Bavarian (German), not Scandahoovian.

And it has always occurred to me that an open-back banjo would be easier to use in an assault than a resonated one, since the strut (if it has one) makes a mighty fine handle. You could use the peghead as if using a bayonet, aiming for the eyes, and then, wham! up comes the shell, right in the teeth! As my basic-training US Army drill sergeant might have said, "Vertical shell-stroke -- Hoh!" (As you can also probably guess, there is a bit of repressed agitation, or even rage, in my banjo-playing past).


Bob

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 10:45 AM

Banjos don't assault people, people do, that's priceless, maybe we could wheel out Charlton Heston to defend us banjo players like the NRA do.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Will Fly
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 10:35 AM

Jaysus, Spaw - I haven't heard the word "Framus" in nearly 40 years. There could be worse things than being hit over the head with a big Swedish box - but if there are I haven't heard of them...

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 08:33 AM

My mther always said, "Don't pick it, it'll never get better"
Don't they say, mothers are always right?

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 08:33 AM

If I were to find fault with every bit of bad grammar and spelling on this forum, I'd have little time for anything else.

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: catspaw49
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 07:48 AM

Hey Will......I have less fear of injury being banjaxed than I do being "Framused." Smacked with one of them old suckers might even kill you. As I recall, the extreme danger inherent to the Framus forced it to be used only as a guitar when it was banned as a Field Hockey stick. That was such a terrible thing......they made great field hockey sticks......................


Spaw

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Young Buchan
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 06:39 AM

Cluedo 2010

Mr Stancato
At the bus stop
With a banjo


I win

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Artful Codger
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 05:29 AM

Are you insinuating those with banjo envy lack pluck?

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: GUEST,Ewan McVicar
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 04:32 AM

It occurs to me that some of the anti-banjo comments above arise from 'banjo envy'. Back in the 1960s a young man I knew who loved widely but not wisely was referred to in a staff magazine as 'dragging his banjo round town'.
Ewan

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Will Fly
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 04:27 AM

So, if someone is "banjaxed" - are they hit with a banjo-guitar? (Or is that guitar-banjo?) Either way, that's one weird instrument.

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Sugwash
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 04:13 AM

Did not 'banjo' used to be a term for giving someone a beating. The last verse of Barney Rush's 'The Crack was 90 in the Isle of Man':

The Isle of Man woman fancied Whack; Your man stood there till his mates
came back
Whack! they all whacked into Whack, and Whack was whacked out on his back.
The police force arrived as well, Banjoed a couple of them as well,
Landed up in the Douglas jail, until the Dublin boat did sail,
Deported every man, The Crack was Ninety in the Isle of Man.

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 03:55 AM

I personally call it a load of old banjo — a phrase I dredge up from my long-ago youth to mean a load of old nonsense. Was it a widespread usage or simply common to my circle of friends? Not in Chambers English Dict nor Partridge's slang dict, nor readily confirmable on Google - anyone else remember it?

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: GUEST,999
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 03:49 AM

I think I had galumph in the 1960s.

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Artful Codger
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 03:40 AM

It might be a machine that pelts distant objects with plastic eggs.

Does this qualify as thread creep or thread galumph?

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: GUEST,999
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 02:27 AM

The following is listed on Google Images as a "Plastic Egg Beater". WHY would one want to beat plastic eggs? Obviously to find out where the hyphen went to.

Artful Codger: I was encouraged by your paragraphs. LOL too.

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Artful Codger
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 02:22 AM

Brilliantly expounded! LOL

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: GUEST,999
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 02:16 AM

Lest we confuse an egg beater with a banjo beater, allow me to elucidate. If you crack the shell and a yolk comes out, that's an egg. If you beat the egg with a banjo, that's just plain foolish. A REAL banjo beater uses an axe. And there you have it.

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Artful Codger
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 02:09 AM

Still not buying that linguistic "fact". As in many cases in the language, there is a referential gap, and consequent ambiguity, when one couples a verb and noun into a single term because the relationship between the two is no longer clear. The noun may be either the agent, the recipient or the instrument of the action. The language is not consistent in the case of either murderer or beater (or many other such words); consider child-murderer, where child may be either the agent or recipient, but is unlikely to be the instrument, contrasted with ax-murderer, where it is naturally understood as the instrument. With "beater", all three are possible (though agent is least likely), and context is what determines the sense, not some fictitious linguistic rule.

Hence, "banjo-beater" may be either one who beats banjos or one who beats using a banjo, given the limited ways English provides for combining such elements. Without further information, you might leap to one meaning over the other (after all, what is more natural than wanting to smash a banjo?), but the original reporter is not wrong in his choice of the term. You would have it that the miscreant could only be labelled a "wife-beater", but spousal abuse is fairly common, whereas inflicting pain (physically) with a banjo is not--for this reason, "banjo-beater" is not only correct in this situation, but rightly places emphasis on the more newsworthy aspect of the story.

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 12:44 AM

Artful Codger - It just happens to be the linguistic fact that, in the case of murderers, the weapon is idiomatically linked to the deed, as in 'axe-murderer'; whereas, in the case of assault or corporal punishment, this is not the case - nobody would have called an old-fashioned schoolmaster a 'cane-beater', but a 'caner', or a 'caning teacher'; because it was not the cane that he beat, but his ill-behaved pupils, using the cane as his instrument.

Maybe the language is inconsistent in this; but I insist that such is the idiomatic or colloquial fact of the language nonetheless.

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 10:56 PM

I have suffered numerous banjo assaults, sustaining damage to my ear drums, my sensibilities, my psyche, and my soul, and the assailants have walked free every time.
I have tried restraining orders to keep all banjo players at least 50 feet away from me, but that's not far enough.

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Charley Noble
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 10:55 PM

I don't know why people are always picking on banjos when they don't know a thing about banjo picking!

To paraphrase the New Lost City Ramblers:

It ain't right to beat your wife with a banjo on Monday, when you got Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday too --
It ain't right to beat your wife on Monday!

Charley 5-String Noble

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Artful Codger
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 10:13 PM

Mike-the-Pedant: If a banjo-beater must be one who beats banjos, how do you interpret "ax-murderer"? I don't think it refers to Pete Townsend.

I also question that "banjos don't assault people." Ever hear one? If a person didn't have a banjo, he could only beat you with his fists.

(Yes, I dabble with the banjo, too, but responsibly--at home, alone.)


P.S. I've heard the Republicans want to pass a law making it illegal to possess more than one ounce of banjo strings. It's the first step in their "War on Banjos"--finally, a war they might win.

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 09:39 PM

When banjos are outlawed, only outlaws will play banjos...

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Dead Horse
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 08:14 PM

Good job he didnt play pianna then!

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: catspaw49
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 07:20 PM

If I hadn't read the article, I'd have to go along with MtheGM and so would start referring to the penis (have to be correct here for MGM) as a "banjo."   I have a long neck one myself...........wait............ohmygawd.........................................Maybe they've used that term for years! Maybe I just missed it.................................yeah.............that's it...................................sweet jesus in a diaper....That Andy Devine was really a sick fuck with that "Pluck your magic twanger Froggy" bullshit........probably a pedophile..............damn, what a preeevert!


Spaw

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 07:02 PM

Indeed, that's the headline in the link, and I thought it made an interesting twist in the story...

~ B in T

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: katlaughing
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 03:15 PM

Mike the Pedant (we've a few of us around here), good catch, but as you will see, if you follow the link, that is the same wording used by the Aspen newspaper quoted. I know that is not a reason to perpetuate the mistake, but perhaps an email to the editor of the paper would be a good idea? In the meantime, I think we will leave the title alone. We are fairly informal about such things and it has engender a good spate of repartee, wouldn't you say?:-)

kat - mod

As far as I know, my dad never had to use his banjo as a weapon..he had a six-shooter behind the seat of his truck for that!

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: TheSnail
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 03:04 PM

Can't find the lyrics anywhere, but Tim Lyons' "The Grisly Murder of Joe Frawley" is pertinent to the case.

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: SINSULL
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 01:48 PM

Must be the same clipping Eddie1 mentioned.

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 01:36 PM

Until I find and transcribe my newspaper clipping (of unknown date) this will have to do. (I have a photocopy of the clipping and I THINK I have a transcription on another computer and in an incompatible format -- give me a bit of time.)

Meanwhile --

WEST MILTON, Ohio (Reuter) -- A 63-year-old man who played in a bluegrass band has been charged with murder after beating his wife to death with a pair of banjos, police said Thursday.

"I've been an officer for 30 years, and that's the first banjo killing I've seen," said Charles Price,
chief deputy of the Miami County sheriff's office.

Police said Edward Benson bludgeoned his wife Katie with one banjo until it broke and then grabbed a
second and continued the assault until she died Wednesday at the couple's home of massive head injuries.

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 01:16 PM

You may go blind, if you beat your banjo

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 01:04 PM

Maybe Kendall - but the question remains, as I said above: Do people assault banjos - which is all that "Banjo Beater" can possibly, idiomatically, mean?

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: kendall
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 12:59 PM

Banjos done assault people...People assault people.

From my cold, dead fingers....

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: open mike
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 12:49 PM

did the guitar player tune thusly: BAGDAD?

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: olddude
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 12:30 PM

Can't stop Laughing, this is priceless. My 5 string is too heavy to swing properly

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: bill\sables
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 12:12 PM

I have a photograph of Saddam Hussein playing his banjo. it seems he was part of a Baghdad Bluegrass band

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: TheSnail
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 11:13 AM

From http://www.ghost-story.co.uk/stories/alcatraz3.html

"After more than three years on the Rock, Capone was on the edge of total insanity. He spent the last year of his sentence in the hospital ward, undergoing treatment for an advanced case of syphilis. Most of the time he spent in the ward, he spent playing his banjo. His last day on Alcatraz was January 6, 1939. He was then transferred to the new Federal prison at Terminal Island near Los Angeles. When he was paroled, he became a recluse at his Palm Island, Florida estate. He died, broken and insane, in 1947."

Let that be a warning to you.

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Mark Ross
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 09:43 AM

They did find WMD's in Baghdad, turns out Saddam Hussein had a banjo!

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 08:20 AM

Weapon of mass distraction?