Songs: Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars

notes / gigs / releases

My friend Sanjiv Bali and me
Back in 1984
Had a disagreement about
Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars
He said it was dead good
I contended it's a load of old tripe
And now over 40 years later
I'm gonna prove that I was right

Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars
I'm gonna demonstrate that
Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars is crap

We're gonna to use the Big Five Inventory
A way to measure Personality Traits
And apply it to the sample of texts
For Doctor Doom across the Marvel Age
You answer a series of questions
And the results are mathematically paired
So you can analyse it longitudinally
To see if there's anything there

In Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars
I'm gonna demonstrate that
Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars is crap

So, the big five in the Big Five Inventory
Has openness to experience as the first division
Then conscientiousness, extraversion
Agreeableness and neuroticism

The first four dimensions are coherent
As we move across the Marvel Age
But something happens to neuroticism
When we get to the final stage

It's all over the shop
As you can very clearly see
Using a measure I don't have time to go into right now
That's called the MAD
Just take my word for it
What it shows

Is something happens to Doom's personality
As the Marvel Age comes to a close

Yes it's during Consolidation
When his coherence is suddenly lost
Twenty five years of consistency
Appears to have somehow gone
And it's in one specific series
Where this happens and happens so much
That it skews the results of everything
And it happens quite simply because

Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars
And this is an empirical fact
Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars is crap

So if you're listening Sanjiv
It might have taken me four decades
But I have proved that I was right
HA HA HA! In your face!

Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars
I've demonstrated that
Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars is crap
And that's a fact

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

Ha! I really enjoyed writing this one - it was quite late on in the process of writing Data and Doctor Doom and by this point my BRANE was well in gear for complicated rhymes and METERS which came in very handy INDEED when I was having to rapidly explain about 17,000,000 bits of theory in every line. Having said that, my favourite bit is when I got "It's all OVER the place" as it is fits lovely and is huge fun to say.

There might be a bit TOO much methodology in this one, which is daft really for a song that is basically about me trying to win an argument I had with my friend Sanjiv when we were at school but in theory it also demonstrates that an empirical methodology is NOT about getting rid of theory but rather EVIDENCING theories, so that we can improve important historical/cultural theorising like what this is.

As a postscript to all of the above, Sanjiv very kindly came to see the show in Bedford, and was (to my great relief) fine about the whole thing, even though he claimed not to remember any such discussion!