BURLINGTON, Vt. — Local jam band enthusiast Melody Meadows chose to name her new puppy Bowie as an homage to one of her favorite Phish songs, according to pungent sources.
“Phish is my favorite band, so it was only natural that I’d name my puppy after one of their greatest songs,” said Meadows while knitting a tiny rasta cap for her pug. “I thought really hard about it and finally narrowed it down to Nectar, Fee or Bowie, after their song ‘David Bowie.’ Of course, I ended up going with Bowie because that song is such a blast. It’s crazy how they just sing nonsense words like ‘David Bowie’ and ‘UB40.’ They’re so creative! How do they come up with this shit?”
Friends have had little success in trying to correct Meadows.
“The last time I saw her at a show I tried to explain that the Phish song was referencing a real dude who is one of the most accomplished musicians of all time, but she just couldn’t get it, man,” said friend and fellow Phishhead Lentil Quinoa. “It doesn’t help that we were on a shit-ton of mushrooms at the time, but still. It devolved into a real ‘who’s on first’ situation. I tried to prove it by showing her on my phone but it just wasn’t working. After 45 minutes I realized I was trying to do a Google search on a Nature Valley granola bar. Melody had already gotten bored and wandered off by then.”
Henry Stokes, author of several rock star biographies, worries that Meadows’ mistake is indicative of a generational music literacy problem.
“There’s an education crisis when it comes to rock music today,” said Stokes while applying a Misfits sticker to his CPAP machine. “There are kids out there who have never even heard of The Stooges or Joy Division! Just the other day, I mentioned Captain Beefheart to my nephew and he thought I was talking about a character in an upcoming Marvel movie. I’ll give Ms. Meadows a little bit of credit for being a Phish fan. While they are an objectively appalling band, at least they are well established and could be considered classic by some definitions.”
At press time, Meadows had changed her mind and renamed the puppy Dylan after Timothée Chalamet’s folk singer character in the film “A Complete Unknown” that she believed was entirely fictional.