The "giant cowbells" here are bells worn by actual cows, not musical instruments as in the SNL "More Cowbell" sketch, but the reference comes immediately after a description of a musical performance.
Cowbell first came up in the comments on "A touch of Pixie dust," where Bill mentioned a dream about "the word 'Cowbill', which I took as a play on words for Cowbell," and I then mentioned the sketch again in "Rub-a-dub-dub, it was the Summer of Love" and "Cold Brother, the Background Brethren, and Christopher Walken," the latter of which references my earlier mention in the 2023 post "Gordon Lightfoot's UFO song."
A search of the blog turned up one even earlier reference: "Now, O now, in this brown land" in 2022. That post also quotes Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 in its entirety. This is a sync because on October 18 I posted "On the marriage of true minds," which borrows and subverts numerous phrases from that sonnet. The next day, October, 19, I rewatched the "More Cowbell" sketch (inspired by references to BOC in a book I'm reading) and then saw Bill's "Cowbill" comment. I had no conscious thought of "More Cowbell" when I wrote "On the marriage of true minds." The poem was, rather, inspired by the "total table" in Chelmaxioms, which got me thinking about altars and then about the alter/altar homophony from which the poem germinated.
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