submissions
| The Hold Steady – Magazines Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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The missing line is "She mainly trades in adoration."
Also, I love the line "New York is pretty heavy/Girl, I hope it doesn't crush you" and, along with the Lifter Puller song "NYC Kool" ("I guess your tonsils must've tasted like the Pine-Sol/In the back macking pack after pack of twenty menthols/coughing up that New York City cool"), it pretty much sums up my thoughts on the city. |
submissions
| The Hold Steady – Both Crosses Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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The tranverberate thing is weird. It's listed in the dictionary as "To beat or strike through", but it has a second meaning in Catholicism involving an ecstatic experience, related to a "dart of love" piercing the heart and inflaming within it an intense love of God. Source:http://maryschild.blogspot.com/2005/08/feast-of-transverberation-of-st-teresa.html
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submissions
| Bob Dylan – Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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I believe the title is an allusion to Rimbaud's "My Bohemian Life": "My only pair of trousers had a big hole./Tom Thumb in a daze, I sowed rhymes". The poem also has a line sometimes translated as "strong Burgundy" (un vin de vigueur). This leads me to believe that this song is a response to the concept of "la vie boheme" that was very popular in the 1960s. Dylan goes through a laundry list of bohemian artist cliches; drugs, prostitution, drinking, rejection of money, antagonistic relationship with the police, before eventually deciding, in the final lines to leave it all and go back to New York. |
submissions
| Robert Johnson – Cross Road Blues Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Greil Marcus seems to agree with lightman: "the nightmare of "Crossroads", where Johnson is sure to be caught by whites after dark and does not know which way to run" (Mystery Train). It definitely seems to fit, and Marcus is certainly an expert. But on a more general feeling it captures loneliness in a sort of visceral way that only the old blues men were capable of. |
submissions
| Bob Dylan – Subterranean Homesick Blues Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Definitely about the Beats. The title is an allusion to "The Subterraneans", a novel by Jack Kerouac. It's certainly stream of consciousness, and a lot of it is just playing around with the way words sound, but that doesn't mean it's meaningless.
The first two verses seem to tell a story about drug dealers, particularly their interactions with the cops. "Look out kid, it's something you did/God knows when but your doing it again" probably refers to the original sin. He refers to two of his own songs here: "Blowing in the Wind" ("Don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blow") and Maggie's Farm ("Maggie comes ..."). "Better stay away from those that carry around a fire hose" probably alludes to the Montgomery Riots, where fire hoses where turned on protesters.
The third and fourth verses are, essentially, do it yourself guides for the counterculture and mainstream. Both are fairly nightmarish, to be honest. The former basically instructs on how to stay alive in the counterculture, while especially focused on the leaches and jerks that any such culture inevitably accrues. "Girl by the whirlpool" may be an allusion to the sirens from the Odyssey (Whirlpool = Charybdis), but that seems to be stretching it a bit. The latter is a run-down of the indignities inherent to the capitalist society we live in ("Try and be a success", "Buy gifts", "Don't want to be a bum you better chew gum"), and a warning to stay away from the counter culture ("Don't where sandals, try and avoid scandals") |
submissions
| Elvis Costello – The Beat Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Another one of Costello's love-as-police-state songs (cf "Two Little Hitlers" off Armed Forces, which was originally called Emotional Fascism). Full of military puns (The masterful police/masturbation reference of the title, "victim", "vigilantes", "confuse the enemy", and the aforementioned "standard leader"). "never played with your toy" is another masturbation reference, and "Oh, I don't want to disease you, but I'm no good with machinery" is possibly about condoms? It's hard to tell. |
submissions
| The Magnetic Fields – Absolutely Cuckoo Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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In the booklet it says that it was originally written as a duet, but due to time constraints it was recorded with just Stephin. Which makes this song substantially more interesting IMO. |
submissions
| The Magnetic Fields – A Pretty Girl Is Like... Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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I like the last line. Sort of a dig at all the overwrought metaphors that tend to plague love songs. Once again Stephin shows his knack for subverting and mocking pop music cliches while simultaneously embracing them. |
submissions
| The Magnetic Fields – Long-Forgotten Fairytale Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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"In every life a little rain" is an allusion to the Ink Spots song "Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall"
Also, I love all the S&M punning: "pets", "decked out", "beat me once again". Merritt is brilliant. |
submissions
| The Mountain Goats – Collapsing Stars Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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He says Baby Aspirin in the version from Come Come to the Sunset Tree and Pseudoephedrine on the Dilaudid single. Also "Bringing in the Sheaves" is an allusion to an old hymn, and "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag and Smile Smile Smile" is a song from the Thirties. |
submissions
| The Mountain Goats – Moon Over Goldsboro Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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"As with a number of geographic location type songs, this is a bit of a ruse. It purports to take place in North Carolina, but, secretly it takes place in Colo, which is a small town in Iowa, population 773 when me and my wife lived there, 771 now." |
submissions
| The Mountain Goats – Jenny Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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OK, so the motorcycle is the same one from Fall of the Star High School Running Back", right? 'Cause the cover says it's about, among other things, one motorcycle. But how are these songs related? It couldn't be William in the song, because how many seventeen-year-olds share a house with a romantic partner? And the bike is described as being brand new in this song, so it's sort of baffling. This is the only part of the AHWT mythos that I can't really get my head around, so if anyone can shed some light... |
submissions
| Art Brut – Bad Weekend Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Best Live Adlib ever, after kicking over a mic stand: "Spacial Awareness no longer applies to me" |
submissions
| The Mountain Goats – Autoclave Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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This song is boring "Get Lonely" noise until it hits the last verse and it gets insane and epic and wonderful. I'm sorry I ever doubted you John. |
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