| Steely Dan – Green Earrings Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| This dude is caught up in a total moment: Sparkly earrings, a smile, lust and impulse. At that moment, she turns and gives him a look: I don't mind! Yes, I know you are consumed at this point, but I don't mind. That's all.. It happened in a split second. He's looking at her, and she's looking through him. | |
| Steely Dan – Deacon Blues Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
I always took this to be a song about personal growth, in whatever form. Sure, the singer wants to "learn to work the saxophone", but he also might be a guy in college working on a business degree, or or a retired woman learning a new language. It's a song about, and for, anyone trying to grow. |
|
| The Left Banke – Pretty Ballerina Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| The girls name in this song is "Renee". | |
| The Left Banke – Walk Away Renee Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| Renee Fladen-Kamm went on to become a classical singer and vocal teacher in San Francisco. Yes, it's a song about a real girl, a real crush. She had platinum blond hair; the Left Banke song "Pretty Ballerina" was also about her. | |
| 10,000 Maniacs – Tension Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
This is a song that you understand more and more as you get older, the layers of memory and layers of physical artifacts in an old house. Slowly, year after year, without your direct awareness, the house becomes your memory, and your memory becomes a kind of house. Thought and memories and patterned walls become interchangeable. Even the nicks on the china (the servile) register as mental events. For example, one of my earliest memories is of my mother crying after the assassination of President Kennedy. And for me, the "mass edition icon" was a massively large white bible in four translations belonging to an aunt. Each event or thing was a world, contained in a house, now contained in my mind. Natalie sings about all this, and also your world, and your house, and your mind. |
|
| The Beach Boys – Don't Worry Baby Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
This is something definitely Medieval romantic about this song... It could have been a song about a knight going off to fight the Crusades, or seeking the Holy Grail. I can just imagine a perfume-scented scarf tied to the steering wheel... Death would have had no terrors for a guy racing for the love of his girl. |
|
| Steely Dan – Rikki Don't Lose That Number Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
I thought I had this song figured out years ago as about a girl who digs group sex (or swinging, or something else hard core), but tries to deny it to herself. The singer sees through all that, and knows that once she's had some time to cool off, she'll want to know how to get back in with the group. Swinger clubs are almost impossible to patch into without the proper contact information. Here's the internal evidence: - "We could stay inside and play games..."; swingers will often refer to sex as play (via wiki) - "I got a friend in town, he's heard your name...", through the club network. - "You tell yourself you're not my kind..."; Rikki knows what the singer is, but she doesn't want to admit what she is. Actually, even under this (outlandish?) interpretation, the song is very tender, respectful, and insightful. Rikki is lucky to have a friend who is so understanding. |
|
| 10,000 Maniacs – National Education Week Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
Well, the "41 thousand" is akin to Blue Oyster Cult's "40,000 men and women everyday", the number of people who die every day (roughly). In this song, the lyricist is wondering if the education of her younger years has really prepared her for the grim knowledge of her adult life. It hasn't, except to show her the bare rudiments: flags, maps, and the ability to count up the destruction with simple arithmetic. This song is about the loss of innocence on an industrial scale. |
|
| 10,000 Maniacs – Katrina's Fair Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
Oh, this is a song about a woman with multiple personalities.. Each personality has a different characteristic or focus. Each one comes out to play, then "dissipates". At the end of the song, Katrina finally asserts her "true" identity by shouting into an empty room. But, as assertive as she is, even Katrina is haunted by all the ghosts and their residue. Katrina never knows when the party is going to start, or when (if ever) it will end. The final lyrics go something like this: "Sylvia cans beasts in jars, Labels them by Kingdom Phylum Order Class, Family, Genus, Species. [chorus] Down the way(?), a silk design. This space is mine! Tis I, Katrina! Katrina, I." If you think about it, it's a fairly hair-raising song, one of my favorite from early 10K Maniacs. |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.