| Mark Knopfler – Remembrance Day Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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You are absolutely right about the effect of the Great War on English neighborhoods. The effect was intensified by the British practice of forming territorial units. Every village has a war memorial. Some predate WWI, and many of them have added casualties from later wars. I think the list of names is supposed to be from the local war memorial "...on and on". The song's structure comes from how our experiences seem fixed, because the seasons circle around even as time slips away. The second verse is about the official commemoration; the first verse, speaks of remembering the fallen at May Day and in mid-summer. |
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| Dire Straits – Industrial Disease Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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It's a deadpan look at press/popular enthusiasms--"Industrial Disease" then; "Global Warming" now--and at the culture of indignation and blame. All the opinions and emotions he describes are preposterous, from the watchdog with rabies and the foreman with fleas to the doctor who is cashing in on the Anxiety of the Day. Listen to MK's mocking tone of voice when he sings "There’s a protest singer singing a protest song". I don't think he takes seriously the singer's catalogue of paranoia about what "they" are doing. It's a list of absurdities, like two people who claim to be Jesus. The singer turns all the things he doesn't like into evidence for a conspiracy. In 1982 "they" want to "stop us buying Japanese"; nowadays, the singer would be anti globalization and would complain that "they" *want* us to buy Chinese. By the way, I kinda like to read the line "They got free speech, tourists" without the comma, since a lot of tourists go to Hyde Park to "see free speech in action". |
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| Mark Knopfler – What It Is Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| The song mixes up the references to "Dirty Dick" and Little Nell, the latter a character in Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop. "Dirty Dick" was a London ironmonger who went crazy when his fiancee, Nell, died the day before the wedding. There is a Dick Swiveller who looks for Little Nell. "Dirty Dick" may be looking for Nell, but not in the pages of Dickens' novel. | |
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