| Eric's Trip – Behind the Garage Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| in most cases i'm reluctant to say a song is "about' drugs. to me it sounds almost as weird/irrelevant as if you said your friend 'john' was 'about pot' because he smokes it. i don't think this song is about pot, but i'd say its a pretty good bet that it smokes it. | |
| Eric's Trip – Sand Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| I KNEW IT. or i knew i couldnt be the only person who thought that. i did not know they had knifers in canada around that time though. i have always been of the belief (as well as almost as every one i know) that knifers are largely an isolated, pacific northwest phenomenon. in fact, i've heard it convincingly argued by many over the years that they were invented in my very hometown. the whole subject is very intriguing and mysterious and makes me feel at the center of a universe which is part real, part figment of a dream i created. | |
| Eric's Trip – Behind the Garage Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| not saying you are wrong, but that seems like kind of a questionable tactic for keeping a secret: writing an album of highly situationally accurate themes, including specific details and not even changing the names? i guess things are just done differently in canada... | |
| The Velvet Underground – Black Angel's Death Song Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
the song is a lot of jabberwocky, but i always thought there was a sort of loose narrative. i always imagined a sort of wartime scenario, some lone confused soldier seeing all possible paths before him spread out like some quantum probability wave. some end in glory, some in metaphysical disillusionment, some in violent death. feeling nothing to lose, alienated from some dreary place he once called home, he plays out these scenarios in his mind. caught between decisions, he often retreats back in the safety of the "cozy brown snow", which i always felt sure was heroin, to save the choice for another time. try between, try to lose, choose to choose, choose to go. does he take the middle path, give up, dedicate to making a choice, possibly the one that would finally fulfill his fate? the last line of this song is 'choose to go'. i think this song is about embracing your fate, knowingly following the path that will probably end your life with guns blazing. i mean look at the title, it's obviously a song about death. there's plenty of imagery to suggests it. also, i like that the black angel is portrayed as weeping. it's not a malevolent force, but a compassionate, remorseful one. the metaphysical implications of this song seem staggering if you take the view that reed was telling some kind of story or making some point. I personally think the guy is a jackass, and that he channels dead music gods from time to time, in-between putting out albums and albums of crap. |
|
| The Velvet Underground – Black Angel's Death Song Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
the song is a lot of jabberwocky, but i always thought there was a sort of loose narrative. i always imagined a sort of wartime scenario, some lone confused soldier seeing all possible paths before him spread out like some quantum probability wave. some end in glory, some in metaphysical disillusionment, some in violent death. feeling nothing to lose, alienated from some dreary place he once called home, he plays out these scenarios in his mind. caught between decisions, he often retreats back in the safety of the "cozy brown snow", which i always felt sure was heroin, to save the choice for another time. try between, try to lose, choose to choose, choose to go. does he take the middle path, give up, dedicate to making a choice, possibly the one that would finally fulfill his fate? the last line of this song is 'choose to go'. i think this song is about embracing your fate, knowingly following the path that will probably end your life with guns blazing. i mean look at the title, it's obviously a song about death. there's plenty of imagery to suggests it. also, i like that the black angel is portrayed as weeping. it's not a malevolent force, but a compassionate, remorseful one. the metaphysical implications of this song seem staggering if you take the view that reed was telling some kind of story or making some point. I personally think the guy is a jackass, and that he channels dead music gods from time to time, in-between putting out albums and albums of crap. |
|
| The Microphones – The Glow Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| Thinly veiled metaphor for spiritually transcendent lovemaking. | |
| Radiohead – Kid A Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
DUDE. I've done that exact same thing! I used mp3's, but the rythmic interplay was worth the effort of opening the song with two different audio players. I like how the structure of the human mind makes it likely that two brains across time and space will have the same revelation. |
|
| Lou Reed – Street Hassle Lyrics | 16 years ago |
|
Everyone's got their own idea as to who is the prostitute, or if sex or drugs were being bought, or if the chick in part two is Waltzing Matilda. I don't think the details matter as much as the message. Part 1 is a story of transcendent love in the midst of and in spite of the gutters of human life. Part 2 shows how things get real in this same seedy setting, when the 'heroine' dies of an overdose. Even though the characters are all portrayed as sort of low lifes, the sense of loss is still gutting. The feeling washes over you as if it were you hearing the news of your lover's death, as your new buddy casually says, 'hey, that cunt's not moving.. lay her out in the darkened street'. You feel reality hit you, that strange mix of dread and shock. It's like Reed is making a case for life not being meaningless. It is brutal and unforgiving, but there is hope for transcendence whoever you are, and however you live your life. Everything can be lost in the blink of an eye for no reason at all, but that doesn't make the best things in life any less real or meaningful. Part 3 illustrates just how deeply the loss is felt. It seems to be a hallmark of Reed's career to humanize characters that society generally condemns. Also, it's strange to find such a masterpiece on an album where on all other tracks Reed seems high and belligerent. It makes you wonder how he's even capable of writing, or even comprehending, the beautiful message of this song. |
|
| The Velvet Underground – I'll Be Your Mirror Lyrics | 16 years ago |
|
I wholly agree. This is the ultimate love song. Worded so elegantly, and says so much in so few words. How many love songs out there only appeal to vanity and superficial feelings/needs? But to say 'I'll reflect what you are, and what you are it good', what could be more reassuring and pure to a troubled yet lovely mind? It makes genuine love seem possible. How many of us could use to be told this? |
|
| The Velvet Underground – There She Goes Again Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| There are so many crappy covers of this on youtube where the singer obnoxiously omits the line, 'you better hit her'. | |
| The Velvet Underground – Heroin Lyrics | 16 years ago |
|
He seems almost happy to go, proud of his willful resignation. It becomes one giant fuck you to the world. The narrator can't seem to bend reality to fit his own sense of universal justice, and he can't make it in a world that is so compromised and relative and meaningless. He chooses slow suicide because it is the only slice of heaven he has ever found on Earth, and he finally feels the way he always thought he should. Walking the streets while really six inches back in the warm cloud in your head, feeling cool and glamorous. Feeling right. Feeling justification in those beautiful little molecules that allow you to know a more polarized world of good and evil, instead of the awful, deadening gray. Too bad it's all a horrible trap. This song is incredibly sad. |
|
| The Velvet Underground – Black Angel's Death Song Lyrics | 16 years ago |
|
I have a book on The Velvet Underground, and there's a part that talks about Eliot's influence on Reed's writing. Apparently Lou's mentor in college, Delmore Schwartz, was a worldwide authority on T.S. Eliot. I guess Lou was really impressed that Eliot could write something as good as Prufrock at age 25. At the end when he starts breaking into the "i chi chi, chi chi i, kah tah koh" seems directly influenced by the "co co rico co co rico" wordplay end of Eliot's The Waste Land. Also, in heroin, the line "and when that heroin is in my blood, and my blood is in my head" always reminded me of the line "formulated, sprawling on a pin... pinned and wriggling on a wall". Two great lines. and then The Murder Mystery is a whole other can of worms... |
|
| The Velvet Underground – Heroin Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Ever notice how on the first album, most of the instrumentation seem to try to metaphorically symbolize the theme/subject of the song? With heroin, with its the flow from the rush and the nod, slowly building up, and increasingly strung out (care of cale's screeching viola). I'm Waiting for the Man sounds angular and repetitive and full of motion, just like the city it describes. Venus in Furs sounds like some viking slave ship beat, perfect for its account depravity in antiquity. In There She Goes Again, at the end of the verse, when lou says, "you'd better hit her", the band answers back with a sharp "bum bum bum bum" in agreement. And then my all time favorite, The Black Angel's Death Song, has Cale's viola providing that eerie, ghostly shriek in perfect counterpoint to Reed's rambling lyrics about death and choice and fate. The whole album is completely sublime. If you yearn to start a band whose ideals are originality and expression, this album is almost a prerequisite. | |
| Elliott Smith – Clementine Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I think he's saying sorry to Clementine because it's the damn millionth time someone has sung that song for her and it wasn't clever the first time. | |
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.