| The Gourds – Burn The Honeysuckle Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| It's basically southern trash talk. Bragging on yourself. If you've ever tried to clear honeysuckle off a fence row, you get it. About the only way to get rid of it is to burn it and even then it'll come back if you don't dig up all the roots. It's a redneck way of saying, "I'm tougher than you'll ever be and I ain't goin' nowhere. Starting trouble with me is like burning honeysuckle." | |
| Hoagy Carmichael – Hong Kong Blues Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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"Kicking Buddha's Gong" was fairly common slang at the time. Cab Calloway used it in Minnie the Moocher: She messed around with a bloke named Smokey She loved him though he was cokey He took her down to Chinatown and showed her How to kick the gong around |
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| Tom Waits – Waltzing Mathilda Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| Everyone keeps talking as if Tom Traubert were a penniless bum, but that's clearly not true. When was the last time you saw a bum wearing Stacys? I picture him more as a traveler who's just missing home and that one chance he missed to settle down. But he doesn't sound like he'd change things much if he could. | |
| Leonard Cohen – First We Take Manhattan Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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To me, this seems a song about revolution against everything. Manhattan and Berlin are prefect cities to attack if you're an individualist. Especially at the time this song was written. Both were cities where you had greed driven capitalism coexisting right beside socialism. Both were cities where extremists ruled and intellect was used to justify both the greed of Wall Street and the tyranny of communism. "I don't like your fashion business, mister And I don't like these drugs that keep you thin" That's about as bruising an indictment of capitalism as you're going to find. The monkey and the plywood violin, the person who was loved as a loser but couldn't be allowed to win ... artists are always viewed with a bit of condescension. They give voice to the revolution's ideas but they're just supposed to be entertaining. They aren't supposed to actually change the status quo. Like an organ grinder (or violinist) with his dancing monkey, they're not supposed to actually be taken seriously. In the end, though, I think this is just Leonard Cohen talking about where he was in his own life. He was bored with not performing. He was amping himself up to go back on the road, rant against the myriad injustices of the world and people could either see him as an entertainer or a prophet, but no matter how they saw him, they'd hear him as well. |
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