| Syd Barrett – Octopus Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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The song is a pastiche of poems from one of Barrett's favorite anthologies. He borrowed lines here and there, twisting and changing them, and adding his own bits in. Most significantly, "isn't it good to be lost in the wood? Isn't it bad, too quiet there... in the wood. It meant even less to me than I thought..." which is a reflection of his withdrawal into himself. The Octopus ride is an old fairground ride, of course, and reveals a surrender to childlike fantasy ("please leave us here") and a bewilderment of surroundings ("close our eyes"). It's the kind of bittersweet recollection of times past that are prominent in his solo records. I agree with the commentators who say that the line is actually "The mad CAT laughed at the man on the border." It is clear in the recording, and animals are the most prominent motif on the solo records. A cheetah and kangaroo pop up in the next line, for instance. I think Waters and Gilmour got a little carried away packaging and presenting his first solo record as the work of a lunatic, and Barrett was too shy and checked out to advocate for himself. It's anyone's guess what the line means, but I have always thought that Barrett is not the cat, but the "man on the border" hunting with the Talbot, and getting lost in the woods. |
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| Syd Barrett – Dominoes Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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Eerie song. Usual Barrett themes of a happy recent past, somehow abstracted, idealized, and now far distant ("an idea, someday, in my tears my dreams" which echoes lines line "Only last summer, it's not so long ago. Just last summer, now must winds blow" in Wined & Dined). As usual, very beautiful descriptions of weather ("A day so dark, so warm"). Clearly it is addressed to a former girlfriend. The scary part is the feeling of fog and entropy, the terrifying feeling of time just slipping past over games of dominoes. At this time, Barrett would wall himself in his room for weeks at a time, unable to do anything. One of his flatmates was painter Duggie Fields, who was extremely prolific, so much so that for some insensible reason, Barrett claimed he could not paint because Fields was so "good at it." He couldn't do much of anything, he was just lost in his own head ("losing when my mind's astray"). I guess for that reason, and Barrett's delivery--he sounds like he's literally pushing the words out of his mouth into this world from some distant, private one--this song almost more than any other sounds like him withdrawing, retreating, erasing himself. |
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| Syd Barrett – Late Night Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| @[giantsquid:37263] potentially it is written about Libby Gausden, his first serious girlfriend. He heard that she had gotten married while in 1968 or 69, I think. | |
| Syd Barrett – Late Night Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| @[giantsquid:37262] potentially it is written about Libby Gausden, his first serious girlfriend. He heard that she had gotten married while in 1968 or 69, I think. | |
| Leonard Cohen – Iodine Lyrics | 6 years ago |
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In keeping with the theme of the record (the "death of the ladies man"), it's a song about impotence. Much of the first side of the record is about emasculation (impotence, cuckoldry, voyeurism, rejection) building to a depressed and demented male libido and ego on the B-Side. The metaphor here is that iodine is used to treat wounds, and the woman's (a sex worker?) compassion to him in his moment of humiliation feels like a wound being treated. "I needed you when I knew I was in danger/ Of losing what I used to think was mine" is perhaps an indication that the woman's role is a service role, ie sex work, and what he is worried about losing is his masculinity. "You covered up the place I could not master/ It wasn't dark enough to shut my eyes" the place being his penis, which remains embarrassingly flaccid and out of his control, and the lights being on indicating that this is likely a casual or procured sexual encounter. Like the next song, "Paper Thin Hotel," the narrator learns that what he had feared, losing his perceived manhood, is possibly a blessing. "And all my wanton lust was iodine/ My masquerade of trust was iodine," indicates that he was using his masculine posturing and sexuality to cover up deeper wounds in his character. He's learned something about being a better person, and a better man, we may guess). |
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| Elvis Presley – Any Day Now Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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Two thoughts: 1) I love Elvis slight shift in the original Bacharach lyric, "And the blue shadow will fall all over town." In the original, it's "the blue shadows," plural. Elvis's shadow is encompassing, specific, familiar—he's known it before. And it's a single shadow that sweeps over everything, in a vast hypallage. Of course, it is neither the city nor the shadow even that is blue. He is, and because he is, everything to him is colored that way. The shadow anticipates his blues, the depths of his depression. 2) Another piece of anticipatory rhetoric, "then my wild beautiful bird, you will have flown." The use of the future perfect signifies that by the time his love meets another man, she will already have been gone. Meeting someone knew here is the effect, not the cause of her departure. She is gone already, in fact. The singer is struggling to acknowledge what he already knows: love has already let him down, already he finds himself alone, and already his love has left. He is awaiting her material departure from his life as a sad formality. |
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| Siouxsie and the Banshees – Cities In Dust Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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Interesting that a lot of people read a Christian or culturally conservative ethic into this -- I don't see any censure in the song of pagan idolatry or of the moral character of Roman civilization in late first century A.D. (which, actually, was thriving and centuries away from collapse). Rather, the focus is on the suddenness of a city's collapse, and how impotent an ordinary person is when faced with annihilation. The people of Pompeii, obviously, could not have stopped Vesuvius no matter how well they behaved. Nor could their gods ("Were you praying at the Lares shrine?"). The song also dwells on the insignificance of human accomplishment in the face of death ("Your former glories and all the stories/ Dragged and washed with eager hands"). Everything can be erased in a second by powers well outside of an ordinary person's control. Again, I think it's wrong to read this as a general rebuke of Roman civilization. Rome's collapse was not sudden. It occurred over centuries of deterioration and for a great multitude of reasons, beyond the simple rote Christian reading of bad morals. It took Edward Gibbon thousands of pages to describe, after all. I agree with those who draw parallels to nuclear war. The terrifying aspect of this song is that we imagine the bodies at Pompeii, permanently fixed in the positions they died in, and we can readily imagine the same thing happening to us. |
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| Fairport Convention – Matty Groves Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| It's likely that neither constitute statutory murder. Matty was a peasant, and killing him under any circumstances would not likely have brought a charge to a nobleman. Both killings in the specific circumstances were probably justified in law, since discovering a man with your wife if you were noble in many places warranted the murder of both the wife and the lover. Certainly, in Ancient Greece for instance, the murder of the wife was encouraged, and the murder of the lover forgiven if the man of the house chose to do it. | |
| Elliott Smith – I Better Be Quiet Now Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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A breakup song -- Figure 8's best moments are when it keeps to the break-up thread. To me, the album stands next to Dylan's Blood on the Tracks. Elliott had such a wonderful way of encapsulating complex emotional situations into simple lyric, and this is one of his best moments. This song about the quiet moments after the relationship has died: wondering what your ex is up to, wanting to hear his or her voice, trying to fill time and wondering when it will stop hurting. I think the title reflects how emotionally drained the narrator is. It reminds me of the "I'm tired" refrain in XO, when the narrator's weariness reaches into retreat. The line "If I didn't now the difference/ Living alone would probably be okay" reflects the cataclysm in his life. He's been with this person so long that he doesn't know how to live alone, doesn't remember how to fill the time. Like "Somebody that I Used to Know," this song gives the impression that the narrator is not over the loss. He feels like he's stagnating, held back by enmity and regret, and that he's too emotionally exhausted to make any progress. |
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| The Beatles – You Know My Name (Look Up the Number) Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| Both John and Paul claimed this was one of their favorite Beatles songs. Its one of mine too. Its clearly influenced by the Transcendental Meditation they were into in the late 60s -- a lot of songs from that period are built around a repeated mantra, a meaningless phrase or even gibberish used in meditation. "Why Don't We Do it In the Road," "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" "Hey Jude" (with its 4 minute coda) and "Across the Universe" (with "Jai guru deva om") are other examples of this influence. I love these little experiments in minimalism. And, yeah, you have to love the music hall and goon show influence on this one! | |
| Elliott Smith – Alphabet Town Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Many cities have districts with alphabetically named streets, but this Alphabet Town definitely refers to NW Portland. The streets aren't named for Simpsons characters, for the record; Matt Groening is a Portland native and borrowed the street names for a number of characters (Mr. Burns from Burnside and Montgomery Park on Vaughn, Flanders, Kearney, Lovejoy, Quimby). Both Groening and Elliott Smith went to Lincoln High School, a solidly upper middle class school on the other side of Burnside in SE. And the Alphabet district has been around forever. Its one of the oldest parts of the city. The comment about it being new is probably confusing the massive gentrification project called the Pearl District that, in the 90s, replaced a large section of NW Old Town and turned it into a glitzy yuppie paradise. Much of Old Town still exists, and its definitely the seediest part of downtown Portland. There is a lot of drug crime and quite a few music venues in the area (The Roseland, and the Crystal Ballroom is not far away. Both major Portland music establishments). The line about it being haunted is a bit of a Portland inside joke. NW Portland is supposed to be haunted (the haunted Portland walking tour, popular with tourists, goes through Old Town: http://www.portlandwalkingtours.com/tours/beyond_bizarre.php). Smith could be evoking the gloomy, ghostly feeling that NW can evoke, but very likely the character(s) in the lyric are the ones haunting the town. The drug references are obvious and unavoidable ("threw up whatever she shot down" and "hand on your arm" -- which also appears in Needle in the Hay). For me, the song is more about the place than the drugs. A dark, sad neighborhood rich with memory and regret which the drugs, no doubt, were a large part of. |
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