| Steely Dan – Jack of Speed Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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moving on metal means moving on rails like a train car. he's on a set course that can't be altered |
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| Donald Fagen – I.G.Y. (International Geophysical Year) Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| forgot to add, the whole album nightfly seems to be set in the early sixties, either explicitly (new frontier) or in terms of attitude. fagen does this all the time. note the 1920's gangster argot in good stuff, for example. | |
| Donald Fagen – I.G.Y. (International Geophysical Year) Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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IGY = international geophysical year = any year ending in zero. this is a song about 1960. igy got lots of play in 1960, and then you never heard about it again. standing tough. standard kennedy/nixon cold war foreign policy posture on that train all graphite and glitter. standard science fantasy about a future that looked a lot like the jetsons cartoons. this is where we got our ideas about talking dogs and flying cars A.O.K. standard astronaut-speak your ticket to that wheel in space -- they really did sell tickets to the first space station, which was going to look exactly like the space station in 2001 more leisure time for artists everywhere -- jackie-speak. jacqueline kennedy said stuff like this all the time. also fagen's delivery of this line is a pretty good jackie impression Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision -- in the sixties, computers were either completely benign or completely evil. their representation in movies was not a computer, it was a reel-to-reel magnetic tape reader. in short: a naive (not ironic) recounting of everybody's POV from 1960, before all the wars and assasinations |
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| Steely Dan – Jack of Speed Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| teddy kennedy's drug of choice was alcohol, not MDMA. | |
| Steely Dan – Jack of Speed Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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i think the girlfriend has been tweaking too, although to a lesser degree than Teddy. he is destined for the shriek express, and if she doesn't get out now then she'll be trading fours with him. i.e., first he will shriek for four bars, and then she will shriek for four bars, because the meth will have made them both insane.. |
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