| Al Stewart – Jackdaw Lyrics | 6 months ago |
|
Not much to say which the lyrics (below) don't make obvious. But, surely, a one night stand he's ambivalent about. He hopes to sneak away without awaking the girl and having to explain? Perhaps conscience makes him compare himself to a jackdaw: having instinctively 'collected' a shiny object, now dropping it and flying away. (I can't see how to add lyrics in their proper place, so perhaps someone who does will oblige?) ---------------------------------------- Al Stewart — Jackdaw (lyrics) ---------------------------------------- I'm running away on a day like today Nothing you say could cause me to stay Jackdaw (jackdaw) Leaving by your back door Should be gone by now Should be gone by now Should be gone by now Don't try to follow, just leave it alone The trains have all left now and the station is closed Jackdaw (jackdaw) Leaving by your back door Should be gone by now Should be gone by now Should be gone by now It's five in the morning and it's rainy and cold Just go back to sleep now and you won't see me go Jackdaw (jackdaw) Leaving by your back door Should be gone by now Should be gone by now Should be gone by now |
|
| Al Stewart – Jackdaw Lyrics | 6 months ago |
|
You list the song, but no one seems to have filled in the Lyrics. Not sure how to do that (as a member, I am able only to mention my interpretation) — so, for completeness, here they are; hope you can add them. I'm running away on a day like today Nothing you say could cause me to stay Jackdaw (jackdaw) Leaving by your back door Should be gone by now Should be gone by now Should be gone by now Don't try to follow, just leave it alone The trains have all left now and the station is closed Jackdaw (jackdaw) Leaving by your back door Should be gone by now Should be gone by now Should be gone by now It's five in the morning and it's rainy and cold Just go back to sleep now and you won't see me go Jackdaw (jackdaw) Leaving by your back door Should be gone by now Should be gone by now Should be gone by now |
|
| John Otway – Beware of the flowers Lyrics | 1 year ago |
|
Yes. But what does it mean? |
|
| Sex Pistols – Pretty Vacant Lyrics | 1 year ago |
|
I agree with @[indie10:51087] . I always felt it was about the fashion industry (the body-conscious models paid to sell it, the smug, shallow people who could afford it); by extension, that included the whole teen rock/pop industry that, since the early to mid seventies, had begun to replace rhythm, blues and the rebel roots of rock and roll. — Turns out it was inspired by The Bay City Rollers. So I think @[indie10:51087] hit the nail on the head and may rest his/her case. |
|
| Roy Harper – Commune Lyrics | 1 year ago |
|
I came here to read others' thoughts about this beautiful song. I have some thoughts of my own. But first, let's get the lyrics up, eh? [The version above is full of holes. When I try to edit the lyrics (to fill in yawning elipses), this site insists I "must be logged in" - which I am. When I agree to log in again (though my name appears top right), it takes me to some other page, inviting me to view random songs. When I search for Commune, it takes me back here but still insists I "must be logged in to edit" - which I am.] So here, in the comments, are the full lyrics as I hear them. Someone please put them in. ----------------------------------------------------------------- COMMUNE by Roy Harper I thought I heard the sound of my name And I looked back down behind me And with hair like the ripened wheat she came Sure as the west wind to find me And just for a moment I wished my life To see our friends all around us And I turned to her but I held my breath In the far Norwegian mountains For there we stood, two children of spring As everything seemed to be gleaming Her looking breathless clean out of my mind And me with my crazy dreaming To think of my friends underneath the same roof In one common destination When all we do is remain aloof Like we have no close relation [Chorus 1] And love is my torment And I'll take when I can But I'll give in the moment When you are my woman and I am your man And I watched her makin' her first daisy chain As her nipples hung hard and suggestive And naked, gnat-bitten we drifted the plain In the hazy desert of sensation And we dreamed of all the loves we'd known And we never never thought of the sorrow With forelocks wound over primrose down In the wood by the empty long barrow Two silver greenflies to flicker the backdropping lush Of the emerald springtime To lust for a moment in love of another's dust On a dragonfly's wing [Chorus 2] And love is no torment For we'll give when we can And we'll live in the moment When you are my woman and I am your man And the blackcap sings and the forest rings With the nettles tall around me With shafts of sun and moving things And poems fast and slowly And fantasies of luscious thirst For new lust and fresh waters to seek it Like diamonds set in realities Of skies drawn back in secret But somewhere out there with my heart in her care And her prayers in the breezes that caught them She sits like the earth as I fly to her arms Like the showering yellows of autumn [Chorus 3] And love is no torment For we'll give when we can And we'll live in the moment When she is my woman and I am her man |
|
| Rickie Lee Jones – Skeletons Lyrics | 2 years ago |
|
I am genuinely fascinated by this song's last verse — reinforced by its title. I had hoped that someone might have an explanation here, because I always wondered about it. . Bereaved Mom brings up a fatherless son and daughter in some garden suburb? . But how do the son's "model planes" threaten bird "wings" — and in what sense does that leave skeletons? . On the album, the mood immediately switches to the sheer, vibrant be-bop freedom of "Woody and Dutch on the Slow Train to Peking," rappin' the fat scat. . Well, a lot of her songs to date had been autobiographical. By the time Pirates was recorded, Tom Waites, The Troubadour's other remaining latter-day beatnik (they both loved the music, fashions and lifestyles of the thirties/forties/fifties), had split to rebuild his career in New York, Chuck E Weiss was getting his own act together, and RLJ was desolate. I think this accounts for a lot of the bittersweet memories of the old gang in many of her songs — the perpetual lurch between joy and aching sadness. . Did she know a "Bird" to whom this had happened? Might there perhaps have been a news piece about a police shooting which made her think? Chances are that RLJ's "Bird" was also black — gunned down by police in a case of mistaken identity; the hoped-for "move to the West Side" (of Chicago, perhaps, or New York's Hudson? At any rate, somewhere removed from the snowy February streets), an escape from the ghetto to "give a kid half a chance." Guns are scientifically refined killing machines — widely available wherever there is street life. . Of course, one never forgets one's first sight of a bird's forlorn skeleton, its skin and feathers rotted away bleaching in the sun. In the legend of Icarus, to escape imprisonment, the master designer Daedelus fashions wings for him and his son. Icarus, captivated by the sheer beauty of flight, ignores his father's warning not to spiral too high: he ascends so close to the sun that the wax melts, detaching feathers from frame, and he plunges to his death. . The name, Bird, inevitably makes jazz fans think of Charlie Parker, who did not die from shooting — but from shooting up: the abuse of alcohol and heroin, which had ravaged his 34 year old body so badly that, at autopsy, his age was at first estimated as between 50 and 60. Having been free of heroin more often than not during his stay in LA (though prone to alcohol), Parker had been devastated by the sudden death of his three year old daughter, Pree. His attempts at suicide following this tragedy landed him in a mental institution. He left that clean of his addictions and healthy — but quickly returned to New York and total self-destruction. . Imagine Chan Parker attempting to bring up son Baird among all of that heartbreak and terrible loss. She maintained that Parker was a free spirit with mammoth appetites that no one could contain. His music made him — and everyone around her — soar. But, by the eighties, son Baird's addictions were clearly leading him down the same drug spiral which had taken his father. . [Morphine, a super-concentration of the opium drug, was developed and refined progressively from the Civil War right through to WWII; diamorphine (heroin), was its even stronger post-war refinement. The boomer generation and Gen X messed with opioids perhaps because of the rapid development of medical know-how occasioned by increasingly scientific warfare: we had the false sense that science's increased understanding of biochemistry made it somehow safer to experiment with drugs' effects on our systems. And, besides, jazz men returning from Europe, the Pacific, Korea - and rock stars' sympathy with vets from Viet Nam - lent heroin the cool reputation of being a musician's drug.] . Rickie Lee Jones, the daughter of an artistic, trumpet playing addict from Chicago, born to an orphan mother (eight months after Parker's death), was quite aware, by the eighties, that she — unlike her best buddies — was also dicing with addictions she could not control. She had moved to LA to escape the destruction and confusion of her peripatetic childhood. Now her closest, coolest, wildest friends were drifting away from the place which had become their stomping ground and her home. She holed up at the Tropicana with a spiralling cocaine habit. . So, I don't know. What do you guys think? . Although the rest of the song may be a straightforward, perhaps imaginary, story of tragic loss, the last verse is surely about what a bereaved mother must face in attempting to cope with all that heartbreak whilst nurturing a child. . The model planes of our youth also tended to be replicas of war planes; children of my generation and earlier were fascinated by war — WWII, Vietnam, all that mechanised destruction. . So, for this left-behind mother, perhaps, there are fond memories — the protective, life-nurturing "wings" of love (perhaps, for Rickie also, the freedom and nourishment offered by music's "wings"); hope for the future. How to maintain those, when confronted with your son, already climbing trees, toying with flying instruments of death? How to keep the skeletons in the closet, focus on the child's need for protection, freedom, growth and love, stay positive? . The album's solution is only temporary — a blazing night out with Woody and Dutch. |
|
| Tom Waits – (Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night Lyrics | 3 years ago |
|
I have to say I agree with @[jrisles:43530] and @[regb:43531] on the car vs. girl question — not so much with @[Geeeee:43532] or (the late) @[lou_reed:43533]. I have never actually heard Waites sing "arm around your sweet one *in* your Oldsmobile" and it could easily have been a misprint on the part of whichever publishing exec originally typed up the lyrics and missed Waites' wistful irony. Surely the "sweet one" is his CAR: he lovingly gasses "her" up so she can get him into town and be shown off on the main drag (arm draped over the door). Likely, the only thing in the passenger seat is his six-pack of beer — ready for one of those warm late nights when the bars close but you hang out on someone's porch (or tailgate) for a final drink or two? The question raised is what matters most to this youngster: having your car and your drinking buddies — or vaguely hoping, perhaps, one day, to get a girl? More often than not, all you get is drunk. But next Saturday, you'll smarten up and do it all again because what makes you put up with your boss and your stinking job is your eternal hope of having the best weekend ever. |
|
| Tom Waits – (Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night Lyrics | 3 years ago |
|
I have to say I agree with @jriles and @[regb:43529] on the car vs. girl question — not so much with Geeeee or (the late) lou_reed. I have never actually heard Waites sing "arm around your sweet one *in* your Oldsmobile" and it could easily have been a misprint on the part of whichever publishing exec originally typed up the lyrics and missed Waites' wistful irony. Surely the "sweet one" is his CAR: he lovingly gasses "her" up so she can get him into town and be shown off on the main drag (arm draped over the door). Likely, the only thing in the passenger seat is his six-pack of beer — ready for one of those warm late nights when the bars close but you hang out on someone's porch (or tailgate) for a final drink or two? The question raised is what matters most to this youngster: having your car and your drinking buddies — or vaguely hoping, perhaps, one day, to get a girl? More often than not, all you get is drunk. But next Saturday, you'll smarten up and do it all again because what makes you put up with your boss and your stinking job is your eternal hope of having the best weekend ever. |
|
| Altered Images – Happy Birthday Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| At the time, I never caught the video for this or watched the lip-sync.\n\nOver the radio, she always seemed to be singing, "Happy Birthday, Mahatma," in cutesy voice — and I couldn\'t work out what the lead singer of a new wave bubblegum pop band had for Ghandi — but I guess I just rolled with it.\n\nGod, though, what an annoying song. | |
| Altered Images – Happy Birthday Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| I always thought she was singing "Happy Birthday, Mahatma."\n\nI wondered why the hell a new wave band would be obsessed with Ghandi, but I rolled with it. | |
| Blondie – Dreaming Lyrics | 6 years ago |
| @[bjort:32688] - that doesn't mean they couldn't have dated in a restaurant the next week,,, | |
| Rickie Lee Jones – Living It Up Lyrics | 11 years ago |
|
Nobody seems to know the meaning here. Please let me know if you have any ideas at all. Here's all I can think of (and it's very incomplete). We all know that, whilst writing this incredible album, she was going through a lot of hurt as the result of Tom Waits' sudden split to New York. She, and he, Chuck E., and so on, were all part of a gang of musicians and drinkers who hung out at The Troubadour (amongst other joints) and had a lot of fun and a lot of original ideas. Each character was probably pretty unique. Perhaps they may collectively have been "Wild and the Only ones"; a group of artists, undamming those crazy "ideas you never tell to anyone"; that hive of creativity (and love of life and liquor) the "magnets pulling each of you there" if not the attraction which drew Waits and Jones into a brief, and ultimately painful, relationship. Rickie Lee Jones told DJ and music-journo Simon Barnett about "Cunt-Finger Louie" in an interview which the BBC never ultimately broadcast. It's in the archives somewhere and deserves to be heard. According to RLJ, elsewhere, he was one of many funny stories told by her friend and sometime collaborator, Sal Bernadi. As for Eddie and his crazy eye — who knows? |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.