submissions
| Murray Head – One Night In Bangkok Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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I was at one time part of a traveling chess team that became Oregon High School Champions. My team-mate was Carl Wieman who won the Nobel Prize in Physics about 18 years ago. Chess players must learn to blot out distract-ions so to concentrate and focus. I remember when the team went to the cham-pionship, the other players never left the hotel but to go to and from the tourna-ment. I took a walk in the strange city, like Freddie does in Bangkok. Years later, I would go to crummy hotels in many of America's inner cities, and would take a walk looking for a fast food place or supermarket, and like Freddie would be completely oblivious to the offers of prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers. "I get my kicks above the waistline" means cerebral satisfaction, as compared with genital. I for one am male frigid, I lack brain opium receptors necessary for sex drive or drug addiction and I suspect that many other chess players are also. |
submissions
| Ides of March – Vehicle Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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@[NigelTewksbury:5601] Look up the album cover for the Ides of March album containing Vehicle-- a little girls naked baby doll abandoned in the grass (presumed) by the side of the road, like it's owner had been kidnapped and is never came back for it. But this is what Ted Bundy was doing with college age girls, The transition from the 60s to the 70s was not a happy one and some of the music, like the Mash theme "Suicide is Painless" certainly reflected a descent into darkness. But I think the Vehicle album cover/song was the most sinister. JS |
submissions
| Ides of March – Vehicle Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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If you recall the album cover you will realize that this song is ominous. It shows a little girl's doll by the side of the road. I get the impression that the "friendly stranger" uses "pictures and candy" to entice and kidnap underage girls for very sick purposes. Perhaps he is Ted Bundy, a serial murderer. Despite being a hell of I song, #1 I believe at the turn of the 60s/70s this song gets no airplay now. Yes, it sounds like Blood Sweat and Tears but this was a bizarre time, Vietnam, white dope, the happy days of the 50-60s gone. Other weird songs include Timothy by the Bouys, that dealt with 2 men trapped in a mine shaft eating the 3rd guy. You never hear this one now either. Even Barbara Streisand came out with a cover of Laura Nyro's earlier statement on suicide, Stoney End, in 1970. |
submissions
| Del Shannon – Keep Searchin' Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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This is a weird song about what is a very unusual subject. The singer is a guy trying to rescue a girl from an abusive relationship, but "THEY treat her mean and cruel" is more like her parents are abusive rather than a husband or boyfriend. But the RESCUER is seen as the bad guy for running off with a teenage girl. This was followed up by a song called "Stranger in Town" appearing to be a PI chasing the couple down. Del Shannon was always ahead of his time. |
submissions
| The Left Banke – Walk Away Renee Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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You would never know that the 1960s were teen heaven from this song. It is very effectively morbid, lyrics, music, the way it is sung. You would swear that this is a guy who's long time wife is dead so he wallows in sadness by hanging around the places they used to walk together. What is astounding is the musical sophistication of a 16 year old, at least for one shot. One of the greatest one hit wonders. |
submissions
| The Cyrkle – Turn Down Day Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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I should have also noted the escalating Viet-Nam War and it's depressing effects on the youth culture. America has survived more serious wars than Viet-Nam but Viet-Nam presented unusual frustrations, including that the "mission" was not really to win the war, just "embarrass" the enemy and set up a corrupt Narco based government is South Vietnam to stem the tide of communism. Like Laos and Thailand. But this did not seem to be working and the media was full of bad news from Viet-Nam that was divisive. The draft also was a threat to the happy days youth culture of the late 1950s-mid 1960s. This was far less a factor when the song was written that when the song was released. |
submissions
| The Cyrkle – Turn Down Day Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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I had always thought of this song as a "good" Beatles knock-off, representing the 1967 "Summer of Love" mentality. But after reading the comment on this site, it is clear that it represents the contradiction between the "Happy Days"/ "Archie Comics" type youth mentality of the early/mid 1960s and what was really going on in the back-ground . For the record, JFK was a champion of the youth culture of the early 1960s but there was another reality waiting in the wings-- the Lucky Luciano/Mafia plan to flood this country with white dope. At first the Mafia courted Kennedy but after awhile he cut ties with Sinatra/Rat Pack, and his brother Robert turned into an enemy of the Mafia. There is little doubt that Mafia elements wanted to get the Kennedy's "out of the way" and replaced with those who would "look the other way". I think the song is a lament and wants to just block out such ugly realities (which came to pass) and just celebrate the carefree youth culture of the time. Looking back to those years (I was a kid/teenager during the early/mid 1960s in Corvallis Oregon) it seems like living in an Archie comic, like a dream. The song writer understandably wants to stay in that dream despite the threatening news of reality. |
submissions
| Glenn Frey – Smuggler's Blues Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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The war again drugs is a bizarre war-- the DEA etc never seem to be winning it-- the dope keeps coming-- and US policy has been ambiguous, with at times the CIA supporting the illegal drug growing/marketing business as a prop against communism (in France, Italy, Turkey after WW2, in SE Asia) or in Afghanistan now as a prop against religious extremists. Yet billionaire dope dealers are not really winning either as they live at risk of being shot down or imprisoned for life. I think the video stresses this--the flow of dope has a life of it's own that contin-ues despite the fall of the human players. The modern white dope "octopus" is much the creation of exiled mobster Lucky Luciano and the CIA, who gave it a life beyond them, and structured it so that when one player falls,another imme-diately takes his place. Luciano convinced mobsters that the money from white dope would tower over all the other rackets combined; true, but no-one, including Luciano ever seems to win at the game long term. "Its a losing proposition, but one you can't refuse, it's the nature of the business". Luciano and the CIA created and put into motion a monster that has turned on our own country and Italy even more so. And no one seems to know how to stop it. |
submissions
| Double – The Captain of Her Heart Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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You see all the pretty young girls going about their business. But one of them has a determined yet very sad look on her face. Her heart is broken, she has decided to drive down to the river and drown herself and she does. The next day again you see the pretty girls out and about. But one of them will be forever missing. This video is simple but brilliantly effective; the greatest tear jerker in video history. The look on the determined suicidal girls face, combined with the drowning scene; then the next day; everything is as the day before minus one human being. |
submissions
| Sade – Smooth Operator Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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This song was written during the early 1980s when an international assassin and arms smuggler called "Carlos the Jackal" was active in Europe. He was heavily wanted by INTERPOL but saw himself as a "James Bond" type of glamour figure and had a penchant for lounge singers. In the video Sade is a lounge singer; her employer is buying illegal arms from Carlos BUT CARLOS WANTS SADE AS PART OF THE DEAL AND HER EMPLOYER SAYS YES. She thinks the employer is her "boyfriend" but Interpol convinces her differently with films of him two timing her and they want her to spy on him; she stumbles across contraband rifles in bass cases; the employer sees this and chases her down, tries to kill her but Interpol shoots him down. The Jackal gets away but does not get the girl. "Heaven help him" (the employer) "when he falls", the video is about his fall. |
submissions
| Golden Earring – Twilight Zone Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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1n 1979 an American CIA agent named Paisley died mysteriously ; it was reported as suicide. The Russian press said no, he was probably involved with the Mob and drugs so his murder by the mob was covered up. It also accuses head of the mob Lucky Luciano of being a CIA agent during the postwar era .After Luciano was deported to Sicily in 1945 or so he created a huge heroin export business that included opium from Turkey refined in France then shipped to the US--the French Connection. In 1999 CIA paperwork was released that indeed Luciano was allowed to do this by the CIA in return for assisting in the fight against communism. Hence the mob-CIA-Turkey -execution style murder imagery in the video. The CIA had abandoned their own man for the mob to kill rather than admit their connection to Luciano/mob/dope. He is a an expendable "non person" ("feels like being cloned") in the CIA's top secret mob/drug warfare against the communists. The whole thing is surrealistic--he is "starting to realize" that he is a pawn in a perverse nightmare that will be "covered up" like it never happened. But he himself is a killer, "in the line of duty" like James Bond but he is not sympathetic.The video offers what is actually happening (events leading to a mob style crucifiction execution) and the nightmare playing out in his own mind (being on stage looking at a an audience all with his terrified face, then "when the bullet hits the bone". This is a brilliant work; by far the best video ever made, de-mythifying and de-glamorizing the "James Bond" type anti-hero image. sharphujo |
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