| Vashti Bunyan – Timothy Grub Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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This is an amazing song, because it is both a deeply yearning allegory and literally true. It is about yearning for a better, simpler life. Vashti failed as a pop star, and became a hippie and this was her way of rejecting it all. The "bug" characters are Vashti Bunyan and her hippie friends, circa 1968, who set up a small proto-commune of sorts in some woods not far outside of London. The "Blue Men" are the cops who kicked them out. Everything else is literally true, though cast in this dreamy style. They had a car; it broke down; they stumbled on an old gypsy who sold them a horse and cart ("caravan"). The horse was named Betsy (Bess) and actually was black and actually had a star on its forehead (ok, more of a diamond, but that is not very important, I think). They then set off for Skye, where Donovan was supposedly starting some commune. It took them over a year to get there. By the time they did, the commune was already defunct. This song ends when they just started their trip ("Up and down the hills of the North Countryside"). Diamond Day, the album from which this song comes, is about the entire trip, and it is this amazingly beautiful mix of allegory, yearning for a better and more beautiful life, and literal truth about their experiences (albeit the dreamy and beautiful ones, not so much the cold weather, lack of money, tensions among their small group, etc.). That's part of what makes this album amazing; it is about the best and most beautiful things in life (which, though not the whole story of life, are a part of life). Diamond day, too, was panned by the critics and completely ignored by the public when it came out in 1970. Vashti then gave up music for 30 years. She was convinced her music was terrible. But, then, collectors started discovering it, and, by the 1990s, the album was selling on Ebay for $2000. "Freak folk" stars like Devandra Banhart knew about her and both sought her advice and helped her re-start her career (in the 2000s, now in her 60s). If you search youtube for "Vashti Bunyan, From Here to Before" there is a great biographical documentary of all this stuff. It is an incredibly beautiful song, and an incredibly beautiful album, and everything about it is an incredible story. |
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