| Camper Van Beethoven – She Divines Water Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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What is a dream, what is not, and how do we know? Love can give us a sense of order and security and it can be disorienting and disquieting. Our narrator, in bed, seems unsettled in the presence of his partner. He finds himself in a recurring dream having the luck to live it up in the back of a limousine riding through the sky as a member of the press with a famous actress who displays a wide array of party tricks to entertain them. She means to charm them, ostensibly to advance her career, a hint at the transactional nature of this relationship in which she will always have the upper hand. A Cadillac is a status symbol, but an old-fashioned, outdated one. Similarly, the “boys of the press” feels dated. Both hearken back to postwar 1950s-60s America and the start of a consumerist, corporate, conformist culture which peaked in the Reagan 1980s to which CvB and other postpunk, underground/alternative music was a countercultural reaction. This preoccupation with an idealized postwar Americana is revisited much more pointedly in CvB’s follow-up to this album, Key Lime Pie, in songs like Jack Ruby, Sweethearts and When I Win the Lottery. While the actress’s entertainment for the boys is transactional, still there’s some real magic to it. They drink vodka, but she divines water. Since she does so by “dancing a jig,” I always thought the following line was “she will wrestle a pig,” which rhymes, and would be an extreme but suitably surreal way to curry their favor. Everything in this world has its place and time—or does it? |
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| R.E.M. – Pretty Persuasion Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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Everyone here is right; there are multiple levels to Pretty Persuasion. One is young, ambivalent sexuality; another is a critique of consumerism. The two themes merge into one that is both playful and apprehensive--a tension that helps make for a great song. At the time, R.E.M. represented a real alternative to the corporate rock of Reagan's1980s, really part of a whole DIY cultural ethos they shared with fellow postpunk, underground, independent bands, among whom they are pioneers, having helped to open and create networks for shows and distribution outside the channels controlled by the music industry. Anti-exploitation, big business themes and the search for authenticity in a consumerist world appear throughout their work at this time. The idea that something true and beautiful can be bought and sold like a commodity might seem quaint, now, but was a real impetus for the counterculture of the 1980s and the rise of alternative rock in the 1990s. Secondly, any sort of queerness was still somewhat of a secretive topic. In fact many artists of the time, like Stipe, helped queerness become more open and accepted. While known now to be gay, Stipe has talked about having girlfriends during this time, as well. So both women and men represented temptations to him ("he's got/she's got..."). As with his heroes Bowie, Lou Reed and Patti Smith, there's a cheeky ambiguity at play. The themes merge into the idea of a sexual marketplace--being young, maybe less than confident, and being attracted to people, looking for partners. There's great mixed feeling here, looking at fellow human beings as something to select ("buy") and consume. This idea is brutally explored in The One I Love: "Another prop has occupied my time." Much of rock and roll is about being young and horny; leave it to a great band like R.E.M. to add these wonderful nuances to that particular genre. |
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