| Rush – Different Strings Lyrics | 6 years ago |
| Er, point and counterpoint | |
| Rush – Different Strings Lyrics | 6 years ago |
| I always believe this and Entre Nous are like a point and counterpart..... Entre Nous strikes me as being a sort of "let's embrace our differences and find common ground" whereas Different Strings seems more along the lines of "let's agree to disagree and not argue"... one example of a Rush trick that I always liked, which was that they didn't necessarily write albums that were overtly conceptual, but yet seems to have some kind of common theme or link between them, especially lyrically. | |
| Rush – Losing It Lyrics | 6 years ago |
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All the Hemingway references are pretty much spot on, I think, and placed into the larger idea that we are all mortals who eventually age out of our primes. Beautiful song but unbelievably depressing...... and appropriate that they only played it live for the first time on their last tour, thus adding a sad and poignant context. |
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| Rush – Subdivisions Lyrics | 6 years ago |
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Neil was into a lot of puns and phrases with multiple meanings around this time - like Moving Pictures and the album cover. Subdivisions is no different - you have the literal subdivisions of neighborhood streets and then you have the metaphorical subdivisions that people create... in the song the teenage / high school context is the most apparent but I think the message overall can be spread wider - obvious it starts with how we tend to separate into cliques and circles from a young age - and the greater idea that if you don't necessarily fit into some neat segment, then you are on your own. I think the part later about the "rat race" wrap up the song nicely... how adulthood brings about its own ideas of class, separation, and conformity. This has always been my favorite Rush song and one of my favorites by anyone, anywhere.... few pieces of music speak to me like this one did, and continues to do. I have seen the band play it live a few times, and each time I found it to be a very personal and moving experience, as I found my formative years very difficult socially. |
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| Steely Dan – The Second Arrangement Lyrics | 6 years ago |
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A Gladstone bag is a leather suitcase / duffle bag that kinda looks like a large purse. A great pity what happened to the song.... I've heard a snippet of a much smoother, cleaner version than the bootleg tape but there's no vocals on it. |
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| Steely Dan – I.G.Y. Lyrics | 6 years ago |
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This song invokes images of all those old 50s films you see about "the kitchen of the future" and stuff like that, where everything is automated and robotic and technology solves all the world's problems. I think this song is an homage to those sorts of ideals and also pokes fun at how ridiculous and impractical many of those ideas turned out to be..... like the underwater sea tunnel, for example. |
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| Steely Dan – The Fez Lyrics | 6 years ago |
| I always thought that maybe the "holy man" referred to a Catholic who may have felt birth control was against his/her religion. and so the song is an argument between one partner who insists on it (and won't do it without) while the other is conflicted about it for religious reasons. | |
| Steely Dan – Babylon Sisters Lyrics | 6 years ago |
| I always thought of the "sisters" as the two cities themselves.... Los Angeles and San Francisco. Two distinctly different yet equally attractive places for differing reasons, but both places where one could find adventure (and trouble) easily... so fine, so young (both are relatively young cities in terms of cultural significance)... "tell me I'm the only one" could be thought of as the rivalry between the two places. | |
| Steely Dan – Glamour Profession Lyrics | 6 years ago |
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Cocaine - the LA concession. Illegal fun, under the sun. Spending a quarter just to shine the silver bowl - I believe this refers to the street price of a gram of cocaine circa 1979-80 when the song was written - $250, which is a "quarter" of $1,000. I've also heard "Jack with his radar" stalking the "dread moray eel" is a metaphor for snorting... the radar is the tube / dollar bill and the "eel" is a squiggly line of coke on a mirror. Magic Johnson was a rookie sensation in LA during the 1979-80 season and I've also seen reference to the Hoops McCann character as being somewhat inspired by him. Not to say that he himself was necessarily a heavy cocaine user, but knowing of his.... liasons.... it wouldn't be surprising. The song itself is probably the closest the Dan ever came to disco.... somehow I don't think that was entirely coincidental considering the subject matter. I believe they used Wendel for the drum track on this song; it sounds quite mechanical and the drum fills sound like they are overdubbed. |
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