Karn Evil 9: First Impression

Geez is this a dead thread?

"a glaze of vaseline" First, get your vaseline out. Burt's Bees or UnPetroleum will do. Now take a swipe and rub it on your front teeth. You will automatically keep smiling because it feels so gross!! You have just "glazed" with vaseline. Ok to wipe off. I had to do this to smile while performing with Up with People which I just found ridiculous. Fake smiles. The Gypsy Queen probably has some on, can't you see her fake smile here.

Next, in Star Wars comments (from A New Hope) and other commentaries, Lucas says that they rubbed a little vaseline on the film to smudge the wheeled cart that the landspeeder was carried on, to make it look like a hovercraft. You can look at how smudgy and blurry it is under the landspeeder in the original movie. They "glazed" the film with vaseline to blur the truth of the cart, leading you the viewer to be impressed with the hovercraft. It worked in 1977, still works in the film. I always thought it was blurry because the make believe craft would have heat generated like in a car, and the heat would blur in the dust and air. I, for years, thought the blur was deliberate...

I will bypass the sex reference with vaseline. You probably understand that one already.


when you "glaze" with vaseline or other oil you are smudging and blurring, or oiling to increase pleasure, or even perhaps to oil slick a surface, like for clean gears. She's performing on a guillotine, either oiling her traps (sex reference), oiling the mechanism of the guillotine for a clean cut, or blurring the truth. Any of these will work in the context. I think that a lot of Sinfield's lyrics have multiple, layered meanings, so you the listener get to pick and choose which ones you feel the song is about, or its about all of them.

This is probably one of the strongest utopian songs out there. If you've seen 2001, I Robot, or 1984, you see what happens when a perfect machine goes horribly wrong, or even like Brave New World, We, any sf novel by Vinge, there are boatloads out there. But in rock music, only a handful of utopian themed songs really work lyrically. Knife Edge, for a short song, is right up there, so is All along the Watchtower, Lemmings (by Van der Graaf Generator), Tarkus... I think ELP, both pre-Sinfield (albeit Lake's lyrics, I think, were influenced by Sinfield's lyrics for Crimson) and when Sinfield was actively involved, had a stream of thought on each album dealing with apocalypse, utopias, technology v. humankind, etc. I really doubt there is a shred of Christian thought in any of Sinfield's lyrics since he professes anti-Christian sentiments, while using biblical references to defend his nonChristian position. So the first poster I think, while right on about the state of the world, is way off in regards to the lyrics of this song. And I'm Christian.

Utopia and science/technology gone wrong were popular topics during that time frame with psychedelic, prog and other rock groups. I think ELP were very much involved with that thinking. Interesting since they were constantly accused of having the technology of their music be more important than the music itself, or the humanness within their music (comments defeated repeatedly by their wildly successful sold out stadium sized live concerts). Its also interesting that ELP's stage shows were a little like burlesques with rotating drums, pianos that turned upside down, knife stabbing, riding the organ, and so on, by a group of excellent musicians with no sacrifice to musical quality (or quantity)!! One must say that Greg Lake was the only one who didn't seem to fall prey to the over the top category.

Karn Evil 9 works on a lot of levels, but I like the interpretation above that the computer kept one man alive, and then desroyed the imperfection. The idea that our technology will lull us to sleep, or that we enjoy ourselves to the point that we are inert, are concepts straight from Brave New World. This song really carries this thought through to a frightening end. We should stop and pause in what we do, as weIts true today, as we sit here, watch TV, use Ipods and cell phones, using our computers to communicate our ideas.

amen.

I'm sorry, but it's hard to take someone who capitalizes words that frequently seriously. To each his own, though.

I wonder if RayMan knows that Greg Lake, the lyricist (and bassist), is a cynic and a devout atheist. He hates religion. This is a matter of record. But, don't take my word for it; listen to what he sings.