A reasonable thought for our troubled times…
“Our nation will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedom, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
Abraham Lincoln.
When you take some time to think about it there could be several things that make you like a song. On Dick Clark’s American Bandstand the teenagers would rate three new records each week. I don’t remember any Philadelphia teen-ager rating the record by saying, “The lyrics were really deep and meaningful.” Most of the time the responses were, “It has a good beat and you can dance to it.” I like a good Reggae beat or a driving drum beat on a rock and roll record. There are other things, arrangement, harmony, musicianship, and lyrics that make a record enjoyable, listenable, meaningful, memorable, the list goes on.
Lately,I have been thinking a lot about lyrics. There were always certain songwriters whose lyrics defied the usual top 40 song of the week. Bob Dylan, and Paul Simon were a couple of these songwriters. A song that John Sebastian wrote, covered by the great Del McCoury, “Nashville Cats”, is a song whose lyrics keep me smiling and my feet tapping as wonderful images of guitar pickers pickin” in Nashville swirl around my mind.
“Yeah, I was just thirteen, you might say I was a musical proverbial knee-high (Close your eyes and say those last four words out loud slowly and see how they roll off your tongue, cascade away from your lips and then lightly float away into the Nashville night air.) .
“When I heard a couple new -sounding tunes on the tubes and they blasted me sky high..
And the record man said every one is a Yellow Sun Record from Nashville
And up North there ain’t nobody buys them
And I say, “But I will.”
“Well, there’s sixteen thousand eight hundred’n twenty-one
Mothers from Nashville
All their friends play music, and they ain’t uptight
If one of the kids will
Because it’s custom made for any mother’s son
To be a guitar picker in Nashville
And I sure am glad I got a chance to say a word about
The music and mothers from Nashville…
John is explaining to the listener how the tunes from Nashville blasted him SKY HIGH and as a listener to the song you are being blasted SKY HIGH by the lyrics, beat, arrangement, instruments, etc. Life imitating art. Del does justice to the song and both versions are worthy of multiple playings over and over again. I love the sweet touch saying a “nice word” about the music and mothers from Nashville.
Paul Simon. The gentle, haunting, strumming of Paul Simon’s guitar and the bleak portrait Paul sees from his window on a winter’s day in the opening to “I am a Rock”…
A winter’s day
In a deep and dark December
I am alone
gazing from my window to the streets below
On a Freshly Fallen Silent Shroud of Snow
I am a rock,
I am an island
Freshly fallen silent shroud of snow. I know alliteration can sometimes be over rated but these cold and frosty words shroud me with an image of desolation, loneliness, and sadness. A simple guitar and a few well written words create a masterpiece.
The Dangling Conversation is another Paul Simon song that wasn’t a smash hit but listening carefully to the lyrics I was blasted Sky High in a different manner. “The Dangling Conversation” speaks of a well read literate couple having a hard time connecting through all their literary accumulated baggage.
“And you read your Emily Dickinson
And I my Robert Frost
And we note our place with book markers
That measure what we’ve lost
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm
couplets out of thyme
in syncopated time
And the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
Are the borders of our lives.”
Listening to Paul compare the couple’s relationship to a poorly written poem and then in detail lets the listener experience EXACTLY what he means. The lyrics paint a portrait of a marriage (or relationship) that cannot function due to the couple’s fixation on literature and lack of compassion for each other. A brilliant song.
Bob Dylan addresses problems between a couple in a terse nonsensical way in “Don’t Think Twice It’s all right”.
“I gave her my heart
But she wanted my soul
Don’t think twice
It’s all right”
How many men and women can say this about a relationship gone south? I take this a step further and believe that Bob Dylan felt this way about the reporters, musicologists, critics, etc. who tried in vain to place meanings in the complexities of his lyrics. Bob really had no time for these folks. He was a tunesmith traveling the land singing his songs. That’s all you need to need to know about him. And he has been doing it since 1962, and he still won’t go into detail. You have to love the man.
On a lighter note the wonderful Alice Cooper isn’t so serious in
“School’s Out”
“Well we got no class
And we got no principles (principals)
We ain’t got no innocence
We CAN”T even think of a word that Rhymes”
I love the self effacing humor on the word play class and principle and the lack of concern being unable to find a word that rhymes. Love it.
I would be remiss if I did not mention the wonderful Ola Belle Reed song, “High on a mountain” (which she wrote) I heard for the first time in 1987. Sung by Rick Cornish this song has stayed in my heart and will be always be there.I love a thousand songs but if I had to choose a handful to take with me to a desert island High on a Mountain, sung by Rick would be one of my choices. Thanks Rick.
The last few lines…..
“High on a mountain,
Standing alone
I wonder where the years of my life have flown….”
Coming up: Sheila and I will spend a couple of days in Vegas to see the Beatles Cirque Du Soleil show and to catch a John Fogerty concert in May. Looking forward to that. In July my sister and cousin John and his wife, Cheryl, leave for a 12 day trip to our homeland in Pico in the Azores. Looking forward to that as well. Sheila and I are also hoping to finally get things together to visit her ancestors’ homeland, Ireland, in the near future.
Until Friday April 6…
Read a book, hug a child, pet a dog, stroke a cat,eat a bar of chocolate, and let some tunes blast you sky high.