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Some things you just can't explain

Some things you just can't explain
May 27, 2008 04:27PM
Among your favorite songs, are there any that you just find yourself having to explain to other listeners — or at a loss to explain to them?

For example: King Crimson's "Indiscipline." In that song, Adrian Belew talks about something that he keeps studying, examining, considering and reconsidering from a variety of viewpoints. He never specifies just what "it" is — only that it's absorbed his attention and thoughts, and that, when all is said and done, he likes it. He ends this monologue by shouting, "I wish you were here to see it!"

I wish I had a dollar for every time someone's asked me what "it" is. Do I know? No. Do I care? Nope. But I regularly meet others who just can't be satisfied with the song on its own terms.

Anyone else?
ira
Re: Some things you just can't explain
May 27, 2008 07:43PM
In Belew's case, perhaps IT was the woman he left his wife for?
Re: Some things you just can't explain
May 27, 2008 09:27PM
Delvin wrote:

> Among your favorite songs, are there any that you just find
> yourself having to explain to other listeners — or at a loss to
> explain to them?
>
> For example: King Crimson's "Indiscipline." In that song,
> Adrian Belew talks about something that he keeps studying,
> examining, considering and reconsidering from a variety of
> viewpoints. He never specifies just what "it" is — only that
> it's absorbed his attention and thoughts, and that, when all is
> said and done, he likes it. He ends this monologue by shouting,
> "I wish you were here to see it!"
>
> I wish I had a dollar for every time someone's asked me what
> "it" is. Do I know? No. Do I care? Nope. But I regularly meet
> others who just can't be satisfied with the song on its own
> terms.
>


that would've been right about the time king crimson did saturday night live, right?

[snltranscripts.jt.org]
Re: Some things you just can't explain
May 27, 2008 09:31PM

>
>
> that would've been right about the time king crimson did
> saturday night live, right?
>
> [snltranscripts.jt.org]


oops, guess that was fridays...

always loved that snl skit, though!
Re: Some things you just can't explain
May 28, 2008 01:26PM
Reminds me of that Tim Finn song, "I Found It". He never gives us the antecedent in that, either. All the better.
Re: Some things you just can't explain
May 28, 2008 03:44PM
I put Tarnation's cover of "The Little Black Egg" on a mix tape for an old girlfriend and she asked me to explain it, since she couldn't figure out if the little black egg was a metaphor for something else and if so, what exactly it might be. I was no help in trying to figure it out.

We agreed to assume it was something sexual but were never sure what.

Many Costello, Dylan, Stipe and Ian McCulloch lyrics leave me completely baffled as to what they're supposed to be about, but in general I refuse to admit it and just pretend I know and hope no one asks me to explain it.
Re: Some things you just can't explain
May 28, 2008 09:30PM
Phil Harris "The Thing"

Actually hit #1 in 1950.

I was asked to explain this after I played it when guest dj-ing on a radio show and I also went with the sexual angle - '50s, repression, etc. Could be. Or could be just pure surrealism.

re: "Little Black Egg" The band that did it originally, the Nightcrawlers, said the song was based on an actual experience of seeing a bird's nest in someone's backyard containing a little black egg with little white specks. They've always denied that there was anything more to it then that.



Post Edited (05-28-08 18:34)
Re: Some things you just can't explain
May 28, 2008 09:55PM
I have never had a clue what the hell "Saccharin and the War" from the first Sparks album is about:

"Fifteen years the bus had waited
Before it moved on into the town
Eye liner worn by all their girls

Through the night the war was fought
Each "eye liner" took two small drops
Reaction - Elation - Joy, Joy, Joy

Every girl took in a doctor
The Constitution says: "you must house the men"
Each doctor undermined a plot

All the weight that was soon lost
They erected as a golden cross

Remember the weight is no longer here

Through the street girls sang
The marching bands brought on the rain
The Doctors stood by the gold cross

One "eye liner" she had an idea
She read the Book, the Golden Book
It seems another Man had come across a cross

Dr. Jones they crucified

But, all their weight was returned back

Ha, Ha for all the girls now"

I've been trying for at least 30 years now to understand that song, yet its meaning seems to dangle just beyond my reach. I sometimes think I almost understand it, then will read a random line from it which completely dashes whatever inkling I was starting to have back on the rocks of incomprehension.
What Difference Does It Make?
May 28, 2008 11:45PM
Okay, this is a different sort of mis-understanding, but try and beat this for naivety:

After twenty-one years of Smiths-fandom, it only occurred to me a few months ago what Morrissey's big secret was in "What Difference Does It Make?"

As a teenager, I used to think "that's weird. This whole song is about a friend rejecting him because of some secret he reveals. But he never spells it out for us. Huh, wonder what it was."

I read all the articles and interviews, but just never understood when people said Morrissey's lyrics were "gay."

And, no, I'm not particularly stupid.

Re: Some things you just can't explain
May 28, 2008 03:58PM
I've often felt the same way about Robyn Hitchcock's lyrics.
Re: Some things you just can't explain
July 01, 2008 02:21AM
some things you cant explain
like the time a cabbie fell asleep in hoboken and woke up shirley mclaine.

matthew ryan- dissapointed
Re: Some things you just can't explain
May 29, 2008 01:20PM
Well, hey, I am particularly stupid. But come on, what difference does it make.

Now excuse me while I kiss this guy.

Re: Some things you just can't explain
May 29, 2008 02:00PM
Sometimes misunderstanding the lyrics can actually make the song better. Before reading the lyric sheet, I always thought "All Apologies" ended with "All alone/ Is all we are", repeated as the song slowly staggers to a halt like an old, drunk ferris wheel. It fit the mood of the album perfectly -- so perfectly that I can't listen to the song without singing those lyrics instead of the actual ones.

I also had a friend who hated "Martha My Dear" -- and he otherwise viewed The Beatles as a religious experience -- because of its misogyny. He felt very relieved once he found out it was about McCartney's sheepdog.
Re: Some things you just can't explain
May 30, 2008 10:33PM

Zappa's "Apostrophe" is tough to explain - I always hear that as a metaphorical/satirical take on America and consumerism run wild but I can't quite put into words to explain why I think that is the case.

Re: Some things you just can't explain
May 30, 2008 11:31PM
Not only do I not have an explanation for it, but it mystifies me why Bowie didn't write "Time may change me, but I can't change time." It makes so much more sense than "Time may change me, but I can't chase time." Why?!!
Re: Some things you just can't explain
May 31, 2008 03:49AM
But that Bowie creation sounds close enough to what Roxy Music was doing around the same time so, yeah right, what does it matter anyway.
Re: Some things you just can't explain
June 01, 2008 02:02AM
> Zappa's "Apostrophe" is tough to explain ...

So is a lot of other stuff Zappa did ... except for the stuff that's easy to explain, because we heard it in locker rooms before we heard it on Zappa's records.

Re: Some things you just can't explain
July 01, 2008 03:17AM
I read an interview with Blue Oyster Cult. Buck Dharma took their most powerful song - Don't Fear The Reaper (come on, enough cowbell crap already!) and defanged it. "It's about falling in love." he said. "When I sing '40,000 people every day', I talk about the people swept up by love." What a huge letdown. I wanted him to stay cryptic and say that it's whatever you think it means.

The listeners bring their own meaning to the song, anyway. I'm stickin' with The Reaper.
Re: Some things you just can't explain
July 01, 2008 12:02PM
I always thought "Don't Fear the Reaper" was about a suicidal lovers' pact, what with the constant references to Romeo and Juliet and all. Guess I was being too literal.
Re: Some things you just can't explain
July 01, 2008 05:50PM
I'm with Hoip. The song is much more powerful if "she ran to him" means she's embracing death, not just some guy.
Re: Some things you just can't explain
July 01, 2008 04:08PM
"Madame George" is a big one, though I personally don't trouble myself over whether it's about a drag queen. I think "playing dominoes in drag" is a stream of consciousness line that just came to him without much mind to narrative. And he admits that he's often singing "Madame Joy"...not "George." Lots of Van Morrison stuff is unexplainable..."Orangefield" is named after his boys' school in Belfast but the lyrics seem to be about adult romance, not a school. I think the early folk days of Dylan got everyone too attuned to lyrics. (I yearn for the days of "a one-eyed cat peepin' in a seafood store.") Even Dylan tried to dismantle that by coming up with some genuinely inscrutable stuff ("Visions of Johanna," "Ballad of a Thin Man," etc. etc. etc.). I'm kind of a musical primitive though, and as a rabid fan of 50/60s guitar instros, I probably shouldn't even be chiming in.
Madame George
July 01, 2008 07:22PM
The extra verse in the BANG version makes it more likely that "Madame George" is a drag queen. Which is as it should be- the song is more powerful with that element in it. Why deny or dismiss it?

That is why "Lola" is more powerful than anything Lou Reed ever wrote. Writing observationally of social misfits and deviants is one thing. It's quite another to write about desiring/being in love with one.

Re: Madame George
July 01, 2008 08:33PM
Well, I'm also taking into account the fact that Van Morrison has said over and over again that it definitively is not about a drag queen--that it's about a bunch of people "who couldn't find themselves in there if they tried" (latter part to Bill Flanagan circa 1986).

I've got nothing against songs about drag queens.
Re: Madame George
July 02, 2008 07:01PM
Sweet Madame George. Gaze in your looking glass. You're not a child anymore...
Re: Madame George
July 02, 2008 08:46PM
You know, that song (which I won't name, cuz I wanna see how many other TPers know what it is) has the same chord progression as Led Zeppelin's "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" and Chicago's "25 or 6 to 4."
Re: Madame Blue
July 02, 2008 09:09PM
you mean that band (which is named after a river) is not wholly original?
Re: Madame Blue
July 03, 2008 01:54PM
And ripping off other bands with their own issues with originality, no less.
Re: Madame George
July 04, 2008 01:42PM
At the end of the song, instead of chanting America, singers will chant Transvestica to accommodate both patriots and trannies.
Re: Some things you just can't explain
July 01, 2008 08:32PM
Quote : "That is why "Lola" is more powerful than anything Lou Reed ever wrote. Writing observationally of social misfits and deviants is one thing. It's quite another to write about desiring/being in love with one."


If that's the criteria, then Coney Island Baby exemplifies the definition of powerful.

Coney Island Baby
July 01, 2008 11:26PM
CIB is a beautiful/powerful song, but it couldn't be more oblique in it's take on trannies, or love for one, or fear of love for one.

I don't find the song enhanced by the passing reference to Rachael, nor by the trivial knowledge that Rachael had a penis.

"Madam George" and "Lola," on the otherhand, ARE enhanced by reading into their namesakes gender/sexuality. [Though I think Lester Bangs (admirably) overstated the case!]



Post Edited (07-02-08 01:08)
Re: Coney Island Baby
July 02, 2008 02:37PM
Lester Bangs' big wet paean to Astral Weeks--despite being incredibly well-written and moving--seemed to be only tangentially about Astral Weeks at times. And some of his insights are highly questionable.

The story of Astral Weeks, IMO: young Belfast singer in middle of contractual dispute with old label takes a bunch of two- to three-chord, poetically potent songs into a studio with a bunch of jazz musicians he doesn't know. The result is lightning-in-a-bottle magic. Lew Merenstein never got his due for the circumstances. Or his partner (too lazy to recall) who overdubbed some great strings. I'm hard pressed to see how Morrison was any more in control of the outcome than he was of the outcome of the Bang material ("Brown Eyed Girl," et all--charted and orchestrated by Bert Berns).

Don't get me wrong, I'm in love with Astral Weeks. But I'm also a harsh realist.
Re: Some things you just can't explain
July 07, 2008 04:19PM
That song, Shadowlane, by KD Lang, is something I'll never understand. When she sings, "I'll never know how I become shadowlane," is she talking about turning into shadow lane under a full moon, like a werewolf?
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