Twentieth century foxing

Posted on 12/01/2017 by admin

There was a feeling in the nineties of drawing to a close and wondering what it would be like on the other side of the curtain so there is likely to be some of that doom-stalking, along with a continued desire to be cool or alternative or whatever is part of the impulse of noisy youth.

As the nineties don’t lend themselves to wordplay quite so much, I had to think a bit and was originally hovering around Pen ultimate as this was the last part of a remarkable century whatever was happening then. Then I thought that the twentieth century was so important for song that it would be acceptable to pan out and so the clear message that records from the time – paper ones – were old enough for foxing. And there’s the big movie studio and the Doors song.

That’s the title of the post. Here’s a stab at nineties rock

Recursive

I said the same thing in another way on a different day
I spoke at one stroke it was in the play
The dialogue that's been dialed from God
the need for a feed of usual expectation
Round about found out the poor relation
You repeated and then entreated 
a pitted pattern please be conceited
a jab or a swipe brings back the gripe
the scene on the screen where your memories wiped

We swore as once before relented repented as we reached shore
a mostly ghostly host who rang once more
we know the score
and what's in store

They had some headstrong hidden calling 
the dreams where it always seems 
the way you're falling
Inviting invasive invested information
on that very suggested situation
or to coin a phrase by coincidence
 join in praise of the first instance
of the well plowed field of endeavour
going back to whenever

A tease

Posted on 10/01/2017 by admin

Anyone who felt that the seventies was ‘the decade that style forgot’ had not made it to the eighties. The kind of hair bands around then left this critic cold for the most part but I appreciate it for what it was. There was a healthy underground and poppy electronica that wasn’t bad. Don’t forget the Police keeping on the beat and the rise of U2

Let’s see what we can make of eighties rock

Pheromones

A fair amount of pheromones is needed to proceed
A fair supply of X and Y of see and sigh
Switching signals hard to cum by chemical
trace from drawing lace adoring face

Sniffing out and stiffing doubt
a measure of pleasure 
is what it's about (there's a bit about)
a waste of taste if choice is chaste
arm in arm with the rest replaced

Recklessly reclined in revealing the line where the feeling is fine
from pheromones
for pheromones
Pheromones

A dose a deuce a dice with 
the devil may care that's in the air
too delicious to be suspicious
Too delighted to be afrighted
Walls and windows awash (pheromones)
suggestive and restive
freshly mown
Pheromones

Needs grown seeds sown
Pheromones
Pheromones

Savant ease

Posted on 07/01/2017 by admin

Seventies rock is much like the decade that went before it in that there were a number of genres or subgenres, sometimes at complete loggerheads. While the revolution in the air may have been blown away like smoke and fashion stacked itself to giddier heights with no regard for the original spirit that informed it – yes, just like grunge in the nineties – there is no doubt that each facet was either informed or repelled into creating something else.

So before you put on those flares and beetlecrushers, not to mention the skivvies or nylon shirts, let’s see what comes out of this happenin’ time

Some Day My Prints Will Come

This pun was spun some time ago
By someone whom I hardly know
It speaks of modest measurement of those dimensions
 the number three was never mentioned

Now though we are making as if from Adam's clay
the essence of your presence without the decay
Substance sublet to some subordinates
at the core of these coordinates

Plans and panels rendered oblique
the universe ere light so to speak
A rendering of a recent rendezvous
The model my dear for me and you

Six teas

Posted on 17/12/2016 by admin

I don’t know about the people of my parents’ generation, now in their eighties, but I can’t sympathetically go back earlier than as a child mis-singing “Hey Buffalo Bill, what did you kill”. I doubt I’d have heard of bungalows at that stage but news of Mister Cody had traveled far.

In discussion on communication of any kind, we should never forget there was a time when radio, television and newspapers were mediated and parents and their circle of friends and associates were of a mind to impart some things more than others. Yet still we had this treasure trove of lore.

This applies as much to the song lyric as any other mode of communication; whether you subscribe to the opinion that the true intent or feeling doesn’t become apparent until you hear it sung or you think that songpoetry will be apparent on the page. If the latter, there is still the more easily parodied second stringers who tried their hardest with a seemingly cosmic sweep but end saying little.

This is common to every era, just as there is fine music being created and performed. It’s useful to those interested in the craft, as another string in their bow. I remember reading this in a totally unrelated paper on writing (as opposed to writing on paper),

Now I say this as a person who has had a man crush on The Stranglers and adored The Fall and worshipped Elvis Costello. Someone who enjoys the heck out of Ray Davies without writing like him. And of course likes and appreciates the differences in all the great and successful songwriters such as Paul Simon (I know, it’s slim picking for Aryans) and so on and so on and doobie doobie doobie

My Olympus is populated by such legendary writers and performers as Willie Dixon. Both Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits. I like The Doors so much more than I should. And regardless of all this, the passing of one true master of the song lyric as art, as poetry, is monumental to me as someone working in that field (or even if I’d only ever listened while writing assignments or during my break). And twilight recognition to a writer who, at his best, was both universal and transmuted. Even if he couldn’t sing. A couple of people have come out and said that it should have been Cohen, not Dylan, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Was Dylan the sympathetic favourite because he’d had the bigger impact, or because of Blonde on Blonde and Highway 61 Revisited? For me, I saw them both live in thoroughly enjoyable concerts and my record collection is bristling, even our bookshelves have the stray work.

Despite all this, I don’t take my main cues from either, other than to give service to the power of the words to project or convey meaning once they are assembled (and this applies to knights in white satin and climbing the stairway to heaven as it does to more or less esoteric work).

Start to Rock

Posted on 03/12/2016 by admin

First: a disclaimer. I tried to figure out how to migrate From the Sound of It to my other website, Wellwrought, but can’t do it so I’m back here.

Why I ever thought it would be good to have a Belay Bob hosting a lyricist blog is anyone’s guess. Now that that’s out of the way..

The antecedents of rock are principally in the fifties: rock’n’roll, rockabilly, rhythm’n’blues but generic rock begins in the fabled 1960’s

Sure, you can point out all the pop and country and big bands with crooners but the foment of the sixties encapsulates much of what we take from the music. This is not to pretend that there is a sixties rock that can represent all the subgenres that began then: heavy metal, hard rock, acid rock

More tally

This year death has barely drawn a breath
Hardly idle with our idols 
Quakes and shakes soon am I tidal
 measured end and mass incendiary

This time of engaging in gauging crime
from somewhere subhuman to somehow sublime
The devil his due
divulge and you die

Plan it and see if it's spinning through space
the grounds may confound but you still found the place
with pursed lips and pursestrings
groundbreaking discovery

You might think this a trifling peculiar considering how much I have let go through the net in terms of ‘authenticity’ but I’m going to say the above does not meet our criterion; it’s not sixties rock, it’s a poem. There were plenty of poems being written then, some even being performed on stage to muted background music, but we are attempting to encapsulate everything from the bikers to the mods, a stray Ted. We want to keep the hippies happy, prop and prepare protester fare, drag haut cauture and drug culture into the innocent mix

So if we can’t write our song that is secretly about two thousand and sixteen and pass it off as sixties, what next? Besides actually grabbing icons and images from the era and bunging them in and then, when questioned, claim that this represents the chaos and confusion, brother.

The solution is to not indulge in caged metaphor and describe some real incident or place or person, no small irony in doing that considering how much the sixties was hellbent on breaking tradition.

You Could Have Told Me

You're the consequence of all my recompense
You're patchouli flavoured and Heaven sense
The way I had things planned
 I'd only take your hand
For one more whirl of boy meets girl
You could have told me
How I'd fall for you How I'd call to you
You could have told me
Now I see it's true I need to be with you

You're the destiny and distilled desire
Mirrored in the mire pirrhouetting to the pyre
The things I cherished then
I declared perish them
Since this better plan a woman and a man

(C)
You're the circumstance of when I circled chance
I'll never leave for love or roam for romance
I was sure of something else
Why, while I keep this to myself