"Happy and Dopey and Dirty in Places"
[This is one post in a series about my music mixes. The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use. You may wish to read the introduction for more background. You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.
Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguou
Sometimes second volumes are just part two of the initial mix development of the mix, when I just had way too many ideas to all fit on one volume.1 Sometimes the first volume was going to be the only volume, so volume II is breaking all new ground.2 Of course, sometimes a mix is right in the middle: with Bleeding Salvador, I had a few tracks left over after volume I, but certainly not enough to make a whole volume II. So it took a while to accumulate more great tracks with weird, surreal lyrics, but I finally got there.
Returning artists from last volume include the Beautiful South, whose “Woman in the Wall” was our original mix starter, the Cramps, and They Might Be Giants. The Beautiful South returns with “From Under the Covers,” a lighter tune but still with some great imagery; the Cramps’ “Human Fly” isn’t quite the powerhouse “Goo Goo Muck” was, but still some great line
All the people are so happy now
Their heads are cavin’ in;
I’m glad they are a snowman with
Protective rubber skin.
And of course King Missile’s “Part Two” was always going to appear here; the joke on The Way to Salvation was that half the story of “The Boy Who Ate Lasagna and Could Jump Over a Church” appeared on side 1, and you had to wait till side 2 to hear the conclusion. But I went a step farther and made you wait till volume II to get it.
I felt it very appropriate to kick off this volume of surreal lyrics with perhaps the greatest WTF song of all time: “Hotel California,” by the Eagles.3 The individual members of the Eagles have been asked many times over the past nearly-fifty years what the lyrics of this song actually mean, but all the answers can probably be boiled down to “we were on a lot of drugs back then.” Drugs were likely a factor in our closer as well, although to imagine that Jim Morrison was no more than the sum of all the drugs he consumed would be dangerously short-sighted in my view. Both “Hotel California” and “Riders on the Storm” have been subject to all sorts of interpretations throughout the years, and they illustrate some of the best characteristics that surreal lyrics can offer. Different people will always get different things out of them, and be convinced that they “definitely” mean this or that, but you can also just turn your brain off and enjoy them thoroughly without trying to figure them out.
Continuing through the seventies, “The Fat Lady of Limbourg” was pretty damned weird when Brian Eno included it on his second solo album in 1974.4 Shivaree’s version, coming along some 30-odd years later, is both less and more strange simultaneously, being a bit more melodic, but also throwing in more random sound effects and giving the whole thing even more of a patina of Twilight Zone (aided immensely by Eno’s lyrics, of course). A 70s original, Squeeze’s “Cool for Cats” is just an exercise in double entendre and other clever language. Sung by Chris Difford5 in full cockney accent, the lyrics are full of allusions to rhyming slang, old English TV shows, and other Londonisms; it’s probably only truly surreal for us Americans.
Our volume title also comes from the seventies: specifically, 1979, when half of the remnants of 10cc, now renamed Godley & Creme, put out their third studio album, including the ultra-weird opener “An Englishman in New York.”6 I know of no other song which so thoroughly embodies the classic line from Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead: “half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn’t mean anything at all.” Is there deeper meaning in Godley’s disturbingly detailed description of a “crucifix clock” in which “two miniature Romans, running on rails, appear every hour and bang in the nails”? how about ”‘Ode to a Burger’ by Keats at his worst”? or “shhh, Howard Johnson is moving his bowels”? Much like the volume title, most of this song seems like it must mean ... something. But, what that might be, you really have no idea.
As for other obvious candidates, I’ve always had a soft spot for Michael Penn’s “Brave New World” ever since I first heard it (mostly likely on the Saturday Night Live episode that his brother Sean was hosting). Besides containing great, bizarre lyrics like this:
Buster and his company look good in black;
They’re looking for a way out of the cul-de-sac:
Tearing through the phone book and the almanac,
They all have dusty noses ’cause they sniff shellack.
it also appeals to the poetry nerd in me for the feat of rhyming across the bridges.7 R.E.M.‘s “Swan Swan H” was another obvious choice, starting as it does with “Swan, swan, humminbird, hurrah. We are all free now. What noisy cats are we.”8 Jane’s Addiction is another band who often uses challenging imagery, though often it’s so buried in hard rockin’ tunes that you don’t notice. I’ve always loved the spare, stripped-down sound of “Summertime Rolls,” where the opening imagery of falling into a “sea of grass” while children run over you is particularly evocative (another great line is “her nose is painted pepper sunlight”). I even stole the grass image for a story I wrote once.9 Other personal favorites that just had to end up here include “The Morning” by the Call (“I am standing at the edge of my mind; if I look in, I might fall in”) and “Stuart” by the Dead Milkmen (“Jumpin’ Jesus on a pogo stick! Everybody knows the burrow owl lives in a hole in the ground! Why the hell do you think they call it a burrow owl, anyway!?”). The former is a convoluted song of longing; the latter is a sometimes difficult look at small-minded small-town intolerance that still manages to be funny at times.
[ Happy and Dopey and Dirty in Places ]
“The Fat Lady of Limbourg” by Shivaree, off Who's Got Trouble?
“Boat of Car” by They Might Be Giants, off They Might Be Giants
“From Under the Covers” by the Beautiful South, off Welcome to the Beautiful South
“An Englishman in New York” by Godley & Creme [Single]
“Cool for Cats” by Squeeze, off Singles: 45's and Under [Compilation]
“The Morning” by the Call, off Reconciled
“Brave New World” by Michael Penn, off March
“Part Two” by King Missile, off The Way to Salvation
“Human Fly” by the Cramps, off Bad Music for Bad People [Compilation]
“Summertime Rolls” by Jane's Addiction, off Nothing's Shocking
“Swan Swan H” by R.E.M., off Lifes Rich Pageant
“Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car” by Iron & Wine, off The Shepherd's Dog
“Nothing's Gonna Change My Clothes” by They Might Be Giants, off They Might Be Giants
“JD” by Mocean Worker, off Candygram for Mowo!
“Magic Alex” by the Red Sea Pedestrians, off See Through the Eyes of Osiris!
“Stuart” by the Dead Milkmen, off Beelzebubba
“Harvey” by the Electric Swing Circus, off The Electric Swing Circus
“Riders on the Storm” by the Doors, off L.A. Woman
It’s probably not too much of a stretch to imagine we’d eventually see Iron & Wine here. When we first saw him on Slithy Toves I, I pointed out that nearly all his songs have quite surreal lyrics; when he resurfaced on Slithy Toves II, I talked about his “juggernaut heart.” Here he gives us a “Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car,” where he reports “I was still a beggar, shaking out my coat among the angry cemetery leaves.” No clue what this one is about, but it’s a beautfiul track.
My all time favorite transition on this mix is from Mocean Worker’s sort-of instrumental “JD” (which just barely missed being slotted onto Cantosphere Eversion) to “Magic Alex” by the Red Sea Pedestrians. We first saw Mocean Worker (remember: “Mocean” rhymes with “ocean,” thus making the name a pun for “motion worker”) on Salsatic Vibrato V, where I pointed out that it was the moniker of the son of a jazz producer; the father’s initials are “JD,” which I suppose might be a coincidence, but then again probably not. There aren’t really enough discernible words here to figure out what MW is trying to tell us, but it’s a trippy little bridge nonetheless. And it flows surprisingly well into alt-klezmer folksters RSP, who here bring us a departure in “Magic Alex,” who they describe as “the Greek wizard of electric paint” and “a real rock gardener, the son of the secret police.” Of course, to be fair, this album (See Through the Eyes of Osiris!) is pretty much a departure from the more straight-ahead-folk of A Lesson in Cartography, which I discovered while searching for updated versions of “Willie the Weeper.”10 But “Magic Alex,” with its electronic, almost sci-fi, sound effects, is a departure from the departure.
Finally, the most unexpected track here is probably from the Electric Swing Circus, a band I discovered while searching for new (to me) electro-swing for Salsatic Vibrato.11 So it doesn’t seem like they’d be a particularly good fit here, and honestly most of their output isn’t. But then there’s ... “Harvey.”
If you ask people what the best classic black & white movie of all time is, I’m sure you’ll hear a lot of votes for Casablanca and Citizen Kane, and perhaps a few suggestions of African Queen or Rebecca or The Maltese Falcon or Psycho. But, for me, it is and will always be Harvey. Jimmy Stewart is certainly a talented actor, and you may prefer It’s a Wonderful Life or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but for me, those all pale in comparison to Harvey. Stewart has a mischeivous side that was rarely allowed full reign, but it gets just that in this lovely movie about a man who most consider simple, because he believes he’s constantly being accompanied by a 6’3” invisible rabbit. The movie is named after the rabbit, not Stewart’s character, and that is significant. The movie is heartwarming and funny and says a lot about how the “normal” people have a lot to learn from this eccentric man-child and his “imaginary” friend. Now, there’s actually no indisputable evidence that ESC’s “Harvey” refers to the movie (or perhaps to the play on which it was based), but the fact that Harvey is referred to as a pooka and this beautiful refrain:
So, here’s to you, Harvey,
The weaver of dreams,
The stopper of clocks, the unpicker of seams.
Raise a glass to old Harvey,
Look him straight in the eye:
If you say you can’t see him, you’re living a lie lie lie ...
make it very clear, at least to me. The idea of an overgrown invisible rabbit as the weaver of dreams, the stopper of clocks, and the unpicker of seams makes real an abstract magick in my brain that makes me relive my enjoyment of this classic film every time I hear it.
Next time we’ll return to the intersection of my music interests and my gaming interests.
1 Prime examples of this would be Smokelit Flashback II and Salsatic Vibrato II.
2 We just saw an example of this last time in this series, with Wisty Mysteria II.
3 It almost made it on volume I, actually, but I felt it would have a bigger impact as the opener to a new volume.
4 This would be post-Roxy-Music, but pre-inventing-ambient.
5 One of only 3 Squeeze singles he sang, as it happens.
6 Not to be confused with the Sting song of the same name; Godley & Creme’s predates Sting’s by nearly a decade.
7 By which I mean, there are 3 verses and 3 bridges, and the first lines of every bridge rhyme with each other, but not with any other lines in the song.
8 And also being from the best R.E.M. album of all time, Lifes Rich Pageant.
9 Another fun fact: I once wrote an English paper in college contrasting the organic imagery and playing with grammar that Farrell and Stipe did in their music.
10 For the record, RSP’s version is pretty damned good.
11 As of this writing, we’re one volume away from seeing ESC on that mix, but we shall get there in the fullness of time, I’m sure.