We all have our favourite songs which hold special meanings for us or which are simply the right tune for the moment. Then there are those songs that impart a little insight and wisdom for those willing to read between the lines. I thought I'd share with you a selection of those songs that have inspired or informed my thoughts over the years. What songs have shaped you?
Zeger and Evans - In the Year 2525 (A 1960's classic with a cautionary prognosis for mankind's future)
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do, or say
Is in the pill you took today
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long black tube
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wondering if man's gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing
Cher - Its in his kiss (This is one of the few love songs that, despite its painfully schlocky style, actually imparts a pearl of wisdom to the ladies in suggesting a focus on the substantive over the superficial)
Does he love me?
I wanna know!
How can I tell if he loves me so?
(Is it in his eyes?)
Oh no! You need to see!
(Is it in his eyes?)
Oh no! You make believe!
If you wanna know
If he loves you so
Its in his kiss
(That's where it is!)
(Oh yeah! Or is it in his face?)
Oh no! It's just his charms!
(In his warm embrace?)
Oh no! That's just his arms!
If you wanna know
If he loves you so
It's in his kiss
(That's where it is!)
Oh,ooh, oh! Its in his kiss
(That's where it is!)
Sprirt - Nature's Way (The definitive ecological theme song that points out the link between changes in the environment around us and the health of the world. Written in 1978, it only took about another 30 years before people finally started to get the message)
It's nature's way of telling you something's wrong
It's nature's way of telling you in a song
It's nature's way of receiving you
It's nature's way of retrieving you
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong
It's nature's way of telling you, summer breeze
It's nature's way of telling you, dying trees
It's nature's way of receiving you
It's nature's way of retrieving you
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong
Dead Kennedys - Holiday in Cambodia / Kill the poor (A friend recommended these tunes to me as an exercise in grounding oneself and as an insight into the minds of the powerful)
HOLIDAY IN CAMBODIA
So you been to school
For a year or two
And you know you've seen it all
In daddy's car
Thinkin' you'll go far
Back east your type don't crawl
Play ethnicky jazz
To parade your snazz
On your five grand stereo
Braggin' that you know
How the niggers feel cold
And the slums got so much soul
It's time to taste what you most fear
Right Guard will not help you here
Brace yourself, my dear:
It's a holiday in Cambodia
It's tough, kid, but it's life
It's a holiday in Cambodia
Don't forget to pack a wife
You're a star-belly sneech
You suck like a leach
You want everyone to act like you
Kiss ass while you bitch
So you can get rich
But your boss gets richer off you
Well you'll work harder
With a gun in your back
For a bowl of rice a day
Slave for soldiers
Till you starve
Then your head is skewered on a stake
Now you can go where people are one
Now you can go where they get things done
What you need, my son:.
Is a holiday in Cambodia
Where people dress in black
A holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll kiss ass or crack
KILL THE POOR
Efficiency and progress is ours once more
Now that we have the Neutron bomb
It's nice and quick and clean and gets things done
Away with excess enemy
But no less value to property
No sense in war but perfect sense at home:
The sun beams down on a brand new day
No more welfare tax to pay
Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light
Jobless millions whisked away
At last we have more room to play
All systems go to kill the poor tonight
Gonna Kill kill kill kill Kill the poor:Tonight
Behold the sparkle of champagne
The crime rate's gone
Feel free again
O' life's a dream with you, Miss Lily White
Jane Fonda on the screen today
Convinced the liberals it's okay
So let's get dressed and dance away the night
While they:Kill kill kill kill Kill the poor:Tonight
Hawkwind - Welcome to the Future / Spirit of the Age (These tunes serve me respectively as a warning of the capacity of homo sapiens to deceive itself and the potential of technology to throw up unexpected moral conundrums)
Welcome to the oceans in a labeled can,
Welcome to the dehydrated lands,
Welcome to the self police parade,
Welcome to the neo-golden age,
Welcome to the days you've made
You are welcome
I would've liked you to have been deep frozen too
and waiting still as fresh in your flesh for my return to Earth
But your father refused to sign the forms to freeze you
Let's see you'd be about 60 now,
and long dead by the time I return to Earth
My time held dreams were full of you,
as you were when I left; still underage
Your android replica is playing up again, it's no joke
When she comes she moans another's name
But that's the spirit of the age.
I am a clone, I am not alone
Every fibre of my flesh and bone is identical to the others
Everything I say is in the same tone
as my test tube brother's voice
There is no choice between us,
If you had ever seen us,
You'd rejoice in your uniqueness
and consider every weakness something special of your own
Being a clone, I have no flaws to identify
Even this doggerel that pours from my pen,
has just been written by another twenty telepathic men,
Oh, word for word, it says:
"Oh, for the wings of any bird, other than a battery hen".
That's the spirit of the age.
Nitin Sawney - Street Guru Pt.1 (This is a monologue rather than lyrics but the sentiment is something I find myself in agreement with)
They've incorporated their culture and their values in the city and they've enriched the city. Both like, from uh, you know a work ethic. You know the restaurants and the music and it's really a diverse city.
I mean you walk through the Vany Oven yu-you know you go through Korean neighborhoods, Old Jewish neighborhoods, Arab big neighborhoods, uh, Pakistani-Indian neighborhoods. It's incredible. The intensity... I think yeah, development has pushed us away from other people. You know, a lot of times people are rude because they want like immediate access or immediate information.
You know some things in life can't be immediate, sometimes you gotta wait and let things happen. People are like increasingly rude. Like I'll say someone will get in a cab, we'll say I'll get em there in 5 minutes. And they'll say, It should only take 3. Now who gives a shit if it takes 5 minutes or 3 minutes, who cares? At the end of your life nobody's gonna put shit I got in a cab in fi-seven minutes instead of three. It doesn't matter technology has made us slaves of the time.
Naw, a lot of people that are really have technical jobs they're slaves to time.
Time's the essences of life it seems like. And they're basically like losing it.
They're losing the essence of their life because, you know, their life is like just going away and, they're not enjoying it because their so engrossed in efficiency and productivity and shit like that. It's almost sad.
They all come here from somewhere else like seeking their fame and fortune or,
Their tap jobs and they're and caree-you know, in their in their industries.
They get very engrossed in it and they into these you know these cell phones and computers.
And I think the real important things in life are you know, people and your family. I think you don't realize that, a lot of people don't realize that until they're older. I think there's going to be a backlash against technology.
Harold Melvin - Wake Up Everybody (Another 60's classic - the message was simply and righteous but maybe the tune was so funky that people forgot to pay attention and are thus busy still sleeping on the job)
Wake up everybody no more sleepin in bed
No more backward thinkin time for thinkin ahead
The world has changed so very much
From what it used to be so
there is so much hatred war an' poverty
Wake up all the teachers time to teach a new way
Maybe then they'll listen to whatcha have to say
Cause they're the ones who's coming up and the world is in their hands
when you teach the children teach em the very best you can.
The world won't get no better if we just let it be
The world won't get no better we gotta change it yeah, just you and me.
Wake up all the doctors make the ol' people well
They're the ones who suffer an' who catch all the hell
But they don't have so very long before the Judgment Day
So won'tcha make them happy before they pass away.
Wake up all the builders time to build a new land
I know we can do it if we all lend a hand
The only thing we have to do is put it in our mind
Surely things will work out they do it every time.
Iron Maiden - Revelations (Possibly one of the first heavy metal bands to incorporate classical literature in songs that also featured melodies and rifts that had wide appeal. This intro alone brought G.K Chesterton to millions of people who otherwise may never have discovered his work)
"O God of Earth and Altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die,
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride."
(G. K. Chesterton; English Hymnal)
Grandmaster Flash - The Message (In the 1980's the inner cities of the UK and USA were being torn apart. The Furious Five tried to lay out the 'game play' that would be the fate of those who dropped out)
A child is born with no state of mind
Blind to the ways of mankind
God is smilin' on you but he's frownin' too
Because only God knows what you'll go through
You'll grow in the ghetto livin' second-rate
And your eyes will sing a song called deep hate
The places you play and where you stay
Looks like one great big alleyway
You'll admire all the number-book takers
Thugs, pimps and pushers and the big money-makers
Drivin' big cars, spendin' twenties and tens
And you'll wanna grow up to be just like them, huh
Smugglers, scramblers, burglars, gamblers
Pickpocket peddlers, even panhandlers
You say I'm cool, huh, I'm no fool
But then you wind up droppin' outta high school
Now you're unemployed, all non-void
Walkin' round like you're Pretty Boy Floyd
Turned stick-up kid, but look what you done did
Got sent up for a eight-year bid
Now your manhood is took and you're a Maytag
Spend the next two years as a undercover fag
Bein' used and abused to serve like hell
'til one day, you was found hung dead in the cell
It was plain to see that your life was lost
You was cold and your body swung back and forth
But now your eyes sing the sad, sad song
Of how you lived so fast and died so young so...
Don't push me 'cuz I'm close to the edge
I'm trying not to lose my head
Prince - Pussy Control (Another instantly iconographic message for the ladies. This time Prince wants them to have some self respect, self control and select their man on the basis of mutual reciprocation - and does it in a way that rocks your socks off and makes you laugh.)
Our story begins in a schoolyard
A little girl skipping rope with her friends
A tisket, a tasket, no lunch in her basket
Just school books for the fight she'd be in
One day over this hoodie
She got beat for some clothes and a rep
With her chin up, she scolded, "All y'all's molded
When I am rich, on your neck I'll step"
And step she did to the straight A's
Then college, a master degree
She hired the heifers that jumped her
And made everyone of them work for free?
No! Why?
So what if my sisters are trifling?
They just don't know
She said, "Mama didn't tell them what she told me
'Girl, you need Pussy Control'"
Gill Scot Heron - B-movie (Complete academic's guide to the election of Ronald 'Ray-Gun'.)
Well, the first thing I want to say is Mandate my ass!
Because it seems as though we've been convinced that 26% of the registered voters, not even 26% of the American people, but 26% of the registered voters form a mandate or a landslide. 21% voted for Skippy and 3, 4% voted for somebody else who might have been running.
But, oh yeah, I remember. In this year that we have now declared the year from Shogun to Reagan, I remember what I said about Reaganmeant it. Acted like an actorHollyweird. Acted like a liberal. Acted like General Franco when he acted like governor of California, then he acted like a republican. Then he acted like somebody was going to vote for him for president. And now we act like 26% of the registered voters is actually a mandate. We're all actors in this I suppose.
What has happened is that in the last 20 years, America has changed from a producer to a consumer. And all consumers know that when the producer names the tunethe consumer has got to dance. That's the way it is. We used to be a producer very inflexible at that, and now we are consumers and, finding it difficult to understand. Natural resources and minerals will change your world. The Arabs used to be in the 3rd World. They have bought the 2nd World and put a firm down payment on the 1st one. Controlling your resources we'll control your world.
This country has been surprised by the way the world looks now. They don't know if they want to be Matt Dillon or Bob Dylan. They don't know if they want to be diplomats or continue the same policy - of nuclear nightmare diplomacy. John Foster Dulles ain't nothing but the name of an airport now.
The idea concerns the fact that this country wants nostalgia. They want to go back as far as they can even if it's only as far as last week. Not to face now or tomorrow, but to face backwards. And yesterday was the day of our cinema heroes riding to the rescue at the last possible moment. The day of the man in the white hat or the man on the white horse - or the man who always came to save America at the last moment someone always came to save America at the last moment especially in B movies. And when America found itself having a hard time facing the future, they looked for people like John Wayne. But since John Wayne was no longer available, they settled for Ronald Reagan and it has placed us in a situation that we can only look at like a B movie.
Come with us back to those inglorious days when heroes weren't zeros. Before fair was square. When the cavalry came straight away and all-American men were like Hemingway to the days of the wondrous B movie. The producer underwritten by all the millionaires necessary will be Casper The Defensive Weinberger no more animated choice is available. The director will be Attila the Haig, running around frantically declaring himself in control and in charge. The ultimate realization of the inmates taking over at the asylum. The screenplay will be adapted from the book called Voodoo Economics by George Papa Doc Bush. Music by the Village People the very military "Macho Man."
Company!!!
Macho, macho man!
Two-three-four.
He likes to be well, you get the point.
Huuut! Your left! Your left! Your leftright, left, right, left, right!
A theme song for saber-rallying and selling wars door-to-door. Remember, we're looking for the closest thing we can find to John Wayne. Clichs abound like kangaroos courtesy of some spaced out Marlin Perkins, a Reagan contemporary. Clichs like, itchy trigger finger and tall in the saddle and riding off or on into the sunset. Clichs like, Get off of my planet by sundown! More so than clichs like, he died with his boots on. Marine tough the man is. Bogart tough the man is. Cagney tough the man is. Hollywood tough the man is. Cheap stick tough. And Bonzo's substantial. The ultimate in synthetic selling: A Madison Avenue masterpiece a miracle a cotton-candy politician Presto! Macho!
Macho, macho man!
Put your orders in America. And quick as Kodak your leaders duplicate with the accent being on the nukes - cause all of a sudden we have fallen prey to selective amnesia - remembering what we want to remember and forgetting what we choose to forget. All of a sudden, the man who called for a blood bath on our college campuses is supposed to be Dudley God-damn Do-Right?
You go give them liberals hell Ronnie. That was the mandate. To the new Captain Bly on the new ship of fools. It was doubtlessly based on his chameleon performance of the past - as a liberal democrat as the head of the Studio Actor's Guild. When other celluloid saviors were cringing in terror from McCarthy Ron stood tall. It goes all the way back from Hollywood to hillbilly. From liberal to libelous, from Bonzo to Birch idolborn again. Civil rights, women's rights, gay rightsit's all wrong. Call in the cavalry to disrupt this perception of freedom gone wild. God damn itfirst one wants freedom, then the whole damn world wants freedom.
Nostalgia, that's what we wantthe good ol' dayswhen we gave'em hell. When the buck stopped somewhere and you could still buy something with it. To a time when movies were in black and white and so was everything else. Even if we go back to the campaign trail, before six-gun Ron shot off his face and developed hoof-in-mouth. Before the free press went down before full-court press. And were reluctant to review the menu because they knew the only thing available was Crow.
Lon Chaney, our man of a thousand faces - no match for Ron. Doug Henning does the make-up - special effects from Grecian Formula 16 and Crazy Glue. Transportation furnished by the David Rockefeller of Remote Control Company. Their slogan is, Why wait for 1984? You can panic now...and avoid the rush.
So much for the good news
As Wall Street goes, so goes the nation. And here's a look at the closing numbers racism's up, human rights are down, peace is shaky, war items are hot - the House claims all ties. Jobs are down, money is scarce and common sense is at an all-time low on heavy trading. Movies were looking better than ever and now no one is looking because, we're starring in a B movie. And we would rather had John Wayne we would rather had John Wayne.
"You don't need to be in no hurry.
You ain't never really got to worry.
And you don't need to check on how you feel.
Just keep repeating that none of this is real.
And if you're sensing, that something's wrong,
Well just remember, that it won't be too long
Before the director cuts the scene yea."
This ain't really your life,
Ain't really your life,
Ain't really ain't nothing but a movie.
Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Two tribes (Mid-1980's, Red Threat, M.A.D - Frankie gave us relief by parodying the futility of the cold war)
We got two tribes
We got the bomb
We got the bomb-yeah
Sock it to me biscuits-now
Are we living in a land
Where sex and horror are the new Gods?
When two tribes go to war
A point is all you can score.
The Doors - A Feast of Friends (Jim Morrison's poetry has been criticised aplenty but these stanzas hit home for me)
No more money, no more fancy dress
This other kingdom seems by far the best
until it's other jaw reveals incest
and loose obedience to a vegetable law.
I will not go
Prefer a Feast of Friends
To the Giant Family.
Black Sabbath - War Pigs (1970's UK: Sabbath calls the ongoing bloodshed for what it is - an industry)
Generals gathered in their masses,
just like witches at black masses.
Evil minds that plot destruction,
sorcerers of death's construction.
In the fields the bodies burning,
as the war machine keeps turning.
Death and hatred to mankind,
poisoning their brainwashed minds.
Oh lord, yeah!
Politicians hide themselves away.
They only started the war.
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor, yeah.
Time will tell on their power minds,
making war just for fun.
Treating people just like pawns in chess,
wait till their judgement day comes, yeah.
Now in darkness world stops turning,
ashes where the bodies burning.
No more War Pigs have the power,
Hand of God has struck the hour.
Day of judgement, God is calling,
on their knees the war pigs crawling.
Begging mercies for their sins,
Satan, laughing, spreads his wings.
Oh lord, yeah!
The Tubes - What do you want from life? (Every time I listen to this song I feel compelled to ask myself the question. I don't always have an answer but the mental exercise is good.)
What do you want from life
To kidnap an heiress
or threaten her with a knife
What do you want from life
To get cable TV
and watch it every night
There you sit
a lump in your chair
Where do you sleep
and what do you wear
when you're sleeping
What do you want from life
An Indian guru
to show you the inner light
What do you want from life
a meaningless love affair
with a girl that you met tonight
How can you tell when you're doin' alright
Does your bank account swell
While you're dreaming at night
How do know when you're really in love
Do violins play when you're touching the one
That you're loving
What do you want from life
Someone to love
and somebody that you can trust
What do you want from life
To try and be happy
while you do the nasty things you must.
