| Radio Iodine – Manic Girl Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| This is one of the few songs that comes right out and bluntly discusses the feelings of mania. I find it refreshing in a way. The crazy pace and the feeling of confusion from the mania, lack of sleep and out of control, and yet you 'ask for more'. | |
| Grant Lee Buffalo – Demon Called Deception Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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This is one of my favorite Grant Lee Buffalo songs. To me the song personifies deception as a being of some sort, who tags along, enticing one to not believe in oneself, or demean oneself. The first 3 verses talking about a slave working in the cotton fields that sings along, seemingly content with the situation (or at least tolerating it). The 4th verse talks of 'Charlie' and his sex and drug obsession. I like the 'While Deception was a clickin' his high heels' part because it portrays the women (or men) that Charlie sleeps with are deceiving him into being this horrible creature. 'clicking his high heels' could mean that the man is sleeping with other men, or it is just the demon 'deception' (being a male demon of sorts) taking control of women to deceive him. I am not totally sure about the last part. What is the something that saved his skin? Realization that he can change? A higher power? Was he saved right before going to hell? I have no clue. |
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| Bob Dylan – Visions of Johanna Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I love the discussion! Great stuff. I remember several years ago, I would sit for hours and listen to Dylan's music, feeling it, absorbing it. I can see the validity of the many interpretations listed here (the WWII one being quite a stretch, but anyhow), and I would like to share mine. The imagery is very powerful in this song, as in many of his songs. He is essentially a painter of words. With many of his songs, it's about the many layers. If you get down and into the words/poetry you will find many meanings, a lot of times because things are ambiguous and such. However, on a different level, a visual level, you see a different 'picture'. If you lay back and take your brain out of it a little bit, you can 'see'. Each line is a brush stroke, each verse a piece of the puzzle, coming together to form a mental image. I remember reading something that he said from an interview when asked how he wrote songs. He said (paraphrasing) that it was like taking pictures of things at different times and/or different places and putting them all together on one canvas. They appear that they all belong together at once, but really were pieced together to form a whole new, independent picture. A car seen in the picture may have been parked in front of the same building in the picture, but the car was parked there last year, or last summer during the day, when the building was pictured in the winter at night, etc, etc. To me that makes perfect sense. Explaining it to everyone seems more difficult. I always loved the many characters in Dylan's songs. They may be almost comic or cartoony or fantastical exaggerations, but that is the beauty of it. I see the song as almost a dream sequence. He is in bed with Louise, but he dreams of Johanna (the pined for perfection of something that you will never have, and feeling sorry for yourself because you can't have the unattainable). Striving for perfection, but never getting there. Some might compare this thought to how some view religious belief systems (God is perfect, be like Him, of course you can't but try anyway because that is what good people do throughout their lives). He is beating himself up about not being perfect, and being ashamed of thinking that he should be beating himself up over it. Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while I love that line, as I am sure a lot of you do. The imagery that this brings up is priceless. You could look at this line and interpret that maybe eternal oblivion, or heaven or whatever, in a form where you are somehow conscious of 'being' and living out forever, trying to find something to do. Eventually, 'infinity' itself would be debated, just to have something to do. In a museum, all of the pictures and sculptures and photos are there for you to look at and as a society pick which ones should be kept and which ones are now chosen not to be worthy. We judge the past, present and future based upon what little we know at the moment. There is no one 'infinity' because within each finite space and time are infinite possibilities. I digress. Anyhow, Dylan was also taking lots of drugs and/or not sleeping very much at the time, his brain cells must have been firing like a trillion bats out of hell. He probably cannot fully grasp the entirety of this 'vision'. And so therein lies the full beauty of this wonderful piece of work. |
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| Bob Dylan – 4th Time Around Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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What me4th said sounds very good, and he/she seems to know what they are talking about. However, I would like to just throw something out there just for the heck of it. When I saw Dylan a few years back, I overheard some people talking about this song, hoping that he would play it (he didn't, too bad), and also stating something about this song being about alcoholism. I never talked to the people, but I did ponder this idea as I listened to the song many times over. This part: Out of that picture of you in your wheelchair That leaned up against . . . Her Jamaican rum And when she did come, I asked her for some. She said, "No, dear." This part that brings up the rum and her telling him that he can't have any. It is a stretch but it could be saying that he has a problem with alcohol and she doesn't want him to have any. The 'crutch' at the end is his drinking problem, and whatever her crutch is doesn't really matter. The speaker doesn't really care about her at all, he just wants a drink and sex if she is willing. He is essentially being a sarcastic asshole (great lyrical job, really paints the picture, like a lot of his songs). Great song. |
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