| The Avener – Waitin' Round To Die Lyrics | 6 years ago |
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Uh -- this song is not original to "The Avener;" it's a Townes van Zandt classic, one of his two best-known ("Pancho and Lefty" being the other)... And what you've got here isn't all of it. There's a fifth verse that is what makes the song (especially if you know anything of the life of its creator). Credit where it's due, people. |
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| Warren Zevon – Nighttime In The Switching Yard Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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I read somewhere -- zero clue where -- that this song was supposedly written about heroin. Anyone have any idea whether there's any basis at all in reality for that? I'm just not seeing the connection (as it were) -- unless it's punning on "the mainline" and "the tracks"?? |
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| Mark Knopfler – Boom, Like That Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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Sorry, friend, but no. Afraid it might be just you. |
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| Mark Knopfler – Boom, Like That Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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You say Chuckewe is wrong about pretty much everything. But the story you share about Kroc and the McDonald Bros and Chuckewe's version are not at all inconsistent w/ ea other. What is it that you think Chuckewe has wrong about that part of the tale? |
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| Mark Knopfler – Boom, Like That Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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"It's a dog-eat-dog world" is an old cliché that hard-nosed (or some other body-part) business types often use to rationalize being assholes -- lying, cheating, stealing, etcetc; anything they've chosen to do to attain financial success by doing anything of less-than-Christian ethics. "Rat-eat-rat" takes it to another level. The fact that the subject of the song is the making of a financial empire by selling first America, then the world, on burgers -- burgers ostensibly made of cow-meat, but, hey, you do what you gotta do to get by, right? -- is no doubt purely coincidental, and should in no way be taken to suggest that the burgers sold at McD's, or anywhere else, are ever made of dog-meat, rat-meat, cat-meat, or anything else less than perfectly salubrious. Honestly. |
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| Paul Simon – Duncan Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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"is that just me?" Yes. Just kidding. You're right, they're very much alike in at least two respects, and probably several others that someone who knows music theory / composition could explain to us. The instrumentation is similar -- I'm pretty sure those woodwinds are pan-pipes in both tracks. And the backing musicians playing them, plus at least some of the rhythm section, are the very same: the Andean music group "Los Incas" were some of the backing musicians on "El Condor Pasa," as well as on "Duncan," and toured with PS in the early 70s. They show up on the live album from his '73-'74 tour, "Live Rhymin'". And then, of course, there's the part where they're both heartbreakingly beautiful songs -- but then again so are another half-dozen to dozen Simon songs, most of which don't sound anything like this. (Tho' that loooooonnnnngggg coda to "The Boxer" has a feel very much like the coda to "Duncan," doesn't it?) |
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| Warren Zevon – Desperados Under The Eaves Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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That is a great story. Definitely adds depth and resonance to a song already fraught with both. And I've had that book on my to-do list for years; thanks for the reminder that I really need to get to it. And, of course, thank you so much for taking the time to share that story here, O great world-king |
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| Steely Dan – Time Out of Mind Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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I mean no disrespect, TNice, when I point out that the lyric is "Lhasa" (spelled with an "h"), not "Laos" -- and since this is from the Dan's own website, I don't think there's a lot of question on it. Lhasa is both the capital city of Tibet, and the center of Tibetan Buddhism. I do agree that I've only heard "chasing the dragon" as a reference to opium-smoking, not heroin (either smoking or shooting), but slang does change over time, so who knows. One thing's for sure, though: heroin is not a hallucinogen; nobody ever saw visions from doing just H. Opium, however, does induce a dreamlike state replete with hallucinogenic visions. The Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem "Xanadu" ("In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree") is reported to have been inspired by an opium experience recorded by the poet on waking from his delirium. Source: http://www.steelydan.com/lyrgaucho.html#track5 |
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| Sting – Mad About You Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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Don't know enough about the Biblical David/Bathsheba story to contribute anything useful (except that it's supposed to also be at least part of the inspiration for the great Leonard Cohen song, "Hallelujah," which is now best-known for being the "Shrek" song, in its cover by John Cale). But it's pretty clear that in the verse about "the vanity of an ancient king," Sting is referring directly to the famous poem by the early-19th-century English Romantic poet Shelley, called "Ozymandias." (Don't forget Sting was a schoolteacher for two years before breaking out as a rock-star. Pretty much every English schoolkid would know this work.) The point of the poem (the greatest works of the most powerful man, a king, are nothing in the face of eternity) plays into the point of the song (the singer's kingdom and works mean nothing without his lover's love). Here's the whole poem: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. If you want to know more about the poem, its author, meaning, background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias |
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| Dire Straits – Your Latest Trick Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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This is the one line in the whole song that I'm reasonably confident I've got right: It's a pun, a reference to the 12 musical keys in which songs and other Western music are written in -- and also the 12 literal keys that make up each octave on a piano / organ / synth keyboard; 7 white, 5 black. It fits with the musical pun in the line before -- "I played the blues in 12 bars," where "bars" = both "musical measures" (a "12-bar blues" is one of the standard blues progressions) & "dives where they play the blues." How that fits into the context, though -- "And you never did have the intelligence to use The twelve keys hanging off of my chain" that one's beyond me. Best I can do with that is that music somehow is the way to really get to him (the singer/songwriter character he's playing), and she didn't avail herself of that. Something along the lines of the great line the Sandra Bullock character has in "The Thing Called Love," when she says to the Dermot Mulroney character near the end, "You could have had me for a song." |
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