| Liz Phair – Help Me, Mary Lyrics | 25 days ago |
| @[NAwlinsContrarian:50858] The 'fame' reference hints that this song is not a character study but a real episode in Liz' early life. ie 'help me turn these ugly experiences and dark feelings into something creative and successful.' The fans lapped it up - that first album especially - as she requested. | |
| Creedence Clearwater Revival – Bad Moon Rising Lyrics | 1 month ago |
| @[DjUve:50670] This is a genius interpretation, thanks .... even if a loooooong time ago! | |
| Brian Eno – The Belldog Lyrics | 3 months ago |
| @[emberglanc:50008] Thank you for thanks ;o) | |
| Morrissey – Late Night, Maudlin Street Lyrics | 3 months ago |
|
@humdrum Maybe this lyric holds a clue: There were bad times on Maudlin Street They took you away in a police car |
|
| Coil – Tiny Golden Books Lyrics | 10 months ago |
| @[BlueKephra:47813] A Ray Bradbury story well before the shop | |
| The Smiths – I Keep Mine Hidden Lyrics | 1 year ago |
| @[AKARebel:47108] I love your idea... yellow and green melancholy, which in "humours" medical lore means that the melancholy came from anger and laziness. | |
| Brian Eno – The Belldog Lyrics | 1 year ago |
|
This is the dream-like response Eno had to working with Cluster, a band he had admired for a long time, merging it with the role of producer for many other bands from the same period. Substitute ‘levers’ for ‘sliders’ and ‘dark sheds’ for the windowless studios that he worked in with the bands and then ‘guiding the signals to the radio’ describes his job of producing the music for the bands’ next big hit (well. Most bands would like to have some air-play). Both Conny Plank’s studio (where Broken Head was recorded) and Cluster’s studio in Forst were in rural settings, which may explain the line ‘Out in the trees’… Eno on a fag break. Cluster themselves are name-checked in this verse and their record label Sky is the last word sung in this track. How to read the line ‘I lose control and at last I am part of the machinery’? It is a very ‘cybernetic’ lyric and if the studio-setting interpretation here has some truth to it, then becoming part of the studio machine might describe Eno’s frequent references to treating the studio itself as an instrument. Surrendering to the system. |
|
| Brian Eno – The Belldog Lyrics | 1 year ago |
|
@[blix:45606] m.112 >>I have no idea what the lyrics are about. You must have had some thoughts over the last 40 years about the words to your favourite song? |
|
| The Jesus and Mary Chain – In A Hole Lyrics | 1 year ago |
| @[J3R3M7:45355] Striped cats are cooler | |
| PJ Harvey – M-Bike Lyrics | 1 year ago |
| A song about being pushed over the edge. She can't bear to say it's first / full name, hence the title. When she does say 'motorbike', at the point of accepting there's a problem, it all comes spilling out...'MOTOR!' There is a sad ending suggested by the last few lines: that she is thinking of riding the M over a cliff, not merely push it over one. If you 'take his motor' rather than 'send it over' or 'push it over' you are going with it. 'Break her, break me'... she is thinking about how both the M and herself will be damaged. Does she do it? It's necessarily outside of the song's time line but seems she makes a decision to kill herself and wreck the M when she goes from saying 'I could break her' to 'I'm gonna break her'. Maybe then he will finally notice her. I don't think 'he' is necessarily the boyfriend; I picture all of this happening on neighbours' driveways, she washing her car whenever her gay neighbour tinkers with his motorbike. As it's all still future-tense by the end of the song, you can decide how it all ends! | |
| Roxy Music – Casanova Lyrics | 1 year ago |
|
Bryan Ferry's curt rejoinder to Eno's 'Dead Finks Don't Talk' song - a dig at Ferry that had appeared earlier in the year on Here Come the Warm Jets. This was Eno's first release since leaving Roxy Music and the album featured all the members of Roxy bar Ferry. Casanova more obviously refers to Eno's reputation as a philanderer but could also refer to Eno's 'new home' away from Roxy...Casanova literally means 'new house' and Ferry refers to this dual meaning at the end of the song. ‘Now my finger Points at you’… perceptive Ferry shows he recognised the origin of Eno’s song title as being with William Burroughs’ ‘Dead Fingers Talk’...the ‘dying fiction’ of Eno’s song. ‘You, an island On your own’… Ferry referencing Eno’s solo career on the Island label. This might also explain why Ferry ends the song by singing 'my place is here with you [ie on Island] but not together.' To ‘More fool me bless my soul’ Ferry responds: ‘A precious jewel Or just a fool’, perhaps questioning how a headless chicken could peck its way anywhere. ‘Innovator It's in your mind’… there could surely be no greater insult to Eno! ‘Second hand, second rate.’ ‘You, the hero / Now you're flirting With heroin’ is a response to Eno’s own drug-speak references in ‘Dead Finks’ ‘I failed both tests / In my place the stuff is all there’ ‘My my they wanted the works’. The tit-for-tat retaliation would continue with the instrumental 'Sultanesque' (or 'Insultanesque'?) on the B side of 1975's Love is the Drug, sounding (convincingly) like a Fripp and Eno composition, countered with Eno's 1976 ambient soundtrack to the short film 'Music for Ferry Terminals'. |
|
| Coil – Something Lyrics | 1 year ago |
| Not Coil | |
| Coil – Slur Lyrics | 1 year ago |
|
There are shadows for sale On the edge of town = Rent boys |
|
| Coil – Fffetish Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| Not Coil! | |
| Roxy Music – For Your Pleasure Lyrics | 3 years ago |
|
Roxy Music, introducing themselves at last at the very end of their second album. The lyrics seem to be at once a premonition and flashback of moments and highlights of their (or Ferry's) life. Crafting their art, schmoozing at country estates with the stars even into their elderly years. Part false part true / dark horse hiding Ferry acknowledging his humble Novocastrian roots whilst hob nobbing with the glitterati of the day. 'The words we use tumble over your shoulder' sounds like an intimate 'sweet nothing' shared with their fans but it actually hides a harsher comment: you don't really get us or know what we are saying, or 'it goes over your head'. The final section after 'Ta-ra.... ta-ra', is a lost bit of theatre or drama that practically all fans will miss. Eno creates tape snippets of Ferry singing repeated lyrics from Chance Meeting (on the previous album) 'well how, well how?' from the line Well how are you how have you been? A voice answers 'You don't ... you don't ask why'. How being the lesser question and why being the real issue. Imagine a fan asking Eno a techie 'How do you get that sound?' whereas Why do you...? would be the more interesting question to ask him. The woman's voice is Judi Dench, uncredited on the album. Her daughter, born around the time the album was being recorded, was (is) called Tara and so Ferry 's 'ta-ra' is actually him saying hello to her as well as goodbye at the end of his life. |
|
| Sonic Youth – Marilyn Moore Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| When I first heard the song I was sure it was Thurston Moore imagining a marriage to Marilyn Monroe - there’s surely only one ‘Marilyn’ and in the context of a Sonic Youth song, only one ‘Moore’. The Yorkshire Ripper connection makes a lot of sense too especially given the hammer reference, perhaps Thu was prompted to ponder when reading about the Ripper case...also a UK band from the mid 80s called Sutcliffe Jügend (Youth) may have prompted his interest. I think the song is a conflation of both the real and imagined MMs... a real dream. | |
| Dory Previn – Lady With The Braid Lyrics | 4 years ago |
|
@[Pocket:33439] It is about a woman responding to her long term domestic abuse situation by killing her husband one evening while he combed his hair in the mirror after a brutal last-straw attack on his wife. She slashes his throat with the straight razor and he breaks the mirror as falls down and dies on the floor. While his heart pumps its last, blood jets over the floor and one of the walls. She hides and buries all of the evidence successfully and the papers merely report his continued 'missing' status, meaning he is a high profile figure or celebrity... for example a Hollywood filmscore composer. The (relatively) upbeat lyrics of the song are when she's trying not to think about what she has done and the downbeat, repeated, introspective lyrics are when she remembers. |
|
| Throbbing Gristle – Mary Whitehouse Lyrics | 5 years ago |
| I don't know this TG song - do you know where I could hear it? BTW thanks for transcribing so many of the TG tracks here - your selection is not always the easiest to hear / most well-known songs either. | |
| Coil – Who'll Fall? Lyrics | 5 years ago |
|
Who’ll Fall? On the face of it, a straight-forward premise. A voice mail - from an era where such things were called ‘answerphone messages’ - from a young man describing a friend’s suicide. The recorded message is then accompanied musically by Coil and released as a single, later anthologised on the Unnatural History II CD, and a slightly different version appearing on Stolen and Contaminated Songs around this time. There are no vocals or lyrical response from Coil at all, rather a discrete and mournful cluster of chords, complimented by atmospheric telephone environment machine clicks, courtesy of c1990 British Telecom. The haunting quality of the music and the tragic, earnest quality of the young man’s message makes this a Coil fan-favourite. The sensitivity of the arrangement jars with our sense that we shouldn’t be hearing this private communication… especially not on a seven inch single, however limited the release. On closer consideration, the music, editing and choice of samples can be seen to comprise a narrative in response to the young man’s anguish. The long, evocative chords evoke a deeply compassionate, caring environment, one which recognises that no words will be enough to comfort his loss, but is instead providing a close, deeply understanding embrace by Coil, here represented specifically (I think) by Sleazy. The sadness is tainted by an even deeper regret - that of the unknown suicide. The caller simply needs to know he’s not alone, and that his marginalising experiences are not unique. The female BT voice provides a few clues that I think are significant. Behind it, Sleazy is hiding his own voice and response, so quietly and remotely that it’s easy to miss. The various samples are deliberately collaged by Sleazy: obviously they relate to BT calls from the period, but there’s a sense that a phrase like ‘your call cannot be connected’, here means: ‘there’s no point telling this to me, ‘ or: ‘I don;t know how to respond to this’. I wonder if the band screened their calls (actually, I’m sure they did!) and allowed this message to play out without intercepting it. The length of the message suggests the young man wasn’t necessarily expecting anyone to pick up based on previous calls, and had some points ready. We should also consider Sleazy’s prediction for surreptitiously recording private messages via his short wave radio scanner in the 70s to replay to us as TG consumers - making us part of the subterfuge. It’s a complicated relationship, knowing we as consumers of the product are somehow complicit, especially because it was a non-consensual recording. A design solution like this is sure to backfire! The BT voice message: ‘please hang up’ suggests both disconnection and an allusion to a suicide method (a hanging, or ‘please end it’). Some way into the message, the young man’s voice says ‘in a funny way, we’re doing that … just don’t really connect’. It feels like a key word is missing here, and indeed the band describe editing out identifying elements from the recording. There is then a 30 second instrumental passage during which we are invited to speculate on the distance between people. Is he confessing that despite Sleazy being ‘the only person he can call right now’, they still don’t really connect? So why bother? We have to address the caller’s likely motive. Ways of dying fascinated Sleazy - in the 70s he photographed a series of staged photographs illustrating young men killing themselves, was skilled in recreating bloody medical traumas for paramedic students, and later the band kept a scrapbook of newspapers reports of youth deaths, suicides and murders &c (a page from this appears in the booklet in the ‘Gold is the Metal’ Boxed edition). Tellingly, he asks: ‘I just wondered what you think that feeling is like?’ Why would you need to know how Sleazy might feel during such a fall, as a means to deal with the death? He says ‘it would help me because I have a terrible fear of heights’. Is this more of an appeal to Sleazy’s dark tastes to secure a personal meeting? I sense Sleazy is expressing something like regret - or at least acknowledging a truth - that the man has to appeal to his dark tastes to secure a connection of any sort. The whole theme of the track is an ode to disconnection…. not about suicide, but Sleazy’s place in the relationship between fans’ expectations, his real desires and Coil’s artistic output. Sleazy was notoriously shy to sing or write lyrics but had other less direct means to communicate his intentions (don’t get me started on How to Destroy Angels). His art was subtle allusion that may take many repeated encounters to resolve. In his graphic design work, I encounter fragments of a larger narrative that emerge years, decades later. Knowing that nearly nothing he chooses to include or illustrate is there by chance helps enormously. Finally, the sound of the telephone receiver being replaced is such a decisive, conclusive clang that it’ s easy to retrospectively assign meaning to what would have been a common enough sound in 1990. Who’ll Fall? It’s entirely a co-incidence, but this was John Balance’s cause of death, 14 years later. Not a suicide, but the exact circumstances of his fall still surrounded by some mystery. Who’ll Tell? |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.