Digesting Deep Lyrics With A Shallow Mind

I am old enough to remember watching American Bandstand, the television program that made the Eternal Teenager, Dick Clark, famous.  The show was mostly about watching teenagers jitterbug to the popular tunes of the day.  There was one segment of the show when Dick would ask two or three kids to grade two songs, by unknown artists, which were brand new and which radio stations had not started playing on the air. He would always ask the teens to consider the beat and the lyrics.  Usually a good beat (i.e., danceable) would trump mediocre lyrics, resulting in a high score. Of course, there are other important elements to a song, such as the quality of the singer's voice, the instrumental craftsmanship, production, and originality, all of which might separate a song from others of its genre.  Nevertheless, the beat and the lyrics have remained the two most important considerations over the decades.

I have always been a beat guy myself.  What did you expect?  I'm a drummer. But, that is not to say that I don't appreciate good lyrics.  A corollary is that poor, ambiguous, inaudible  and non-sensical lyrics bug me. A case in point is I'd Really Love To See You Tonight by four-hit wonders England Dan & John Ford Coley.  That song reached # 2 on the Billboard charts in  the summer of 1976.  The first time I heard that song on the radio, I thought they were singing: 

I ain't talkin' 'bout the linen,

And I don't wanna change your life. 

 

Huh?  I ain't talkin' 'bout the linen?  I should hope not!  Those can't be the words, I told myself.  But, the next several times I heard the song I was positive that's what they were singing.  Whenever the song came on the radio, I waited for the DJ to comment on the strange lyric, but no comment was ever forthcoming.  Of course, this was before the days when lyrics were easily viewed on the internet.

 

Then, about fifteen years ago, England Dan (nee Dan Seals) had a gig at a summer festival on Harriet Island, and I went to see him.  He was pretty chatty from the small stage, maybe because there were only a few dozen of us geezers there to see him.  He played his duo's other hits (Nights Are Forever Without You (# 10), We'll Never Have To Say Goodbye Again (# 9) and Love Is The Answer (# 10)), and saved the song I'd been waiting to hear for last, I'd Really Love To See You Tonight.  He told the audience that he and his singing partner, John Ford Coley, were constantly asked about the words to that song's chorus, but in the interest of maintaining the mystique, they never divulged the lyrics.  He cited a few examples of what fans thought they were singing, including "the linen" possibility.  This was the first time I realized that I wasn't the only one who heard "linen." Then he told us what the words really were: 

 

I ain't talkin' 'bout movin' in 

 

Ah ha!  Of course!  Once I knew what the lyrics were and heard the song again, my ears no longer played tricks on me. That's exactly what they were singing!  Those words, "movin' in," are (almost) clearly audible.

 

Another brief example of a similar situation is Bryan Adams' 1985 hit (# 5), Summer Of '69, one of my favorite songs of all time.  The vocal bridge in that song includes the lines: 

 

We were young and restless,

We needed to unwind. 

 

I could never figure out that second line but, because I'm more of a beat guy and this song rocks, I did not let that little deficiency stop me from including it on the best music mix I ever made, Pud's Plethora Of Platinum (a possible topic for a future post).  And just like the England Dan song, once I found out the true lyrics, the words thenceforth seemed rather obvious.

 

And so ends the first portion of this post.  What follows are my brief observations about four well-known songs containing lyrics that bug me, plus a fifth song that I was going to add to the list but, after a personal epiphany, decided to segregate.  When I use the term "bug" here, I don't mean it in the usual sense.  I still consider all five of the songs to be anywhere from very good to great.  But each song has a word or a line which deprives the song of being even better, and that's why they bug me.  These are songs that should have been tweaked, ever so slightly, to make more sense.

 

1. You're So Vain, Carly Simon, 1972, Billboard Chart Peak # 1.

 

Let's start with low hanging fruit.  Carly had twelve hits which reached the Top 40 on Billboard Magazine's Hot 100, but You're So Vain was her only # 1.  When Carly came out with this song in December 1972, it immediately generated a lot of buzz for two reasons.  First and more famously, everybody wondered which of her seemingly dozens of male friends and lovers inspired the song.  The smart money was on Warren Beatty, who even opined to the press that he was pretty sure the song was about him.  But Carly enjoyed the attention and thus refused to divulge the answer.  Other than the rumored death of Paul McCartney around the time the Beatles' Abbey Road album came out in 1969, the identity of the singer's love interest in You're So Vain was probably the biggest puzzle of the music scene.  Carly has thrown hints over the last forty-one years, and has purportedly revealed the answer to two or three people whom she first swore to secrecy. Currently, the smart money has shifted from Beatty to David Geffen, former president of Elektra Records and therefore Carly's former boss.

 

The second reason for the scuttlebutt surrounding the song, and more to the point of this post, is that the chorus to You're So Vain includes the repeated line, "You probably think this song is about you." Well, duh! Yes, Carly, when you write a song with the word "you" in the title, there is a good chance that second person will believe it's about him.  Even her most ardent fans thought that line was a little weird, but as noted above, it got folks talking about her song for more than just one reason.

 

Incidentally, and getting back to the first point, Mick Jagger provided uncredited background vocals on You're So Vain.  He, along with other well known singers like Cat Stevens and Kris Kristofferson, were also considered possibilities of being the song's mystery man.

 

2. I Get Around, Beach Boys, 1964, Billboard Chart Peak # 1.

 

According to the Billboard charts, this is the highest ranking song ever put out by the boys from landlocked Hawthorne, California.  (The Beach Boys had three other # 1 songs: Help Me Rhonda, Good Vibrations and Kokomo, but under the Billboard ranking protocol, I Get Around is the cream of that crop.) Structurally, it is unique, partly because the chorus is sung before the first verse, a characteristic shared by the Beatles' She Loves You.  I Get Around contains four two-line verses, and it is the last of those that constitutes a head-scratcher for me: 

 

None of the guys go steady 'cause it wouldn't be right

To leave your best girl home on a Saturday night. 

 

First of all, I originally thought the first word was "All" instead of "None," because that's the only way the lyric makes sense to me.  When you go steady, you are not leaving your girl home on a Saturday night; she is with you.  But what the Beach Boys are saying, I guess, is that they like hanging out with their buds so much that, in effect, they're doing their would-be girl friends a favor by not going steady.  Three possibilities here: (1) Californians are so whacky that that's how they think; (2) Californians aren't whacky, but co-writer/space cadet Brian Wilson is, and that's his thought process; or, (3) I am the one who's not thinking clearly, and the lyric makes perfect sense to practically everyone else.  I asked Momma Cuandito for her opinion, and she opted for Door # 3.

 

3. This Boy, Beatles, 1964.  B-side of All My Loving (Billboard Chart Peak # 45), but did not chart separately.

 

Speaking of the Beatles, This Boy was the third track on the Beatles first US album, Meet The Beatles, an album which I must have played (and drummed to) three hundred or more times.  The song's setting is a guy singing to his ex-girlfriend who has now moved on to another guy.  I got started thinking about the lyrical trouble with This Boy when the Beatles performed this song on their second Ed Sullivan Show appearance on February 16, 1964. Even though the lads had two microphones at their disposal, John moved over to Paul's mic and got between Paul and George for this one song.  The three of them sang all three verses together, with John taking over the lead on the vocal bridge.  On the opening line of the song, it appeared that at least one of the three singers sang "That boy took my love away..." (the correct lyric) while at least one of the others -- probably John, who was known to forget lyrics occasionally -- sang "This boy took my love away..." (which, even though including the title of the song, was incorrect).  If you watch the video of that performance, Paul and John quickly look sideways at each other and giggle.  They knew there was a screw up, but of course they kept right on singing.

 

This faux pas surrounding the first verse presaged my personal question regarding the third verse of the song. The lyrics to that verse are: 

 

This boy wouldn't mind the pain

Would always feel the same

If this boy gets you back again. 

 

Should the first two words of the third verse be "This boy" or "That boy"?  Though I will admit that you can make a case for either, it's my contention that "That boy" makes more sense within the context of the song.  If you substitute "That boy" for "This boy," what the singer would be saying is that the girl does not mean that much to her new boyfriend.  Even if she returns to the singer, life will go on for that other guy; he won't miss her.  Apparently what Lennon and McCartney were shooting for was something different, viz., that if the girl returns to the singer, he'll let bygones be bygones.  In case you are wondering, the song writing partnership did not consult me before putting pen to paper, probably because I was a mere lad of fifteen at the time.

 

4. In These Arms, Bon Jovi, 1993, Billboard Chart Peak # 27.

 

I am not ashamed to admit that Bon Jovi is my favorite band currently making music, a fact I've already revealed in my March 30, 2013 post (a review of their album What About Now).  In These Arms is the quintessential guitar rock song, with a driving beat, impassioned vocals, a slick and speedy guitar break, three-part harmony, a tempo build-up, and near-great lyrics.  Why only "near" great?  Read on. 

 

In These Arms is the best of both worlds, a love song that rocks.  The message of the singer's unflinching fidelity to his woman is evident in the first verse: 

 

... I would do anything,

I'd beg, I'd steal, I'd die... 

 

and in the second verse: 

 

...baby, I want you,

like the roses want the rain... 

 

and in the chorus: 

 

... I'd get down on my knees for you

and make eveything all right... 

 

But unfortunately, the vocal bridge is entirely incongruous with the rest of the song: 

 

Your clothes are still scattered

All over our room

This whole place still smells like

Your cheap perfume. 

 

Oh boy, what a way to win a girl's heart; tell her that her cheap perfume stinks up the whole room!

 

The former 5. Kodachrome, Paul Simon, 1973, Billboard Chart Peak # 2.

 

This is my favorite Paul Simon song, which is saying something because I love his work.  But as much as I like Kodachrome, I thought he had things flip-flopped.  People do not dream in color; their dreams are in black and white.  Conversely, when I view things in real time, I do see color.  The lyrics suggest the opposite. After chewing on this seemingly inverted idea that Simon offers in his song, I think I've solved the mystery.  I was equating dreaming with imagining.  My bad.  Once again, my propensity to be The Linear Guy had come into play.  I did not recognize the symbolism.  Metaphors are not my forte; I was a finance major.

 

The song's theme is worthy of group discussion, as it's likely that a panel of five people would have five different "takes" on what it's about.  If I could put my interpretation in a nutshell, it would be this:  Our imagination is color, while our perception of reality is black and white.  We should not be stunned or surprised when stark reality does not measure up to our imagined hopes.  The key is the third line from the following chorus: 

 

You (i.e., Kodachrome) give us nice bright colors

You give us the greens of summers

Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah! 

 

But when we look out the window or step outside, it's not always beautiful and sunny.  Half of the time it isn't.  In other words, not every day is a Chamber Of Commerce, picture postcard kind of day.  Reality can be grim, like black and white.

 

I should have figured this out sooner, when Simon is singing about gathering "all the girls I knew when I was single": 

 

I know they'd never match my sweet imagination,

Everything looks worse in black and white. 

 

I suppose now that I've come clean, someone will try to tell me that Bridge Over Troubled Water isn't really about a bridge.

Movie Review: "Gravity"

"Gravity": B+.  It is typical of parenthood that you want your children to have opportunities which will enable them to pursue their dreams to the fullest, to "be all that they can be" (to coin a phrase), and once they become adults, to have a chance to earn their living in an occupation they love.  After having seen Gravity, however, I think I would draw the line at any of them becoming an astronaut.  Nope, I would not want my son or daughter up there in outer space.  Luckily for me and my kids, they are at the stage in their lives where it's out of my hands.  I am happy to report that Momma Cuan and I have two teachers and a food & beverage manager; no astronauts!

Sandra Bullock plays Dr. Ryan Stone, a medical engineer on a three-person astronaut team led by Mission Commander Matt Kowalski (George Clooney).  Their ship is the Explorer, which is roughly seventy miles above the Earth where there is no atmosphere.  Stone is performing some maintenance work on the outside of the Explorer, while Kowalski is floating around by means of a jetpack, untethered, enjoying the view and issuing witty quips to Stone via radio.  This tranquility doesn't last long, and once it's over the movie viewer is on her way to a nail-biting experience.

Mission Control ("Houston") orders the mission aborted when it's learned that space debris from a Russian satellite is heading toward the Explorer.  Stone balks at terminating her repair work before it's completed, but Kowalski orders her to obey.  Before the two of them can get back into the capsule, the debris arrives, dislodging Stone's tether from its mooring point on the vessel.  Hence, the dreaded "U word": unattached. She is floating around, except unlike Kowalski, she is not wearing a jet pack!

To reveal much more would be risking a spoiler.  If you think of all the things that could go wrong with a space mission, other than a launching explosion, it happens in Gravity.  Loss of communication with Houston, oxygen deprivation, loss of thrusting capabilities, fire, equipment failures, attempts to decipher instructions in a foreign language, more space debris, etc.

The special effects used in Gravity are obviously required by the setting, and they are spectacular.  This is a movie that demands to be seen in 3-D.  Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron avoids the temptation to get too cutesy with that asset, making mostly judicious use of it. (Momma Cuan admits, however, that she was afraid some of the flying debris was going to strike her in the eye!)  The views of Earth as seen from the astronauts' point of view are breathtaking and, I would imagine based on reports from "real life" solar system explorers, quite realistic.

Sandra Bullock turns in a top rate performance as Stone.  Her role requires her to play a serious scientist who is capable of athletic maneuvers when faced with one crisis after another.  There are a few scenes in which she appears to have trained hard to look good on camera when she's not enveloped in a bulky astronaut suit.  Unfortunately, we do not get to learn much of her character's (Stone's) background.  This is one of the few faults I can find with the script.  In war movies, the generals always have complete bios not only on the officers under their command, but on their adversaries as well.  It seems to me that a Mission Commander like Kowalski would do the same before they launched, yet the questions he puts to Stone as they're floating around indicate that he did not do his due diligence.

If the viewer so chooses, she can look beyond the action portrayed on the screen and see this story as a study in the human will.  In life or death situations, people have been known to find strength they did not realize they possessed. How much does faith come into play?  How much is simply man's primary basic instinct, self-preservation?  At what point does one give up to face the inevitable?  

Album Review: "New" - Paul McCartney

"New": B.  The Beatles were so huge in early 1964 that even those of us on the North Dakota prairie outposts were more than well aware of what was going on.  It didn't hurt that we were able to pull in rock stations from Winnipeg, Regina and (sometimes) Bismarck, not to mention Minot's own KCJB.  We were listening to the Liverpool lads' songs for several weeks before we ever got to see what they looked like. Once they'd appeared on the Ed Sulivan Show in February, you could not go ten minutes without hearing one of their songs on the radio, our primary source for music.

Sometimes it would be hard to tell which Beatle was singing lead, particularly trying to distinguish between Paul and George.  In some photos, they even looked alike.  After awhile it became easier to identify their voices.  One time the press asked the Beatles how they determined which of the four should sing the lead on any given song.  "Whoever knows the most words" was the reply.

I remember pulling up to North Hill Bowl with a car full of kids in January '64 when a Beatles tune came on the radio just as we were about to go in.  None of us had heard it before.  The two songs which had been getting the most air play were their first two big (# 1) US hits, I Want To Hold Your Hand and She Loves You.  But this time the tune was I Saw Her Standing There.  All six of us stayed in the car and listened to it in its entirety, a practice which lived on throughout Beatlemania.  It turned out that I Saw Her Standing There was the flip side (aka "B-side") to I Want To Hold Your Hand.  The former was so great that it eventually charted separately on Billboard, peaking at # 14.  This marked the first of several occasions when the Beatles had a two-sided hit stateside.  Other such double dippers included Please Please Me with From Me To You, Love Me Do with P.S. I Love You, A Hard Day's Night with I Should Have Known Better, and I Feel Fine with She's A Woman, just to name a few.

When the Beatles split in 1970, there immediately surfaced a worldwide hope that someday they would reunite.  But as the years went by and more rumors, both confirmed and unsubstantiated, surfaced about the intra-band friction, most realists knew it was permanently over.  All four of the Beatles, even Ringo, almost immediately released solo albums following the breakup, evidence that they had each foreseen the band's demise well ahead of time and thus were undertaking a different career path.

Paul McCartney has been prolific. In the forty-three post-Beatles years leading up to 2013, he had released twenty-three studio albums, of which fifteen were "solos."  A couple of weeks ago, the sixteenth hit the market: New.  It is Paul's first studio album since 2007's Memory Almost Full. Yep, even at age 71, the Cute Beatle is still making new music.

The thirteen songs on New noticeably fall onto the pop side of the pop-rock spectrum.  While credit must be given to McCartney for his use of a wide variety of instruments, sounds and themes, I would have been happier with a change of pace rocker or two interspersed among the mostly tepid melodies.

The most interesting track on the album is Early Days, in which McCartney surprisingly points the accusatory finger at the (supposedly) young critics who dismiss the music of the Fab Four.  His voice sounds tired -- even warbled -- as he takes on the role of defender, a surprise move by someone who you'd think would let his music speak for itself.  Instead he states his case, saying in so many words that unless you were there during the early days and witnessed all the hard work that went into the band's songs, you do not have the bona fides to turn up your nose at the music.

Now everybody seems to have their own opinion

Of who did this and who did that

But as for me I don't see how they can remember

When they weren't where it was at.

There are not many songs in the post-Beatles catalogue which so personally reflect the singer's days with the band.  Only George Harrison's When We Was Fab and his tribute to the departed John Lennon, All Those Years Ago, immediately come to mind.

The most beautiful song on New is the final track, Scared.  McCartney told the press that he wrote it for his new bride, Nancy Shevell, whom he married in 2011.  Accompanied only by a melodic piano, and using birds as a metaphor, he confesses to his love that he can't quite get the words out to tell her how much she means to him. 

The beautiful birds won't come out of their cage

Though I'm trying to set them free.

One of my favorite Beatles songs from the "middle stage" of their career is Penny Lane, which by the way is half of yet another example of their double-sided hits (the B-side being Strawberry Fields Forever).  The title track (New) to Paul's new album has an uncanny resemblance to that 1967 hit, each containing the same bouncy beat using the same instrumentation, including terrific percussion.  New is another song reportedly written for Nancy.  The message is an appropriate one for a man to sing to his bride:  I did not have a real plan for the future until I met you.  Now I have direction. 

All my life

I never knew

What I could be, what I could do

Then we were new.

After Paul's bitter divorce from wife # 2, Heather Mills, in 2008, one can certainly understand his joy at finding love again.  Therein lies the explanation of why at least two songs on New are dedicated to Nancy.

Since I have just compared one of the new New songs to a Beatles oldie, allow me to offer one more.  If you are a fan of the somewhat bizarre instrumentation and distortion found in their Revolver album, you must give Appreciate a listen.  I would be surprised if you did not think that Appreciate brings back memories of Tomorrow Never Knows.

As mentioned above, you'd be hard-pressed to find a rocker on New, but there is quite a nice little toe tapper called Everybody Out There.  Some might even label it "jangle pop," which, as a sub-genre that originated with the Byrds in 1965, has enjoyed a comeback in recent years.  Unlike many songs with a serious message, the delivery is upbeat. 

... there but for the grace of God go you and I,

Do some good before you say goodbye.

Perhaps Paul simply was not in the mood to rock this time around.  (Well, okay; the first cut, Save Us, is uptempo, but to be honest, it's not a very good offering.)  He is, after all, the composer of Silly Love Songs from his Wings days.  He has not really rocked out much at all since 1999's Run Devil Run, his eleventh solo album.  But surely he is cognizant of the feedback he gets from his live performance fans whenever he launches into a rockin' Beatles tune.  Why doesn't he attempt to replicate that style on some of his new stuff? I remember seeing him in concert several years ago.  The fans cheered wildly for every Beatles rocker on the set list, and recognized them in a matter of two or three notes.  Drive My Car, with its unique, short instrumental intro, is a good example of that phenomenon.  The fans were on top of it from the get-go.

If any artist has earned the right to record whatever strikes his fancy, that would be Paul.  I guess if I'm looking for McCartney rockers I can always play I'm Down and Long Tall Sally (songs on which he sang lead as a Beatle) back-to-back on my i-pod.  But I hope hitting age 71 is not the line of demarcation separating rock from strictly pop.  If so, I only have five more years before I might be forced to change my name to Johnny Pop. 

Movie Review: "Enough Said"

"Enough Said": B+.  Momma Cuandito and I went over to the Pig & Fiddle on 50th & France Wednesday afternoon to dissect the movie we'd just seen, Enough Said, at the Edina Theater.  As we were enjoying the tasty Brother Thelonious from California's North Coast Brewing, a brilliant (Brilliant!) thought came to me. When you see a science fiction movie, it is highly doubtful that the script writer is writing from personal experience.  Unless she has been on a rocket ship or has fought aliens, the script is mostly the product of the writer's imagination (not that that's a bad thing).  The same can be said for cowboy movies, psychological thrillers, horror movies, most war movies, most detective movies, etc. The characters in those films probably do not resemble or reflect the writer's own life's experiences.  However, in a movie such as Enough Said, which is about a middle aged couple, Albert (James Gandolfini) and Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who are divorced from other people but hoping to make a go of it, the events which occur are not that extraordinary -- in fact, most are ordinary.  As I suspected after doing a little post-viewing research, writer-director Nicole Holofcener herself was married for ten years and now has been divorced for another ten.  The script reflects the strong likelihood that she was not relying solely on her imagination.  She is familiar with the terrain.  This is the very kind of movie I most enjoy: a small scale film involving everyday people who are put in interesting situations.

The other huge attribute which the movie has going for it is that Albert is probably my favorite character of all the movies I've seen this year.  If ever a man was comfortable in his own skin, without the need to pretend he's something he's not, it is Albert.  Expertly played by Gandolfini in his final role before he unexpectedly died five months ago, Albert is not a slob, but he does not put organization or neatness at the top of his priority list.  Last year's fashions are just fine; so are last decade's.  If something breaks he is more apt to do without than to get it fixed or replaced.  He likes the opposite sex -- he's even cordial to his ex -- but he is not a chaser.  He is comfortable in his pajamas at mid-day, so why bother changing?  His  eighteen year old daughter is the most important thing in his life, but on those occasions when she chooses to be with her mother, Albert rolls with it.  He is an extremely likable guy with many admirable qualities. Of course, if you're looking for faults, those are easy to find too.

 

The story line is a familiar one in the sense that it involves one of the two main characters knowing something that the other does not, and a sequence of events which determines if, when and how the second person will find out.  This movie reminded me a little bit of You've Got Mail, in which Tom Hanks' character secretly corresponds via e-mail with a business rival, played by Meg Ryan.  He knows who she is, but she does not realize her "pen pal" is Hanks.  In Enough Said, Eva figures out that the guy she has started to date, Albert, is the ex of her new friend, Marianne (Catherine Keener).  She tries to keep that nugget of info a secret from both Albert and Marianne.  Eva may be looking for exactly the right time to fess up, but once she's waited beyond a reasonable period, all the while getting Marianne's negative takes on her ill-fated marriage to Albert, she is in a pickle from which there seems to be no escape.

 

Louis-Dreyfus does a commendable job as Eve.  The roll calls for a lot of comedy, such as her interactions with some of the clients who hire her as a masseuse, and with her teenage daughter and her daughter's friends.  Her scenes with Gandolfini, which are the best in the film, contain an excellent mixture of comedy and seriousness.  The viewer is quickly immersed in their relationship, and the fact that these are two actors we're watching never enters the consciousness.  The dialogue is witty, charming and sometimes sorrowful. Most of all, as we progress from scene to scene, it is real.  Director Holofcener, who is more well known for her work in television, knows how to keep a story moving.  At almost every turn, just when I thought a scene should end, it did.

 

I highly recommend this film.  I could not give it a grade higher than B+ due to my being unable to buy into the thought process of Eve once she has met Albert and Marianne's daughter, Tess (played by the very pretty Eve Hewson, an Irish lass who is the daughter of U2 singer Bono).  Surely Eve should have changed her modus operandi at that point and come clean to Tess' parents.  Instead, the deception continues.  But if my grading system allowed for a mark between B+ and A-, that's where I'd rate it.