Friday, March 31, 2006

Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.

TheBoy and I were discussing music and songs that we like and such the other day, and it got me to thinking about those songs, or lyrics, that reverberate throughout your life - always having meaning (even if that meaning shifts as you grow and change), or constantly evoking a stage in your life that has (generally thankfully) passed.

I'm passionate about music, and tend to get stuck in late '70s/early '80s punk/ska/new wave era. Anger and aggression and fun and the beginnings of goth music and it's all good. Well, mostly.

Bizarrely, however, that era isn't necessarily where I get my "memory trigger" songs from. I listen to that era for true enjoyment, to dance or sing along. Those songs that trigger a reverberation in me...they tend to be not so much for the dancing and singing along.

Because I'm a maudlin beyotch.

So, in some sort of bizarre order, but probably not really, here are some of the songs that really affect me, and the reasons(ish) why...

Novacaine for the Soul by The Eels

This is off the album Beautiful Freak, but I have never listened to any other Eels songs. I heard this on Triple J back in 1996, and it was on that year's Hottest 100, and I became seriously obsessed with the song. It's one of those incredibly angsty songs that goes so well with your early twenties, when you're trying to figure out the world, and doing incredibly stupid things as part of that learning process. Lyrics like "You'd better give me something To fill the hole Before I splutter out" reflect that sense of not being engaged in your life...Well, they do to me, anyway. Listening to this song is guarenteed to take me straight back to that time, the emotional landscape that I had, and generally I get into a bit of a funk when I listen to it. Which, of course, is kind of the point.

Pepper by Butthole Surfers

This is off the album Electric Larryland, but as above, I haven't really listened to that much else by the Butthole Surfers. I, again, heard this on Triple J back in 1996, and it was, again, on that year's Hottest 100, and, you guessed it, I became obsessed with the song. Must have been my age, or the time, or something. Anyone sensing a pattern here?

Anyhoo, the most reverberant thing for me about this song is the chorus:

"I don't mind the sun sometimes
The images it shows
I can taste you on my lips
And smell you in my clothes
Cinnamon and sugary
And softly spoken lies
You never know just how you look
Through other people's eyes"

And of the chorus, the most important part for me are those last two lines. That realisation that you eventually come to that you can never understand other people, and they'll probably never truly understand you, because nobody can get into someone else's head.

I really explored that a lot, and it is kind of the basis of my favourite episode of the The X Files: "Jose Chung's From Outer Space". Everyone sees, describes, remembers, the same situations from completely different perspectives - because what else can you do? It comes from your perception, your needs, your context - how could your description of any moment be anything like anybody's experience of that moment?

What other songs, hmmm? (Coming back to finish a piece almost two weeks after you started it is a little confusing...)

Anna by The Beatles

This is off the album Please Please Me (yes, I prefer the earlier pure pop Beatles. I will give in my Music Appreciation badge, and hang my head in shame.) I love this song, initially because it was on a mix tape that one of my mother's boyfriends gave her, and I always used to listen to the tape as a kid. It was only many years later that I realised a) Anna is an unusual song to put on a tape for your girlfriend (who shares the name) given the lyrics:

"All of my life,
I've been searchin' for a girl
To love me like I love you.
But every girl I've ever had,
Breaks my heart and leaves me sad.
What am I, what am I supposed to do?"

and the story behind it that Anna wants to leave the guy because she's in love with someone else, and b) that the whole mix tape was a poem to the relationship between my mother and her boyfriend - with songs like Anna, Suffragette City by David Bowie, and Eighteen by Alice Cooper. All of those years I'd been listening to it, and never realised that I was listening in to this private conversation within their relationship.

Weird. And maybe the wrong interpretation, but one that I stick with!

Man Overboard by Do-Re-Mi

Off the album Domestic Harmony, this song...this song used to (and sometimes still does) say to me everything I needed to know about heterosexual relationships. The song caused a bit of a stir upon release because it contained the line: "You talk about penis envy, Your friends applaud". The anger and passion with which Deborah Conway spits out the lyrics just opens me up every time I hear this song. And such wonderfully bleak and angry lyrics they are:

"I've tried to play it open handed
I've tried to make a fist of this
Even when the questions are candid
My arrows miss
I've heard about your fragile ego
Your shield, your sword
What am I expected to do?
Shout man overboard?"

Okay, I admit it. I am incredibly cynical about relationships. It's a thing. Even when in one (*waves at her beloved*), I'm hard pressed to be a true romantic (whatever that may be). So here goes with trying to explain the next song choice.

Rest In Peace
by Joss Whedon, from "Once More, With Feeling".
Performed by James Marsters

Not the whole song, mind. The most romantic lyrics I have ever heard, and that make me all gooey and sigh deep inside, are from the slow break in this song (the section which, I believe, actually began its life as part of another song):

"I know I should go
But I follow you like a man possessed
There's a traitor here beneath my breast
And it hurts me more than you've ever guessed
If my heart could beat
It would break my chest
"

And in bold is the line that makes me all choked up - because Spike's a vampire, and he has no heartbeat.

I'm taking a moment...And I'm done.

To borrow from Neil Gaiman - I don't ask you what romantic songs make you all gooey, do I?

So, on that note, I think I will away to dig out my singles collection and figure out some more songs that I can list the next time I can't think of anything useful to say.

Happy listening!!

Comments:
Ahh yes, the torments of songs long past. To this day every time I hear any Pink Floyd song I think of doing doughnuts in a four wheel drive in the middle of the night. With the lights off. The memory itself has long ago turned to mist but the feeling of giddy nausea has never quite left me.

By the way my beloved, you are a romantic. Anyone who says different.. well.. i'll take me belt to em, and by gum!.. me pants'll fall down.
 
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