Intelligent Life On Planet Rock
Unlikely Subject Matter For Songs
Posted by Fraser Lewry on 13 October 2009 - 8:17am.
The song I'm currently obsessed with is Toy Factory Fire by former Mutton Bird and occasional Crowded Houser Don McGlashan (I'd provide a link, but it doesn't appear to be on either YouTube or Spotify). It tells the story of the Kader Toy Factory Fire in 1993, in which nearly 200 Thai workers were killed, from the point of view of a New York toy company executive looking at photos of the factory - incriminating evidence he'd withheld from investigators.
I can't think of many less likely subjects to be covered in song, or anything written from a less likely perspective. I'm sure you'll prove me wrong.
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The Albion Band
'Gresford Disaster' is an account of an actual tragedy in Wales in 1934. Wonderful song on the excellent Rise Up Like The Sun album.
"The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"
by Gordon Lightfoot - a tale of a contemporary maritime disaster - and perhaps strangely but heart-warmingly too - made it to No.2 on the Billboard chart
New York Mining Disaster
by Bee Gees springs to mind
Especially interesting/unlikely…
… given that the titular disaster (don't forget the '1941' bit) is entirely fictitious.
Trimdon Grange Explosion by Alan Price (& others)
Though I think its a song by the townspeople out of their direct experience so maybe not unexpected subject matter.
The Commander Thinks Aloud - The Long Winters
Is about the Space Shuttle disaster and manages to be both beautiful and heartbreaking.
The riff
that launched a thousand rock dreams..."Smoke on the Water"
Johny Cash's Tribute to the R100
airship songs anyone?
http://open.spotify.com/track/2LXvE0O27xsbmy10xcnLyk
In Germany Before The War
There was a man who owned a store
In nineteen hundred thirty four
In Dusselford
And every day at five o nine
He'd cross the park down to the Rhine
And he'd sit there by the shore
I'm looking at the river
But I'm thinking of the sea
I'm looking at the river
But I'm thinking of the sea
A little girl has lost her way
With hair of gold and eyes of gray
Reflected in his glasses
As he watches her
A little girl has lost her way
I'm looking at the river
But I'm thinking of the sea
Thinking of the sea
Thinking of the sea
We lie beneath the autumn sky
My little golden girl and I
And she lies very still
I've always found this song disturbing, and wondered what led Randy Newman to pen it. I've read the theories, but I'd like to hear Randy's explanation. I doubt he'll elaborate, he's like that.
Randy Newman Louisiana 1927
Randy Newman has good form in this area. Louisiana 1927 is such a simple song in certain respects but it makes the point of the subject matter so much more meaningful because of it. I'm a bit of a latecomer to Mr Newman but he is one hell of a songwriter.
What has happened down here is the wind have changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain
Rained real hard and rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline
The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through cleard down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangelne
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tyrin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The President say, "Little fat man isn't it a shame what the river has
done
To this poor crackers land.
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tyrin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
I didnt realise there was much of a mystery
Its about Peter Kurten - a child killer who terrorised inter-war Dusseldorf and was the subject of the Peter Lorre starring film "M" directed, I think, by Fritz Lang.
Aside from the pretty specific subject matter - really hope I dont come across as an arse - its a remarkable lyric. Its air of quiet menace is perfect on record and the musics almost nursey rhyme like repetition and simplicity makes the horror of its subject matter even more awful.
It's a masterclass in less-is-more songwriting. I remember having an argument about the song with a friend who thought it was sweet and touching. I seem to recall winning the debate on pointing out the line "and she lies very still" meant the little golden girl was dead.
Well, it's not so much that there's any mystery
about what people have speculated the subject matter to be, which is as you mention, but that the speculation has never been commented upon, to my knowledge, by the man who penned the song.
I love Randy Newman's material completely. This morning I drove to work to the accompaniment of Harps And Angels, and it's fabulous.
Fair Point
but why does he need to? It unambigously is about Peter Kurten so why would he need to confirm the obvious.
No-one expects him to confirm that "Sail Away" is about slavery. It is.
Agreed about this marvellous and still underrated songwriter though.
A recent one
Who'd have thought the story of Shane Warne's 'ball of the century' told from the perspective of bamboozled English batsman Mike Gatting would make such a brilliant ditty as the Duckworth Lewis Method's Jiggery Pokery?
Lord Franklin
There are many versions of this traditional ballad, but I would recommend the John Renbourne/Pentangle version in particular. It's subject matter is a doomed Victorian era arctic expedition.
Stand Up for Judas
... by Dick Gaughan ... who reckoned old Judas wasn't such a bad bloke after all (from a Marxist view that Jesus had a tree-hugging acceptance of Roman imperialism)
'Judas sought a world where no one starved or begged for bread. "The poor are always with us," Jesus said...'
That'll be because religious teachers
are always on about how brill things will be AFTER you've died, as long as you do as you're told.
Oh no! I've mentioned the 'R word' on another thread.
Forgive me Lord Fraser, I know not what I do.
The Spanish Civil War making it to Number 1...?
When such things still mattered...
courtesy of Mr Wire
at last I can use my pointless indie band negging headline
"If you tolerate Bis then your children will next"....
Very good…
… But couldn't you have:
“If you tolerate Bis then the Railway Children will be next“?
of course good one
or even the sex gang ...
The source of the greatest football chant ever
Just had to squeeze this in here.
When Heart of Midlothian appointed Graeme Rix as their manager there was considerable uproar given that Mr Rix had recently completed a prison sentence for having unlawful sex with an underage girl.
The tabloids were in a predictable frenzy but I think Hibernian fans said it better. At the next Edinburgh derby they sang:
"If you tolerate Rix, then your children will be next"
I doubt that will ever be beaten.
I know nothing about football...
... but a pal at work assured me that, at a recent match between a Scottish team and an Italian team the Scottish fans were chanting "We're gonna deep fry your pizzas, deep fry your pizzas, deep fry your pizzas" which made me laugh an awful lot...
I know even less about football...
...but I'm reliably informed that the Scottish fans mug up on the local dish of whoever they're playing and promise, in song, to deep fry it.
Although
Fernando by ABBA got there first, didn't it?
Streetband's 'Toast' was fairly unlikely too, wasn't it?
Getting back to the original topic…
… I'd nominate Being Boiled by the Human League.
All together now…
“Listen to the voice of Buddha
Saying stop your sericulture…"
etc
I don't know the song...
...or the incident but songs about disasters, whether accidental or deliberate are commonplace in the folk or singer/songwriter genres.
Perspective is a different thing altogether though. As mentioned earlier in this thread, Randy Newman would be serving life in jail if some of the songs he's written were being sung from events in his life. He likes to call the storyteller the "unreliable narrator" in his songs.
Steve Earle often does songs from someone else's perspective. "Taneytown" is the story of a young black mans first visit to town...with disastrous consequences....double disaster actually. "John Walker's Blues" is from the view of the American Taliban. Not pro Iraq or anti US as Fox news would have you think; it's just the story of a fucked up kid. "Ellis Unit One" (this is the name of the Texas death row prison)is an anti death penalty song, sung by a prison warder, whose job it is is to drag them kicking and screaming from their cells and strap them into the gurney so they can be murdrered by the state.
5:15am - Mark Knopfler
Fruit machine corruption in Newcastle Upon Tyne in 1967
Hoover Factory - Elvis Costello
Paean to listed building "five miles out of London on the Western Avenue"
Halley's Comet
Mary Chapin Carpenter sang of the stellar snowball in her song "When Halley Came To Jackson" referencing the comet's flybys in 1910 and 1986.
That famous Morrissey b-side...
"Munich Air Disaster 1958". Not his finest hour:
We love them
We mourn for them
Unlucky boys of Red
I wish I'd gone down
Gone down with them
To where Mother Nature makes their bed
We miss them
Every night we kiss them
Their faces fixed in our heads
I wish I'd gone down
Gone down with them
To where Mother Nature makes their bed
They can't hurt you
Their style will never desert you
Because they're all safely dead
I wish I'd gone down
Gone down with them
Surely
that cant be real?
Can it?
Oh it can...
Truly Appalling
I used to worship Morrisey as an impressionable teen. I cant fathom why anymore.
And isn't the idea of Morrissey as a teen fitba fan a little incongrous.
Was Liam Gallagher going to the ballet at the time?
Back then he was good!
But these days, when even his "proper" records are all too often lacklustre and uninspired, it's no surprise that the phrase "Morrissey b-side" holds about as much appeal as "Dan Brown first draft" or "Eastenders gone wild".
This must take some beating...
Colin Meloy describing the story behind The Decemberists' The Crane Wife
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crane_Wife
I'd like it a lot better
if Colin Melloy didnt sound almost exactly like Elmer Fudd were he to front a middle ranking American Indie band.
I know what you mean
"it was a loyng noight..."
Still love them though.
The weird pronouciation
I actually find quite endearing. Its the host of speech impediments that, once noticed, I find hard to listen to.
He's got problems with "W" sounds, "R" sounds and "L" sounds.
He should really make a virtue of it and write a song called "You Pesky Wabbit".
Frank Zappa had a doozy...
An armed robber who used to administer enemas to his female victims? You couldn't make it up. Thus was born one of Frank Zappa's most memorable songs.
Nice
So he's the Macc Lads with better pr.
and
waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better chops.
I say this as someone who unironically owns and listens to Macc Lads albums. They're comedically offensive and, to me, funny as a result.
And, if you think that was faintly scatlogical and a bit off colour, there's always this:
Of the legion of the ridiculously
lauded Zappa is king and frankly never has so much missed placed praise been piled on someone so undeserving.
As they say
chaque à son gôut.
as they don't
say in france.
In France?
You fell into my cunningly constructed France Zappa trap:
Zappa Again
The Jacobite rebellion
On Genesis's Eleventh Earl of Mar, from Wind and Wuthering (or 'Wild and Wittering' as a friend of mine, who was not a fan, called it).
The Battle Of Epping Forest
On "Selling England By the Pound" is another oddball subject, but then Genesis seemed to specialize in 'em in their early days.
"Get 'Em Out By Friday"?
Did I hear once
that e=mc^2 by Big Audio Dynamite is entirely about the films of Nicolas Roeg?
(No subject)
You probably did…
… cos it is, like.
(I like a bit of a cavort)
You'll look funny when you're fifty...
... he did too
The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union
covered twice that I know of; firstly by Al Stewart in Roads To Moscow and then The Waterboys in Red Army Blues.
Having said that, most of Al Stewart's Past, Present & Future is filled with unlikely subject matter apart from the above: Admiral Jackie Fisher; Hitler's June 1944 Putsch; US President Warren Harding and "prophecies" of Nostradamus.
Not that rare then
there's also "Stalin was stalling" by Robert Wyatt.
So it seems
Are there any songs on the joint Nazi / Soviet assault on Poland?
That would be
Stalin Wasn't Stallin', as originally performed by the Golden Gate Quartet in (I think) 1943 when Uncle Joe was one of the good guys...
We have some contradiction
ChrisG says above says it was the about Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
I don't know the song, so who is right?
I think early OMD deserve a mention
1. Stanlow - inspired by the Stanlow Oil Refinery.
2. Electricity - "nuclear and HEP" and generally how marvellous electricity is.
3. Enola Gay - about the aircraft that dropped the Hiroshima bomb.
Enola Gay is remarkable because it is so upbeat, poptastic and danceable that it really should be about how great it is to be in love or something along those lines.
4. Red Frame/White Light
It's about a particular telephone box close to where they lived. Lyrical highlights:
"...You have a grey book
On a metal shelf
...You have a yellow book
With adverts
...There is a black lead to a dial and phone"
Donald Crowhurst
The ill-fated 1960s round-the-world sailor was the subject of iLiKETRAiNS' track The Deception.
(Incidentally, next time Film Four's documentary on the subject, Deep Water, is on it's well worth watching.)
A special mention for
They might be Giants
James K Polk - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_K._Polk
In 1844, the Democrats were split
The three nominees for the presidential candidate
Were Martin Van Buren, a former president and an abolitionist
James Buchanan, a moderate
Lewis Cass, a general and expansionist
From Nashville came a dark horse riding up
He was James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump
Austere, severe, he held few people dear
His oratory filled his foes with fear
The factions soon agreed
He's just the man we need
To bring about victory
Fulfill our manifest destiny
And annex the land the Mexicans command
And when the vote was cast the winner was
Mister James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump
In four short years he met his every goal
He seized the whole southwest from Mexico
Made sure the tarriffs fell
And made the English sell the Oregon territory
He built an independent treasury
Having done all this he sought no second term
But precious few have mourned the passing of
Mister James K. Polk, our eleventh president
Young Hickory, Napoleon of the Stump
MEET JAMES ENSOR - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ensor
Meet James Ensor
Belgium's famous painter
Dig him up and shake his hand
Appreciate the man
Before there were junk stores
Before there was junk
He lived with his mother and the torments of Christ
The world was transformed
A crowd gathered round
Pressed against his window so they could be the first
To meet James Ensor
Belgium's famous painter
Raise a glass and sit and stare
Understand the man
He lost all his friends
He didn't need his friends
He lived with his mother and repeated himself
The world has forgotten
The world moved along
The crowd at his window went back to their homes
Meet James Ensor
Meet James Ensor
Belgium's famous painter
Dig him up and shake his hand
Appreciate the man
etc.etc.
The Cheese Alarm
is one I'm rather fond of, by Robyn Hitchcock -
Roquefort and grueyere and slippery Brie
All of these cheeses they happen to me
Oh please
Rough pecorino and moody Rams Hall
Stop me before I just swallow it all
Oh please
Somebody ring the cheese alarm
Oh please
Somebody ring the cheese alarm
Goats' cheese cylinder, tangy and white
Roll over me in the flickering night
Oh please
Chaume and Jarlsberg, applewood smoked
"The pleasure is mine," he obligingly joked
Oh please
Somebody ring the cheese alarm
Oh please
Somebody ring the cheese alarm
Hey now, Fletcher, don't keep me up late
I can't even fit into size thirty-eights
Oh please
Juddering Stilton with your blue-blooded veins
You can't build a palace without any drains
Oh please
Oh please
Oh please
Half the world starving and half the world bloats
Half the world sits on the other and gloats
Oh please
Truckle of cheddar in a muslin rind
Would you give it all up for some real peace of mind?
Oh no
(Though a lot of his output is a bit unorthodox lyrically to say the least)
I always thought...
.... "Poofters Froth Wyoming Plans Ahead" by Zappa and Beefheart was an odd subject. It was about how a town in America was preparing for (I think) the 300th anniversary of the founding of the country. Weird.
illiinois
Sufjan Stevens is rather making a career out of this isn't he? With Albums about Michigan and Illinois.
Long term career plan
I recall reading an SS interview where he claimed he was going to do an album for every state.
Tachometers
are covered in depth by Bauhaus on their first album, In the Flat Field.
The song, Spy In The Cab, seemed to be based on concerns around the time that the device was designed to 'snoop' on drivers, and allowed me and my lorry driving dad a moment of bonding before returning to the default 'turn that rubbish off' position (which, when i think about it, he may well have been right more often than he was wrong!)
New York Mining Disaster 1941
it's not just the topic, its the fact that it was written by the bee gees
and then even more unlikelily it was covered by anarchist punk band (and later one hit wonder pop act) Chumbawamba, which is where I heard it: http://open.spotify.com/track/6jEUBzoTcchvH1QZb0Ga2R
In fact every song by chumbawamba could generally be thought of as pretty unlikely in both subject matter and style. Although that probably makes them likely if you see what I mean!
For example this whole album which is not only brilliant but also covers a number of unlikely subjects (and within that a nice direct love song which is unlikely only in its context) and even more unliklily samples traditional folk songs within a techno(ish) landscape:
http://open.spotify.com/album/6lEE26z5bIKYshaRNH5Jwi
and also
I'm in a duo that quite frequently writes songs about unlikely subject matter, from kids who play music outloud on their mobiles to transpotters at Leyland station
http://www.myspace.com/themiddleclassbastards
what we try to do, like a lot of the artists we're talking about above, is come at unlikely subjects from unlikely angles. Anyway sorry for the self promotion but it seemed appropriate for once.
No Courgettes
Keith Donnelly & Les Barker
here's a song that fits the brief that I just remembered
Steve Goodman had some interesting ones
'The Lincoln Park Pirates' - about towing away vehicles (and charging for recovery).
'Penny Evans' - about a Vietnam Widow - sung in the first person from her perspective.
'Banana Republics' , about expat Americans abroad.
and of course
'The Vegetable Song'
Jimmy Buffet's 'The Great Filling Station Holdup' is another curio, about robbing the eponymous filling station.
Joe Jackson
I can never forget the early live recording he did (Rock Goes To College I think) where he has a mini-rant (from memory, but I'm sure pretty accurate) about "have you noticed how all songs are about '"I'm in love and world is wonderful", or "My girlfriend left me and the world isn't wonderful" - this one's about a guy who works in a butchers shop in Peckham who gets involved in voodoo'. Buggered if I can remember which track it was though.
H5N1 killed a wild swan
H5N1 killed a wild swan
It was a kind of omen
Of everything to come
I can't believe it's happening
And that it's happening now
I can't believe it's happening
It's coming true somehow
On Canvey Island, 1953
Many lives were lost
With the records of a football team
I can't believe it's happening
And that it's happening now
I can't believe it's happening
It's coming true somehow
Don't you think it's strange, you know
The way it all works out
Brace yourself for storms and Summer droughts
Sometimes it's hard to tell
If it's going well
You know the odds against it
Were so phenomenal
I can't believe it's happening
And that it's happening now
I can't believe it's happening
It's coming true somehow