Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine So, what are you listening to?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3QEKT2mk_Q

Lately I find myself really getting into strong guitar songs and adult voices. Thin, reedy voices... I get that they appeal to some folk, but I've always liked powerful tastes in food, powerful colors in art and powerful sound. Perhaps its because i'm trying to learn guitar (Well, I say I am, but Im usually too damn tired or dirty to do much lately. Ain't life a bitch.) so, I'll be posting some things I like that keep to the strength theme.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSROm-vgVRk&feature=related

Simple, nice hook, lots of fun. Alan Jackson, never heard a bad thing about him. Seems like a pretty typical country boy.

Gretchen Wilson. Lady's got chops.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EflVJA6kKf0

Current car CD selection:

They Might Be Giants - Join Us
Tragically Hip - Fully Completely (honestly I didn't switch off of this disc for a good week or more).
Jimmy Fallon - Blow Your Pants Off
Ramones - Adios Amigos!
Bob Marley and the Wailers - Live!
Gorillaz - Gorillaz

Today I listened to selected songs from Morrissey's 2004 comeback album "You Are the Quarry." The album is half-brilliant, with some of the best songs of his career...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qgn1Rc0YJ4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZEGkhzvZRY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ8IRLScl3M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZS5scNrSVc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7F9RCsRezQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKoS5X4SMrY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6kf6olVaoo

...but the other half sounds...well...half-hearted.

It's still much better than anything he's recorded since.

T-Bone Burnett's first eponymous LP.

My receiver was already going, now the turntable is going, too.



I hate being broke!

Train's 50 Ways To Say Goodbye

James Bond theme songs, like;

The World is Not Enough

Goldeneye

and
Tomorrow Never Dies

We had the radio on a so-called classics station last night (so-called because music I listened to as a teen is no classic yet damn it!!)

Anyways, lots of great songs but the highlight was "Lonely is the Night" followed by "Sister Christian"

Genesis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9zj11gf9Qk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOCrYr7VaRI

"Follow You, Follow Me" was the first Genesis song I ever heard. It still pulls at the heart strings.

(And they look so young . . .)

My favorite Genesis song is Land of Confusion , in part because of the irresistible Splitting Image video but also because the song expresses the frustrations of the Reagan era/Cold War wind-down.

I love the lines, "I won't be home tonight/Our generation will put it right." They sound almost hopelessly naive but also optimistic for the future.

He Who, I love Land of Confusion, too. I think it's one of the hardest-rocking songs of the Collins era.

Agreed.

Even when Genesis wasn't rocking hard, they packed a lot of emotion, inventiveness, and even silliness into their music.

Here's another favorite, Abacab . The title comes from the chords of the song!

I Can\'t Dance is just awesomely catchy for me, it gets stuck in my head all the time.

Home by the Sea is another favorite. I have no idea what it's about, but I was reading a lot of Poe (Annabelle Lee, in her sepulchre by the sea...) and Lovecraft when it came out, and the song creeped me out with lines like 'shadows with no substance, in the shape of men.'

I liked Tonight, Tonight, Tonight until it became a beer jingle...

Ah...Genesis. Back when I liked Phil Collins enough to listen. Then he just became a...oh never mind.

I like Genesis. With Phil and Peter.

Those are great songs, too, Set.

Tonight's excusion into Youtube began with Genesis and to Murray Head's One Night in Bangkok . This song was part of a Broadway musical called "Chess," and was composed by Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Anderssen (better known as the male half of Abba) and Tim Rice (lyricist of "Jesus Christ Superstar" fame).

The lyrics are a little hard to understand at first, so here's a transcript .

It's basically about a burglar breaking into a haunted house.

That's actually what's always bothered me about the song. Rutherford's lyrics just seem so hopelessly naive. It just always feels like there should be some sort of ironic twist in the song that never comes. I've always preferred the much-less-catchy but much-more-introspective
Feeding the Fire which covers similar Cold War themes.

It was announced today that Michael Dunford, guitarist and main composer of Renaissance, passed away yesterday.

So, I've been listening to a lot of their stuff today.

Their biggest hit, Northern Lights.

One of the most beautiful songs ever, Ocean Gypsy.

A recent tune, Mystic and the Muse.

I'd never heard "Feed the Fire" before. Thanks for posting it. It's a much more sophisticated treatment of the same themes.

Sorry to hear about Dunford's passing.

Renaissance never really grabbed me. I was only interested in them as a peripheral connection to the Yardbirds (Keith Relf and Jim McCarty were original members of Renaissance), but their music was very haunting and beautiful.

A few more thoughts on "Land of Confusion":

The song's naivete harkens back to the '60s, when bands of that era thought they could change the world with their music. Naive, yes, but I find it hopeful that every generation thinks it can make a positive difference.

I still admire the lyrics, "There's too many men, too many people/making too many problems/And not much love to go round. . . . This is the world we live in/And these are the hands we're given/Use them and let's start trying/To make it a place worth living in." It's not the most profound statement, but in plain language they urge the listener to take action with whatever talents and skills are at his or her disposal to bring more love into the world. Not a bad goal, indeed.

There was definitely a surge in 'musical activism' with things like Farm Aid and 'We Are the World' and various bands making a commitment to not play Sun City (in South Africa) as a protest against Apartheid, etc. Suddenly rich and popular people with tons of money and tons of fans, asking themselves, 'is there something I should be doing with all this other than blowing it all on parties and coke?'

Various bands and artists touched on the Cold War / Soviet theme, the Scorpions singing 'only love can bring down the wall, someday', Sting singing that Russians 'love their children too,' even Elton John singing about a forbidden romance with someone named Nikita 'with eyes like ice on fire,' etc. (back when he wasn't 'officially' gay yet, and people could poke fun that he'd 'accidentally' used a Russian man's name for the woman he was expected to be singing about...).

And Billy Joel, with 'We Didn't Start the Fire,' trying to wrap his head around how strange the world had gotten in his generation.

Don't forget Aerosmith's "Janie's Got a Gun," about child molestation. (Or, better yet, maybe we should forget it.)

Some of these songs probably genuinely attempted to address wrongs; others may have been bandwagon jumpers: "So-and-so wrote a socially relevant hit; let's see what we can come up with."

Back in the '60s, songs with socially relevant or political protest lyrics were new enough that they seemed more genuine, particularly when they were obviously not intended for radio airplay ("I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" by Country Joe & The Fish). Even popular artists like John Lennon risked being laughed at for using their fame as a bully pulpit to express their views.

In the era of MTV, though, there was nothing controversial (from an American standpoint, at least) about "Sun City," "We Are the World" or "Russians". Those songs merely confirmed sentiments already agreed upon most listeners. A bit more controversial and more clumsily genuine was "Do They Know It's Christmas?" by Band Aid (the song that kicked off the charity movement of the '80s)--clumsy because, as someone on TV pointed out a few years ago, it was condescending to people in Africa (of course they knew it was Christmas), but at least the song's heart was in the right place.

Social relevance and rock 'n' roll is always an awkward marriage. Many rockers simply don't know what they are talking about, but they have the clout to get their message across, and they have the means to motivate young people. On the other hand, simplistic views of complex social issues (such as the "our generation will put it right" mentality of "Land of Confusion") can do more harm than good. Young people who try to make change and find out it's not so simple may give up or retreat into cynicism and selfishness. Some argue that's what happened to the Woodstock generation in the '70s.

Part of the difference between the 60s and the 80s is that rock bands of the 60s were typically young people from solidly working class backgrounds, and so "socially relevant" songs often reflected more directly their experiences. A band like Genesis (and I think this generalizes to a lot of 80s "rock stars"), by contrast, were from a mostly upper middle class background (they were formed at an exclusive private school), and were well in their thirties and quite wealthy by the mid-80s, and so their attempts to come off as "socially relevant" tend to come off much more artificial.

With regards to the "naivete" of "Land of Confusion", part of what's frustrating to me is that typically they tend to be a much more cerebral band, and that there tends to be a theme running through a number of their songs that one should distrust the hubris of anyone who claims that they're going to suddenly make the world better. So LoC kind of generates a reaction of "haven't you guys listened to your own songs?" whenever I hear it.

Good points, Eryk.

As I recall, Phil Collins came from a working class background whereas Rutherford and Banks had been students at Charterhouse. But, as you point out, Collins was in his 30s and quite well off (and extremely popular as a solo artist) by the time of "Land of Confusion" -- the lyrics of which were written by Rutherford, in any case.

In the '50s and '60s, rock 'n' roll was by its very nature controversial, socially relevant, and a form of protest. By the '80s, this was no longer the case, and so attempts by artists of that era to come off as such do seem to fall flat if not come off as hypocritical.