mrshl | blog

Easily one of my favorite Cardigans songs because of it’s gorgeous descending hook, "In the Round" (from Super Extra Gravity) includes some pretty basic relationship-type lyrics from Nina Persson. As is so often the case with Cardigans, it’s either about communicating with one another or getting it on. Or both:

I am young and I’m alive
I want to talk about things
I am young and I own my life
I need to talk about it, baby

I am one but I asked for two
I didn’t get anything
This puppet’s lonely without you
It’s tough to walk without strings

I do my dance in the round

You might have heard of this concept before: Dancing in the Round. Maybe from Michael Jackson?

Billie Jean

She says I am the one
Gonna dance on the floor
in the round.

I’m fairly certain these allusions to dancing in the round refer to the centuries old practice of celebrants surrounding a single dancer and watching them throw down some virtuoso moves while everyone claps and kicks their legs up high. For Jackson, the reference is probably explicitly related to breakdancing.

But Persson and Jackson invert the context for this tradition by focusing on the isolation inherent in round dancing. Dancing alone in the center of the circle brings with it a pressure to perform under intense scrutiny. This kind of alienation can be exhilarating for a while. But in "Billie Jean" Jackson seems to use performance as both an escape from and, a metaphor for, the norms of a society that would have him care for a woman and a child suspected to be his.

Persson, too is feeling the pressure of performance, and she wants someone to share it with. Or maybe she doesn’t:

I am young, coming at you live
People gonna talk about me
When I’m done, please hang me high
For everybody to see

Cause I do my dance in the round
So people clap your hands

But whether you spurn it or succumb, there is always centrifugal urge to break from the circle and find a partner, where one can find the comfort and trust that comes with an audience of one.

I love this song, but I confess I’ve never noticed the lyrics are actually a variant of the Stagger Lee mythology. That’s kind of embarrassing, because they say the name right there in the song. Reading the lyrics, it’s pretty clear this is the familiar story of Stagger Lee, the man who shot his friend because he was playing keep-away with Stack’s hat.

Along with House of the Rising Sun, Stagger Lee is one of the most famous blues songs ever. It’s been recorded a gazillion times, and featured in countless news stories including one on NPR and this comprehensive story in The Guardian. In the Clash’s version (according to Wikipedia it’s actually a Rulers cover), Stagger is a working class hero, struggling for dignity and respect.

Stagger Lee throwed seven
Billy said that he throwed eight
So Billy said, hey Stagger! I’m gonna make my big attack
I’m gonna have to leave my knife in your back

Why do you try to cheat?
And trample people under your feet
Don’t you know it is wrong?
To cheat the trying man
Don’t you know it is wrong?
To cheat the trying man
So you better stop, it is the wrong ‘em boyo

You lie, steal, cheat and deceit
In such a small, small game
Don’t you know it is wrong
To cheat the trying man
Don’t you know it is wrong
To cheat the trying man
You’d better stop, it is the Wrong ‘Em Boyo

Billy Boy has been shot
And Stagger Lee’s come out on top
Don’t you know it is wrong
To cheat the trying man
Don’t you know it is wrong
To cheat Stagger man
You’d better stop
It is the Wrong ‘Em Boyo

In the more familiar versions by Lloyd Price and Mississippi John Hurt, Stagger Lee is a “bad man.” Here are the lyrics from Hurt’s version:

Billy DeLyon told Stagolee, “Please don’t take my life
I got two little babes and a darling, loving wife”
That bad man, oh cruel Stagolee

“What’d I care about your two little babes and darling, loving wife?
You done stole my Stetson hat, I’m bound to take your life.”
That bad man, oh cruel Stagolee

Boom boom, boom boom,
Went the forty-four.
Well when I spied Billy DeLyon
He’s lyin’ down on the floor.
That bad man, oh cruel Stagolee

Gentlemens of the Jury,
What you think of that?
Stagolee killed Billy DeLyon ’bout a five-dollar Stetson hat. That bad man, oh cruel Stagolee

Standin’ on the gallows, head way up high
At twelve o’clock, they killed him, they’s all glad to see him die
That bad man, oh cruel Stagolee

I’ll leave you with a more unorthodox “bad man” version from R.L. Burnside, which influenced the Samuel L. Jackson performance of the song in Black Snake Moan.

Because I followed a strange arc in my musical education, I had never heard of Alex Chilton or Big Star when I first became acquainted with the equally unfamous Replacements. The words to the ‘Mat’s “Alex Chilton” therefore made very little sense to me when I first heard them.

If he was from Venus, would he feed us with a spoon?
If he was from mars, wouldn’t that be cool?
Standing right on campus, would he stamp us in a file?
Hangin down in Memphis all the while.

chorus:
Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes round
They sing I’m in love. what’s that song?
I’m in love with that song.

Cerebral rape and pillage in a village of his choice.
Invisible man who can sing in a visible voice.
Feeling like a hundred bucks, exchanging good lucks face to face.
Checkin’ his stash by the trash at St. Mark’s place.

(chorus)

I never travel far, without a little big star
Runnin’ round the house, Mickey mouse and the tarot cards.
Falling asleep with a flop pop video on.
If he was from Venus, would he meet us on the moon?
If he died in Memphis, then that’d be cool, babe.

The truth is they don’t make much sense now, either. If you had to do a blind Pepsi challenge, you might guess Frank Black wrote these lyrics, what with their references to Mars/Venus, Memphis, & raping/pillaging. To understand the verses, I’d probably have to read a biography of the man, and I haven’t done that.

The chorus is another matter. I know enough about Chilton to understand the central irony of his career as the lead singer of the Box Tops and later as the co-founder of Big Star, a band nearly as unfortunate and influential as the Velvet Underground. Chilton enjoyed early success at age 16 with a HUGE hit: “The Letter.”

The Box Tops had a handful of other hits, too. Children by the millions really dug the hell out of Chilton. He was a bona fide teen idol. But his hits were mostly written by studio pros.

By the time Chilton began his second career as half of the songwriting duo behind Big Star, he had full creative control. But the listeners were gone. Big Star’s twin masterpieces #1 Record and Radio City (available as a single CD) are part of the alt rock canon now, but they were pretty much ignored when they were released in the early ’70s.

Today, the band is most often heard indirectly, through the opening credits of That 70s Show. For the show, the Big Star song “In The Street” is covered by Cheap Trick. Here’s the Halloween version (complete with theremin).

Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes round
They sing I’m in love. what’s that song?
I’m in love with that song.

Lots of people call OK Computer their favorite Radiohead record. The Bends is my fave, but picking Computer is a choice I can live with. Its depressing proggy brilliance is acknowledged the world over, and I bought it the day it came out. Ten years later, my love is unabated.

OK Computer might be the greatest album of the last 20 years or the greatest of the 1990s. But OK Computer isn’t flawless. This morning I’m asking you to remember my least favored Radiohead song, “Electioneering.” Among the sophisticated, elegiac laments that dominate the record, Radiohead just had to insert a mediocre rocker that’s dumb as a bag of hammers.

What’s wrong with it? You could point to the shrieking repetition of its bleating guitar hook, or the too-obvious ascending/descending bassline that makes it sound like the tossed-off jam session it probably was. Meh, I’ll go with the lyrics: a first-person, fourth-grade critique of globalism and American-dominated world politics:

I will stop, I will stop at nothing.
Say the right things when electioneering
I trust I can rely on your vote.
When I go forwards you go backwards
and somewhere we will meet.
When I go forwards you go backwards
and somewhere we will meet.
Ha ha ha
Riot shields, voodoo economics,
it’s just business, cattle prods and the I.M.F.
I trust I can rely on your vote.
When I go forwards you go backwards
and somewhere we will meet.
When I go forwards you go backwards
and somewhere we will meet.

At least I think that’s what it’s about. The song does little more than namecheck a few specific evils before getting back to its braying chorus. Elsewhere on OK computer, singer Thom Yorke does a great job weaving these kinds of images into a nightmarish landscape in which our lust for technology and withering attention spans has reduced human kind to a droning, impotent wreck.

Unlike “Let Down” or “No Surprises,” Electioneering doesn’t contain the kind of wistful compliance that makes the nightmare seem so frighteningly plausible. It’s OK Computer’s “Ignoreland“; a shrill idiot protester marring an otherwise masterful gathering of sad-bastard musics. But, like REM, Radiohead was smart enough to sequence their dud at no. 8, leaving them four more songs to recover and save the record from derailing.

The Old 97s - Question

Someday, somebody’s gonna ask you
A question that you should say “yes” to
Once in your life
Baby, tonight I’ve got a question for you

For a bizarre alternate YouTube video featuring the original, click here.

At Ty’s birthday party last weekend, one of the songs blasted from the party boat speakers was a forgotten favorite of mine from the 90s and one of the most genuinely creepy hit songs I’ve ever heard. I was again reminded when I saw the video on a Tumblr site devoted to MTV’s 120 minutes.

Faith No More - Midlife Crisis

For some reason, I’ve never checked out the lyrics to this song. I’m sure I must have seen them printed in the insert for my copy of Angel Dust, but I’ve got no memory of it. So as I’m printing them for you in this post, it’s basically the first time I’m seeing them as well. The full lyric is here, so I’m just giving you the first verse and bridge and the chorus:

Go on and wring my neck
Like when a rag gets wet
A little discipline
For my pet genius
My head is like lettuce
Go on and dig your thumbs in
I cannot stop giving in
I’m thirty-something

Sense of security
Like pockets jingling
Midlife crisis
Suck ingenuity
Down through the family tree

You’re perfect, yes, it’s true
But without me you’re only you (you’re only you)
Your menstruating heart
It ain’t bleeding enough for two

Now that I’m reading, and singing it back to myself, I think that line in bold might be one of my all-time faves. No wonder I don’t remember reading these lyrics when I was a kid. I wouldn’t have understood them. Not the way I read them now.

Oh, man, track #69 from Cracker’s Kerosene Hat record was probably my favorite song of 1994. Looking back, I’m not sure why. It’s not like the lyrics were particularly funny or even memorable. I think it must have been the beer-soaked chorus that made its singers sound drunk–even when they were sober. It was my freshman year of college, and I sang as loudly as anyone. Here’s an excerpt of my favorite bit (full lyric here):

Called my mom from a payphone
I said “I’m down to my last.”
She said “I sent you to college…
now go call your dad.”
And the waitress that he married,
well she hung up the phone.
You know she never did like me,
but I can stand on my own.

Sold my plasma in Amsterdam.
Spent it all in a night,
buying drinks at the Melk Weg
for a soldier in drag.
And I’ll search the world over
for my angel in black.
Yeah, I’ll search the world over
for a Eurotrash Girl

Euro-trash Girl, Euro-trash girl.
Euro-trash Girl, (I’m a) Euro-trash girl.

For your further entertainment, here’s Cracker’s abridged video. 

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/_MEVWHMaFR8" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

And the “ironic” Chicks on Speed version.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/z0e4XuGJUMc" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

And yeah, I guess I’m just in a Cracker kind of mood tonight.

I’ve been listening to John Vanderslice’s new record, Emerald City, and I like it a lot. I didn’t listen to his last one, Pixel Revolt, but according to reviews I’ve read, his lyrics have become focused (some would say fixated) on 9 / 11 and its aftermath.

That’s not what I take away from listening to this record. Indeed, something about Vanderslice’s voice seems kind of beige to me. What I mean is that unlike his sometime collaborator John Darnielle (a.k.a., The Mountain Goats), Vanderslice’s vocals don’t really command me to pay attention. And despite the stripped down production of Emerald City, and Vanderslice’s increasing vocal similarity to Darnielle and Colin Meloy, it’s still the production I care about when I’m listening to Vanderslice record.

Anyway, yesterday I was listening to the record in my car, and one line from “Minaret” caught my attention:

An eye for an eye was a way to limit revenge
We’ve done away with all of that
Read how it all begins
It was written years before, same name, same war
I can see both sides and it paralyzed me inside

Turns out, he’s right. The biblical reference to “eye for an eye” is found in the book of Exodus, in the middle of a longer passage prescribing certain punishments for certain offenses:

Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye’s sake.

And if he smite out his manservant’s tooth, or his maidservant’s tooth; he shall let him go free for his tooth’s sake.

If an ox gore a man or a woman, that they die: then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall be quit.

The whole idea of “eye for an eye” wasn’t an articulation of revenge, but a substitute for it. It was a law intended to replace the chaos that can result when men respond with violence out of proportion to the act that has provoked them. Wikipedia brings the science:

The principle is found in Babylonian Law, see Code of Hammurabi. It is surmised that in societies not bound by the rule of law, if a person was hurt, then the injured person (or their relative) would take vengeful retribution on the person who caused the injury. The retribution might be much worse than the crime, perhaps even death. Babylonian law put a limit on such actions, restricting the retribution to be no worse than the crime, as long as victim and offender occupied the same status in society, while punishments were less proportional with disputes between social strata: like blasphemy or laesa maiestatis (against a god, viz., monarch, even today in certain societies), crimes against one’s social better were systematically punished as worse.

What I like about “Minaret” is how precisely it avoids / transcends politics. Sure, proportionality with respect to 9/11 is something Americans think a lot about. But there’s something more conceptual going on. “I can see both sides and it paralyzed me inside.” He repeats that line twice, emphasizing the balance sheet mentality required to think about justice in these terms.

There is a reason both Christ and Gandhi rejected even “proportionate” revenge. It creates two injuries from one wrong. Gandhi’s fundamental insight was that limiting revenge is difficult to do. “An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind.” I think it’s this double blindness, and the inability to limit revenge that’s so paralyzing in Minaret.