Re: (RL) Lost Art of Storytelling?

[KWood@lightbridge.com]

Lyrics seem to be a major sticking point of most of today's music.  Most
song lyrics nowadays seem to be therapy-inspired autobiographical suicide
notes or synthetic rage power fantasies.  Folks these days seem to have
great difficulty conceptualizing of any middle ground between the length of
our own noses and the global crisis du-jour, let alone expressing such
things in poetic form.  It's funny, though, that when I think of a great
modern lyricist, I think of Paul Westerberg who typified both of those
quite nicely!  Even in that context, though, he told stories, speaking
about the band as a group ('Talent Show') or about himself but in the 3rd
person ('Here Comes a Regular').

Whatever!  Just thinkin' aloud...

-kent





Jim Kauffman <jkauff@earthlink.net> on 06/17/2001 09:41:19 PM

Please respond to matters@richardlloyd.com

To:   matters@richardlloyd.com
cc:    (bcc: Kent Wood/Lightbridge)
Subject:  Re: (RL) Clapton



At 12:07 PM 6/17/2001 +0100, Keith Allison wrote:
>greggluvox <murderedman@earthlink.net> writes
> >Yeah, but let's be serious - doesn't blues-rock really suck?
>
>Not always, no. Usually, perhaps. (Peter Green doesn't play blues-rock,
>just the blues.) Does Hendrix suck? Do the Stones suck (well, for a long
>time, I guess they probably have). Tel you what does really suck,
>though: twiddly-diddly jazz-rock nonsense. Oh, and Steely Dan.

Don't be so hard on Steely Dan, Keith. Becker and Fagan have certainly
created their share of jazz-rock nonsense, but they can be pretty amazing
songwriters. Check out "Almost Gothic" and "Negative Girl" on their
Grammy-Awards-Album-Of-The-Year (choke, cough, clear throat) Two Against
Nature.

Here are the opening lines to "Haitian Divorce" (1976):

Babs and Clean Willie were in love they said
So in love the preacher's face turned red
Soon everybody knew the thing was dead

Three lines (rhymed, no less) and you've learned that an oversexed Jewish
Princess ("Babs") fell in lust with a not-totally-sleazy street guy ("Clean
Willie" - a girl's got to have some standards, you know), got married in a
fever hotter 'n a pepper sprout, and burned it out within a few weeks.
That's not only major-league storytelling economy, it's completely visual,
too.

Gotta give the devil his due.


Jim K.



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