Prince’s moves to elicit female desire in the song When doves cry can be traced according to three codes found in the lyrics: the “normal” code of male sexuality common in rock music, an unusually explicit “Oedipal” code, and an “uncanny” code.
The uncanny code constitutes a counter-code to the usual male-oriented sexuality of rock music and represents an attempt to elicit a non-stereotypical female sexuality—female desire outside of the male sexual economy.
This according to “Purple passion: Images of female desire in When doves cry” by Nancy J. Holland (Cultural critique X [fall 1988] pp. 89–98).
When doves cry is 30 years old this year, as is the film that showcased it,Purple rain. Click here for the official music video; the lyrics are here.
During the military dictatorship in Brazil, which reached a high pitch of political and social repression between 1965 and 1980, the songs of Chico Buarque became vehicles for a strong, albeit veiled, political activism.
Endowed with a phenomenal lyric gift and an ability to penetrate the psyche of the most diverse human beings, Buarque was also skilled in the use of metaphor, the double entendre, the between-the-lines song text. As a consequence, he was able to say a great deal in his songs, without seemingly spelling out anything.
The military censors kept a close eye on him, leading him to complain that, out of every three songs that he wrote, two would be censored. It is all the more surprising, then, that the censors allowed the release of the song Apesar de você (In spite of you, 1970), a very obvious diatribe against the military regime and, more specifically, against the then president Emílio Garrastazu Médici.
Buarque was interrogated several times and asked to explain who was the “you” to which the song consistently refers. According to one of the versions of the interview, he said that the “you” was a very authoritative and bossy wife, and the song was the rant of her unhappy husband. Needless to say, the censors did not buy the explanation, but there was nothing specific in the text of the song that they could point to as a direct attack on the government.
The song is emblematic of Buarque’s remarkable resiliency while navigating the political minefield of the time. Many of his songs from that period testify to this same ability. His highly nuanced, subtle, poetically charged song texts can indeed be read in many different ways, and could easily be construed as the depiction of a domestic, rather than a political, drama. Throughout the duration of the military regime he offered Brazilian society a vehicle in which its entire voice could reverberate, shielded from military scrutiny by the poetic beauty of the texts.
The text of Apesar de você is reproduced in Chico Buarque: Tantas palavras—Todas as letras (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2006).
Today is Chico Buarque’s 70th birthday! Below, Maria Bethânia performs Apesar de você; a free English rendition of the song’s text appears under the video.
Apesar de você (In spite of you)
Tomorrow will be another day…
Today, you’re the one who calls the shots.
Whatever you say, it’s been spoken
And there’s no arguing.
Today, my people walk around
Talking sideways and looking toward the ground.
You who invented this situation
By inventing all darkness,
You who invented sin
Forgot to invent forgiveness.
In spite of you
Tomorrow will be another day.
I ask you, where will you hide
From the great euphoria when it comes?
How will you forbid it
When the rooster insists on crowing?
New water will be flowing
And our people will be loving one another, nonstop.
When that moment arrives
I’m going to charge you
For all this suffering of mine,
And with interest to boot, I swear.
All this repressed love,
All these contained screams,
All this samba in the dark.
You who invented sadness,
Now do us the favor of “disinventing” it.
You’re going to pay double
For every tear that I’ve shed
In this anguish of mine.
In spite of you
Tomorrow will be another day
I can hardly wait to see
The garden in full bloom,
The one you didn’t want to see blooming.
You’re going to be tormented,
Seeing the day break
Without asking your permission
And I’m going to have my big laugh at you
Because that day is bound to come
Sooner than you think.
In spite of you
Tomorrow will be another day
You will be forced to see the morning reborn
And pouring out poetry.
How will you explain it to yourself
Seeing that the sky has suddenly cleared,
And there’s no more punishment?
How are you going to stifle the chorus of our voices
Singing right in front of you,
In spite of you?
In spite of you
Tomorrow is going to be another day
And you’re going to be out of luck.
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Zehn kleine Jägermeister by the punk band Die Toten Hosen, which led the German charts in 1996, is a children’s counting song musically and textually referring to the British-derived Zehn kleine Negerlein and the U.S. Ten little Indians, in which the original set of ten members disappears one at a time through mishaps that are either their own fault or purely accidental.
The ten glasses of Jägermeister, a popular German liqueur, disappear in the obvious and banal fashion; ultimately, the song evokes a meeting between death and the picture of an infantile typical German whose behavior is driven purely by greed, and seems to sound the possibility that the German people could vanish altogether.
This according to “Doitsu no hittokyoku o yomu: Zehn kleine Jägermeister no baai” by Okamura Saburō (Goken fōramu VII [October 1997] pp. 1–23). Below, Die Toten Hosen brings it.
ABBA’s music has often been denigrated as bland, mass market pop. However, viewed from the point of view of reception, the ABBA phenomenon is a highly complex text that offers contemporary music consumers diverse, even perverse, pleasures.
This according to “Music and camp: Popular music performance in Priscilla and Muriel’s wedding” by Catherine Lumby, an essay included in Screen scores: Studies in contemporary Australian film music (North Ryde: Australian Film, Television, and Radio School, 1999, pp. 78–88).
Popular music underwent a profound transformation during the period between 1954 and 1969; this change can be understood through the prism of the extraordinary planetary position of February 1962, which some call the Age of Aquarius.
The seven inner planets formed a stellium (multiple conjunction of planets) in Aquarius at the time of a total solar eclipse. Opposite the stellium was Uranus, approaching its half-cycle with Jupiter on 14 March 1962 (above left; click to enlarge).
A chart for the Woodstock Festival (above right) has the Jupiter–Uranus connection writ large, with airy ideals in Libra. Its Sun–Neptune square is both idealistic and druggy.
In the 1960s many rock bands were funny some of the time; only a few made humor about as much of the act as music was.
In the U.S., only two such bands did so with consistent brilliance: the Mothers of Invention and the Fugs. The international, and kinder and gentler, branch of that triangle of major rock comics was represented by England’s Bonzo Dog Band.
The Bonzos had only one big hit in the U.K. with I’m the urban spaceman, and some Beatles-glamor-by-association due to a cameo appearance in the Magical mystery tour film. In the U.S. they remained a cult band.
Sometimes compared to the Mothers of Invention, particularly in their zany stage shows and their facility for parodying multiple pop genres, the Bonzos lacked the savage cynicism that powered Frank Zappa’s brand of wit. As compensation, they offered a more whimsical, surreal take on the absurd that was in some ways more sonically versatile, encompassing not just rock but also prewar music hall, jazz, and spoken word.
This according to “The Bonzo Dog Band” by Richie Unterberger, an essay included in Urban spacemen and wayfaring strangers: Overlooked innovators and eccentric visionaries of ’60s rock (San Francisco: Miller Freeman, 2000, pp. 109–121).
Below, the Bonzos perform Death cab for cutie, the song that the American alt-rock band took for its name; the performance starts around 0:50.
Music Monday is an annual event sponsored by Canada’s Coalition for Music Education; each year it unites hundreds of thousands of young people through their schools and communities from coast to coast through a simultaneous musical event on the first Monday of May.
Singing and playing the official Music Monday song brings attention to the importance of music as part of a well-rounded education. I.S.S. (Is somebody singing), the official song for Music Monday 2013, was commissioned by the Coalition and CBC Music and written by the astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield—the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station—and singer/songwriter Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies.
On Monday 6 May 2013 Hadfield performed the song from the International Space Station while Robertson, the Barenaked Ladies, and the Wexford Gleeks (the choir of the Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts), performed from Earth.
This according to “Building a voice that cannot be ignored!” by Holly Nimmons (Canadian music educator/Musicien éducateur au Canada LIV/3 [spring 2013] pp. 20–23).
Today is Music Monday’s 10th anniversary! Below, Hadfield, the Ladies, and the Gleeks perform I.S.S. for Music Monday 2013.
Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown (1924–2005) spent his career fighting purism by synthesizing old blues, country, jazz, Cajun, and R & B styles.
Asked in an interview about his early blues-based recordings, he gave a practical answer: “I had to sound like that because I was just starting out. Seeing as how I was a newcomer, I obliged.”
“But after a while, I thought, ‘Why do I have to be one of these old cryin’ and moanin’ guitar players always talking bad about women?’ So I just stopped. That’s when I started having horns and piano in my band, and started playing arrangements more like Count Basie and Duke Ellington, rather than some old hardcore Mississippi Delta stuff.”
In a 2006 interview, Jack Casady recalled the development of the EpiphoneJack Casady Signature Bass: “When I first started playing, I ran across a short scale semi-hollow bass. Despite lacking some low end, I really enjoyed the semi-hollow nature of that bass and over the years tried to capture that characteristic.”
“In 1985 I was living in New York and happened to stop in a music store one day and saw a goldtop, full scale semi-hollow Les Paul bass. I loved the bass but found the pickup to be deficient…I did a little investigating and found out that only about 400 of the instruments were made in 1972 and because it was kind of an odd duck, it didn’t catch on.”
“I approached Gibson and asked if they would be interested in reproducing the bass with my input. Epiphone’s Jim Rosenberg was very interested, and allowed me to kind of re-make the instrument. I told Jim that I’d like to develop a Jack Casady pickup for it and he hooked me up with the R&D Department at Gibson.”
“I went to work on the pickup and it took almost two years to develop. I think they were getting pretty antsy by this time but I wanted it right. I did a lot of homework and bench testing and finally when it clicked in right, it was great. They blow the old Gibsons to smithereens, even in the construction. As you know, the early 70s weren’t good for cars or guitars (laughs) and the workmanship that’s coming in on these instruments is just super.”
Following a wrenchingly poor childhood and a hard-won scholarship, Tracy Chapman was hit by stardom right after graduating from college, when her 1988 self-titled debut album sold 10 million copies.
She had only recently overcome her fear of playing for coffeehouse-sized audiences, and suddenly the machinery of celebrity was bolted around her. Despite her success, she recalled in 2000 that “they weren’t particularly happy times.”
Periods of seclusion followed, but in 1995 she restarted her career on her own terms. “You have to pay attention to the moment and make it the best it can be for you,” she said. “Make it count. I’ve been trying to do that. It’s really made a major difference for me—I’m a happier person.”
This according to “Telling her stories” by Christopher John Farley (Time CLV/8 [28 February 2000] p. 92).
Today is Chapman’s 50th birthday! Above, the singer-songwriter in Bruges in 2009; below, performing one of the songs from her debut album at the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute in 1988, effectively jump-starting the first leg of her career.
The main entrance to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’s exhibition Lou Reed: Caught between the twisted stars opens up on Lincoln Plaza, directly adjacent to the The Metropolitan Opera house. On a sunny day, the Met’s … Continue reading →
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For it [the Walkman] permits the possibility…of imposing your soundscape on the surrounding aural environment and thereby domesticating the external world: for a moment, it can all be brought under the STOP/START, FAST FOWARD, PAUSE and REWIND buttons. –Iain Chambers, “The … Continue reading →
