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EVERYONE IS GOING FETAL!
WON'T YOU SHARE IN MY WELTSCHMERZ?
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WON'T YOU SHARE IN MY WELTSCHMERZ?
FOR MY OWN! SANITY!
The Decemberists, “The Mariner’s Revenge Song”
One of the greatest story songs ever. It reads like a Poe story, or one of those old EC horror comics. I like how it’s tongue-in-cheek while still telling a chilling (and poignant) tale of loss, obsession, and fate.
We are two mariners
Our ship’s sole survivors
In this belly of a whale
Its ribs are ceiling beams
Its guts are carpeting
I guess we have some time to kill…
You may not remember me
I was a child of three
And you, a lad of eighteen
But I remember you
And I will relate to you
How our histories interweave
At the time you were a rake and a roustabout
Spending all your money on the whores and hounds, oh oh
You had a charming air
All cheap and debonair
My widowed mother found so sweet
And so she took you in
Her sheets still warm with him
Now filled with filth and foul disease
As time wore on you proved a debt-ridden drunken mess
Leaving my mother a poor consumptive wretch, oh oh
And then you disappeared
Your gambling arrears
The only thing you left behind
And then the magistrate
Reclaimed our small estate
And my poor mother lost her mind
Then one day in spring, my dear sweet mother died
But, before she did I took her hand as she, dying, cried, oh oh
“Find him, bind him
Tie him to a pole and break
His fingers to splinters
Drag him to a hole until he
Wakes up naked
Clawing at the ceiling of his grave”
It took me fifteen years
To swallow all my tears
Among the urchins in the street
Until a priory
Took pity and hired me
To keep their vestry nice and neat
But, never once in the employ of these holy men
Did I ever once turn my mind from the thought of revenge, oh oh
One night I overheard
The prior exchanging words
With a penitent whaler from the sea
The captain of his ship
Who matched you toe to tip
Was known for a wanton cruelty
The following day, I shipped to sea with a privateer
And in the whistle of the wind I could almost hear, oh oh
“Find him, bind him
Tie him to a pole and break
His fingers to splinters
Drag him to a hole until he
Wakes up naked
Clawing at the ceiling of his grave
There is one thing I must say to you
As you sail across the sea
Always, your mother will watch over you
As you avenge this wicked deed”
And then, that fateful night
We had you in our sight
After twenty months at sea
Your starboard flank abeam
I was getting my muskets cleaned
When came this rumbling from beneath
The ocean shook, the sky went black, and the captain quailed
And before us grew the angry jaws of a giant whale
(whale attack)
Don’t know how I survived
The crew all was chewed alive
I must have slipped between his teeth
But, oh, what providence
What divine intelligence
That you should survive as well as me
It gives my heart great joy to see your eyes fill with fear
So lean in close
And I will whisper
The last words you’ll hear, oh oh…
Gentlemen, I’m very pleased to announce that I have completed work on my latest invention: cylindrical paper!
::applause::
As you can see from this sample, this piece of paper is a perfect, seamless cylinder. No longer will mankind be forced to write on flat paper. With this new paper, we can write along this curved edge, around and around…and around!
::thunderous applause::
Now I will demonstrate how to write on cylindrical paper. If I could have a suggestion from the audience…what shall I write first? Anyone? Yes, the lady in the front row…
“The dog has to go out.”
I’m sorry, I can’t hear you very well. Could you repeat that?
“THE DOG HAS TO GO OUT.”
Oh! All right. Now observe as I use this specially modified pen to write—
“THE DOG HAS TO GO OUT!”
Yes madam, I heard you. I am about to write that on this—
“THE DOG HAS TO GO OUT THE DOG HAS TO GO OUT!”
Oh my God…those words…they’re appearing on this cylindrical paper…they’re writing themselves over and over and…somehow…we can hear them!
“THE DOG HAS TO GO OUT!”
Huh whazza…
…and…SCENE.
“Owner Of A Lonely Heart” by Yes by Grizzly Bear
Peaches - Fuck the Pain Away, sung by Miss Piggy
My wife forwarded this to me and said, “Thank God Jim Henson isn’t alive to see this.”
YES. My boyfriend showed me this a while ago, its amazing.
If you can watch this without getting the same expression as the one Loretta Swit has in it…you are far more jaded than I.
(via suicideblonde)
Obviously everyone here has their own taste and their own favorite songs, but off the top of my head, here are some albums that have placed - in my opinion - one of the album’s strongest song in the second track position. At the very least, I think the 2nd track position is often given to the song that perhaps the producers think is the most commercially viable, but I don’t think its always necessarily the case. I’ve just found, in my personal experience, this whole 2nd track thing to be semi-consistent.
- Radiohead - OK Computer - 2nd track: Paranoid Android
- Garmarna - Hildegard von Bingen - 2nd track: Virdissima Virga (if you haven’t heard this, REMEDY THIS)
- Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space - 2nd track: Come Together
- Beck - Mutations - 2nd track: Nobody’s Fault But My Own
- Beck - Sea Change - 2nd track: Paper Tiger
- Blonde Redhead - Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons - 2nd track: In Particular
- Elliot Smith - XO - 2nd track: Tomorrow, Tomorrow (maybe I am biased - this is my favorite E Smith song)
- Joe Strummer and the Mescalaros - Streetcore - 2nd track: Get Down Moses
I guess I could go on and on but this is probably getting boring. I know I may be disagreed with, so its just a matter of taste and a pattern I found among a few of my favorite albums. I’m just wondering if anyone else has found this too.
Interesting! A quick look at some of my fave albums in my iTunes library…
I don’t know what this means, but hey, anything to delay taking a shower.
To go with my review of Bat Out of Hell, the story of why Paradise By the Dashboard light makes me want to rip my brain out. It is, in my mind, the worst song ever created in the history of music.
It was at my sister’s wedding 13 years ago when my hatred for Paradise By the Dashboard Light reached it’s peak. It was a lovely reception. I was having a great time doing shots of tequila with the bartender and watching my relatives do all those crazy line dances that I refuse to get involved with.
As soon as the DJ cued up Paradise song - I’m talking as soon as the first note hit - the dance floor was packed. Everyone who sat on their fat, drunk asses during the great dance songs of the night (Oh, like you don’t want to dance every time you hear Funkytown) were suddenly lined up on the floor. Guys on the left. Chicks on the right. Ready to….what? Rumble? Line dance? What the hell were they doing? Following the song? Acting it out? When did Paradise become the new Hokey Pokey? Was I that sheltered that I missed this memo?
At this point in the reception, I’d had about five thousand shots of tequila. Ok, maybe twenty. Twelve. Whatever. Point is, tequila will usually have me up on a table swinging my bra around dancing to some Donna Summer song. But not even a good Cuervo buzz could get me out there for this song. They tried. I told them to back off. Call me when the DJ puts on Bad Girls.
I just stood back and watched. Grown men and women doing this bizarre dance ritual. We’re talking town councilmen and judges and the president of the local chamber of commerce. Respected citizens! They all took turns singing the boy/girl parts, standing across from each other like some scene out of West Side Story and doing this back and forth singing. They acted the parts out, pretending to be lusty teenagers in a steamy car. During the Phil Rizzuto play by play part, one couple stood in the center of the two lines and pantomimed the whole thing. I kid you not. They acted the whole damn thing out. I was embarrassed. Why weren’t they? My jaw dropped as my cousin informed me that this went on at every wedding, in every bar, every night of the week and I needed to get out more. No. No. I need to never leave the sanctity of my house again. I’ve been emotionally scarred by witnessing this.
It got worse from there. The play by play part was over. Some lady in a too-short cocktail dress did a sliding split into the middle of the dance floor, holding up her hand and singing “STOP RIGHT THERE!” Wait.. That’s no lady. That’s my daughter’s religious ed teacher! And that guy singing “let me sleep on it” in her face? Jesus, that’s my uncle. Then they all chimed in. All of them. The guys singing desperately “I gotta know right now” and the girls responding with a tit-shaking chorus of “let me sleep on it. This went on until the very end, where they all did some bizarre shimmy down to the floor as they whispered “glowing like a metal on the edge of a knife.” I shook my head to clear it. I thought maybe the tequila had gotten to me. I was hallucinating. I had been transported to the ninth level of hell and Satan himself was going to rise out of the dance floor. But no. It was real. It was real and it was horrible and it formed some Pavlovian response in my brain so that I start itching and breaking out in hives every time I hear this song.
That happened 13 years ago. And I remember every little thing…….nah, not going there.
I don’t believe in Hell, but if I did, I’m pretty sure I would choose it over the above scenario.
