Unkindly Refrain

I recently read somewhere, most excellent and genteel reader, about a contest in England to choose the worst lyrics to a song ever.

I don’t really know about this sort of thing. It is a fairly obvious effort to cash in on a less appealing aspect of human nature, the propensity to sneer.

Having said that, the winner did seem worthy, being from a song called “Life” by Des’ree.

For those who did not hear, the offending lines were:

“I don’t want to see a ghost,
It’s the sight that I fear most
I’d rather have a piece of toast
Watch the evening news.”

Now I don’t want to sound negative, but really could anyone come up with the above then put down his or her pen and think “that’s a good day’s work”? Surely not.

I understand that it has become something of a joke and generally gets mentioned in “Worst Lyrics Ever” discussions, so I suppose that is some sort of comfort for the writer.

Another one that I have trouble with is John Schumann’s song “I Was Only 19”.

Most Australians are familiar with this very popular song and it would take a stronger man than me to listen to it without being moved by the plight of the Vietnam veterans to whom it is a tribute.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that the song itself shouldn’t be held up to artistic scrutiny.

I ask you to scrute the following lines:

“Frankie kicked a mine the day that mankind kicked the moon,
God help me. He was going home in June.”

Presumably Schumann is suggesting that it was a bitter irony that Frankie should have been seriously injured, probably killed – it is not made clear, at a time that his departure was imminent.

Unfortunately that doesn’t quite work.

Man landed on the moon on 16 July 1969. I can still remember getting the day off school. Mum bought me a chocolate doughnut for lunch.

That being the case, Frankie had almost a whole year to wait before he was going home. The tour of Vietnam was one year. In other works, Frankie had practically all of his tour to wait before he got home.

That is not really what troubles me. What troubles me is that Schumann has used artistic licence to strain history and good taste in order to rhyme “moon” with “June”. Again, one cannot imagine a feeling of achievement flooding through him after that effort.

That pitiful rhyme has long been the most tedious cliché in verse. In this case “soon” would surely have been a far preferable rhyme.

Finally, I draw your attention to the perennially problematic “Macarthur Park”. There is practically no line in the song that could not be held up to ridicule by anyone who wished so to do. I don’t really need to do that here.

I was listening to it recently during a quieter moment. I blush slightly to confess that it was not the deliciously cracked Richard Harris version, but the slightly spicier one by Donna Summer. When pain and anguish rack the brow, I find that electric drums do a lot to ease the pain.

Anyway, the song had just started and I knew that the pinging of the electric drums would be with me soon. I was half dreaming but for some reason the following lines from the first verse penetrated my consciousness:

“..Between the parted pages and were pressed
In love’s hot fevered iron
Like a striped pair of pants”

I won’t dwell on what this means, I don’t have the slightest idea. I don’t understand how being between the parted pages would work, I have no experience of being pressed by love’s iron and although I can accept that such an appliance might be hot, I don’t see how it can have a fever.

What really struck me, though, is that I thought Donna was singing “..a stripy pair of pants”. That would have been ludicrous enough, but it turns out that the word is “striped”. To make the song scan you have to give it 2 syllables by giving full value to the “e”. Stripe-ed.

What bunkum. Surely when the lyrics don’t make any sense at all, you should at least be able to pronounce them naturally?

There is not really any point in suggesting an alternative. The song is too well established and is already surrounded in sufficient controversy. All I ask is that in future a little more care is taken. A little more care and a lot less chemical stimulation.

Hippy Sheik

I must apologise for my absence for the last few days, loyal and patient reader.  I attended a particularly boisterous meeting of the Amity Society on the Monday night before last and rather lost track of the later parts of the evening.

Suffice it to say, on checking my car the next morning I was horrified to find some human teeth and a couple of tufts of hair stuck in the grille.  Discretion being the better part of valour, I elected to take a little time off and visit some friends in the far north, where a man might find some space to himself to think things over without being bothered by officious arms of the government.

As it happens I had been the victim of a practical joke at the hand of “Toothy” Anderson, a dentist and fellow Amity Society member.  He noticed that I was possibly not at my most observant and so drove me home in my own car, which he then “salted” with some teeth (it seems he keeps a few on him at all times for this purpose). 

The hair, I am embarrassed to admit, was my own which he snipped off, taking advantage of my condition.  I have been to the gentlemen’s hairdresser and that most excellent fellow has plied the pomade to such good effect that the missing locks are almost unnoticeable. 

I like a joke as much as the next man and to show that there are no hard feelings have now I responded in kind by throwing a large quantity of paint on Toothy’s car.  I am sure he will see the funny side.

The time spent in the outback was a pleasure.  The quiet and solitude of the little pub I was staying in was interrupted from time to time by travellers of all walks of life dropping in for refreshing ale to break up their journey.

Quite a few of them were the old fashioned orange Kombi driving hippies, of the type you used to see all over the place but now you usually have to seek them out.  I had forgotten how comforting it is to see them every now and again.  They are a point of constancy in this changeable world of ours.

You can go to markets in any part of this country, from Mindl Beach to Salamanca Place and there they are, sitting at a card table covered in “crafts” and glowering sullenly through an explosion of hair that reminds you of nothing so much as a burst sofa.

As long as we have hippies we need never curse the darkness. There will always be a big nasty candle to light.  You know the sort of thing I mean, with all colours on the inside and about the size of a milk carton.  In the old days the used to make these things themselves with much melting of coloured wax in an old saucepan.  Possibly you were given craft lessons by one when you were in primary school and know what I mean.

A milk carton with all chips of ice in it.  Some molten wax.  A bloke in a tie-died t-shirt. Heaven.

Now the candles come shrink wrapped and I assume that they are made in
China or somewhere.

However, since those simple times when one might look for a candle and possibly some leathergoods (ie a selection of gigantic watchbands with little flowers stamped all over them) and the odd gonk, the selection has expanded and diversified.

For example, there is Energised Wine apparently made in a winery in
Canada that is shaped like a pyramid.  I thought that all that Pyramid Energy theory had been debunked some time ago, but it seems not.  Someone has committed a significant amount of money to making the most of it, and such is the public enthusiasm that I am sure the investment has been quickly recouped.

Mmm mmm.  Energised wine.  Presumably that is what mummies drink in the afterlife.

You can also get little cardboard pyramids that you can put under the bed to harness their power while you sleep.  Fascinating.

At Salamanca I once noticed a small turned wooden object described as a “hygiene cup”.  I do not know what the intended purpose of the object was and I refuse to speculate.  Suffice it to say that no sale was effected.

There are also dreamcatchers, Indian drums, funny hats and any amount of pottery.  Anything from a lumpen bread crock with an ill fitting lid to a freeform vase a metre high that will hold a single daisy. 

As for services, there are the usual tarot readings and henna tattoos but you can also have your aura read and your chakras aligned.

Possibly there are other goods and services on offer, but just thinking about this is making me smell of patchouli and I need to go and bathe.

Before I do so, may I ask doesn’t all of this industry fly in the face of the whole lifestyle choice anyway?  Wasn’t the whole point to just sit around doing little or nothing? Where did it all go wrong?

Anyway, I hope to be back on form soon but should you be tempted to press me into print in future, take this as a dire warning.