Words for the Music 028: THE TRASH CAN SINATRAS

 

THE TRASH CAN SINATRAS

OBSCURITY KNOCKS

THE TRASH CAN SINATRAS

    from the 1990 Go! Discs LP

Cake

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OBSCURITY KNOCKS 

 

 

 

Always at the foot of the photographs

That's me there

Snug as a bug in a mugshot pose

A foul-mouthed rogue

Owner of this corner and not much more

Still these days 

I'm better placed to get my just rewards

I'll pound out a tune and very soon

I'll have too much to say

And a dead stupid name 

 

And though I ought to be learning

I feel like a veteran

Of oh I like your poetry but I hate your poems

Calendars crumble

I'm knee deep in numbers

I've turned twenty-one

I've twist, I'm bust, I'm wrong again

 

Rubbing shoulders with the sheets till two

Looking at my watch

And I'm half-past caring

In the lap of luxury it comes to mind

Is this headboard hard?

Am I a lap behind?

But to face doom in a sock-stenched room

All by myself

Is the kind of fate I never contemplate

Lots of people would cry

Though none spring to mind

 

And though I ought to be learning

I feel like a veteran

Of oh I like your poetry but I hate your poems

Calendars crumble

I'm knee deep in numbers

I've turned twenty-one

I've twist, I'm bust, I'm wrong again

 

Know what it's like

To sigh at the sight

Of the first quarter of life?

Ever stopped to think

And found that nothing was there?

 

They laugh to see such fun

I'm playing blind man's bluff 

All by myself 

(All by myself)

And they're chanting a line

From a nursery rhyme

Sing ba-ba bleary eyes 

have you any idea?

 

Years of learning I must be a veteran

Of oh I like your poetry but I hate your poems

And the calendar's cluttered

With days that are numbered

I've turned twenty-one

I've twist, I'm bust, I'm wrong again

Ought to be learning

Twist, I'm bust, I'm wrong again

Feel like a veteran

Twist, I'm bust, I'm wrong again

Calendar's cluttered

With days that are numbered

And I know what it's like

To sigh at the sight

Of the first quarter of life

And I know what it's like

 

 

 

 

Words and music

JOHN DOUGLAS, STEPHEN DOUGLAS, 

PAUL LIVINGSTON, GEORGE McDAID  

and  

FRANCIS READER

 

 

 

© 1990 Go! Discs UK

 

 

 

 

 

What do we expect of a so-called 'classic' popular song?  A simple but evocative title?  A catchy, easily reproducible melody?  Lyrics that reference and/or illuminate some aspect of our own life experience in unique and unexpected ways, using language mercifully devoid of the clichés that make so much of what is deemed to be 'contemporary pop' so instantly forgettable if not mindlessly awful?   

 

Obscurity Knocks, released by Scottish band The Trash Can Sinatras in 1990, ticked all of these boxes, perhaps explaining why it remains the favourite song of many people who came of age in the heady days of Britpop, an audience that can recall a time when genuine originality was prized and popularity was more than a matter of conforming to the right set of algorithims.

 

The most striking elements of Obscurity Knocks are its title and lyrics, which are at once clever, knowing, innocent and, most crucially of all, surprising.  Little of the imagery is borrowed and what is borrowed — eg. 'Snug as a bug' — is juxtaposed with imagery that is deliberately, often gloriously disarming.  The rhymes are also unusually structured, stressing sounds — for example, the 'ug' sound repeated three times in the third line of the first verse — that are generally avoided by lyricists because they are short and staccato rather than long and round.  (Think of words like 'love,' 'glove,' 'dove' and 'above' and how many times these have appeared in popular songs since popular songs were invented.)  This is capped off by a soaring chorus and not one but two — yes, two! — middle-eight sections, boldly repeated one after the other before the extended final chorus.  

 

Nary a cliché in sight.  And when you add an irresistibly jangly guitar riff and a vocal that makes no apology for its use of Scottish English rather than standard British or North American English (the most overused form of the language on the planet and particularly so in the field of popular music) you have all the ingredients necessary to create a three and a half minute masterpiece.  Of course, this was no guarantee of commercial success in 1990 just as it remains no guarantee of success today.  Obscurity Knocks became a cult favourite rather than a chart favourite, with its accompanying three track EP rising to #86 in the UK and remaining there for a month while it rose to #12 on the Billboard alternative chart, no doubt aided by some consistent exposure on what used to be the vitally important sales tool known as US college radio.  

 

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to visit the website of Scottish band THE TRASH CAN SINATRAS:

 

 

 

https://trashcansinatras.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 

 

Words for the Music 025: ROBYN HITCHCOCK

 

 

Words for the Music 022: PHIL JUDD

 

 

Words for the Music 011: KIRSTY MacCOLL

 

 

Words for the Music 027: DORY PREVIN

 

 

 

DORY PREVIN

 22 October 1925 – 14 February 2012

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 CHILDREN OF COINCIDENCE

DORY PREVIN

from the 1976 Warner Records LP

We're Children of Coincidence

and Harpo Marx

 

 

 

 

 

CHILDREN OF COINCIDENCE

 

 

If I hadn't made a left-hand turn

If you hadn't made a right

If I'd waited just a moment more

If you'd missed the light

If that car had never blown its horn

If that friend had stopped to talk

We'd have never met at all

If I didn't take that walk

I'd have gotten there too early

You'd have gotten there too late

We are childen of coincidence

Coincidence and fate

Crossed connections

Lost connections

Empty corners

Crowded intersections

Accidents

And incidents

We're children of coincidence 

And chance

If he hadn't stopped to pick it up

If she hadn't dropped her book

When she took it if she'd noticed him

How come we never look

If she hadn't been so very white

If he hadn't been so black

Would she smile and say hello to him

Would he have turned his back

If she cancelled her appointment

Would he break his other date

We are children of coincidence

Coincidence and fate

 

 

Crossed connections

Lost connections

Empty corners

Crowded intersections

Accidents

And incidents

We're children of coincidence 

And chance

 

 

If the planets were in perfect place

If your sign was on the rise

If my stars were in complete accord

But the sun was in your eyes

You'd have only seen my shadow

As I passed you on the street

And it might have been a hundred years

Before our souls would meet

And we would still be strangers 

Too early and too late

We are children of coincidence

Coincidence and fate

 

 

Crossed connections

Lost connections

Empty corners

Crowded intersections

Accidents

And incidents

We're children of coincidence 

And fate

 

 

 

 

Words and music by

DORY PREVIN

 

© 1976 Warner Records/Rhino Music

 

 

 

 

 

Dory Previn, who was born Dorothy Langan on 22 October 1925, began her career as a cabaret performer and lyricist, initially working most frequently with pianist and composer André Previn, the man who became her second husband in 1959.  

 

The couple wrote a number of well-received songs together while working under contract at MGM studios, garnering their first Academy Award nomination for The Faraway Part of Town that was performed by Judy Garland in the 1960 film Pepé and a second nomination for their 1962 song Second Chance which featured in Two For The See-Saw, a popular film starring Robert Mitchum and Shirley Maclaine.  

 

The next six years saw the couple compose many more cinema-related songs together including You're Gonna Hear From Me (recorded by Frank Sinatra among others) and five witty, tongue-in-cheek titles for the 1967 adaptation of Jacqueline Susann's scandalous 1966 bestseller Valley of the Dolls.  This is all the more impressive given that Dory Previn suffered a psychiatric breakdown in 1965 that saw her briefly hospitalized to undergo treatment for severe depression.

 

Previn's transition from witty Broadway-style lyricist to 1970s singer/songwriter was triggered by the second breakdown she experienced after learning that her husband, who had gone to the UK to work as the conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, was having an affair with actor Mia Farrow and had fathered a child by her.  Previn's breakdown began on the aircraft she had boarded, despite her lifelong fear of flying, to take her to the English capital where she hoped to somehow salvage her doomed marriage.  

 

Writing, specifically about herself and her emotions, became a key component of her therapy and led to the creation of the songs that would appear on her critically acclaimed 1970 LP On My Way To Where.  (This was her second album, preceded by a jazz-based recording of original material titled The Leprechauns Are Upon Me that she released under the name 'Dory Langdon' in 1958.)  The album, which featured her accompanying herself on guitar along with other musicians, included the song Beware of Young Girls, a thinly veiled attack on Mia Farrow who married her former husband that same year, an event which saw Previn re-hospitalized to undergo another course of electro-convulsive therapy.  

 

The LP also featured the chilling cut With My Daddy in the Attic that spoke indirectly of Previn's difficult and possibly incestuous relationship with her father, an Irish-American World War One veteran who had been gassed in the trenches and was prone to episodes of extreme paranoia that, at their worst, saw him become violent toward his wife and children and, at one point, keep them literally imprisoned inside the family home for several months.  Despite this and his destructive habit of alternately overindulging and ignoring her, Previn's father was supportive of her decision to become a performer after she displayed genuine talent as both a singer and a dancer in her youth.

On My Way To Where was followed by six more LPs of original singer-songwriter material including Mythical Kings and Iguanas (1971), Reflections In A Mud Puddle (1971), the concept album Mary C Brown and the Hollywood Sign (1972), the self-titled Dory Previn (1974) and what was to be her next to last solo effort We're Children of Coincidence and Harpo Marx (1976).  She also found time to write two autobiographies, a television screenplay, a song for the controversial 1973 film Last Tango in Paris in addition to releasing the double LP Live At Carnegie Hall that went on to become her most enduringly popular recording.  

 

All of Previn's music features startlingly honest and strikingly original lyrics, many of which are as good as any of those penned by her 1970s singer-songwriter contemporaries, and clever arrangements that make the best use of her limited vocal range.  She was never afraid to tackle taboo topics like incest, artistic failure and the bogus spiritualist movement of the 1970s, often disarming listeners with her combination of high intelligence and what, on occasion, could be dark and even macabre humor.

 

Previn spent the 1980s focusing on stage work, often appearing under the name Dory Previn Shannon, and writing short stories and a novel titled Word-Play With An Invisible Relative.  All this work did not prevent her from co-writing the theme song for the 1980s sitcom Two Of A Kind for which she and her songwriter partner Jim Pasquale received an Emmy award in 1984.  That same year she married actor and artist Joby Baker, going on to collaborate with him on an illustrated edition of her 1970s song lyrics that appeared in 1995 as The Dory Previn Songbook.  

 

Two years later Previn revived her professional partnership with her former husband André Previn, collaborating with him on The Magic Number, a piece he composed for orchestra and solo soprano.  She allegedly contacted Woody Allen after the comedian was accused of sexually molesting his adopted daughter Dylan in 1992, suggesting that Mia Farrow had based the story of what had been done to Dylan inside the Farrow home on the lyrics of her song With My Daddy In The Attic.  Nor is it without significance that, like the decidedly menacing father figure in the song, Allen also plays the clarinet.

 

Despite suffering a series of minor strokes which affected her eyesight, Previn continued to work and managed to release a final LP — another conceptual work about the environment and the threat of nuclear war titled Planet Blue — in 2002, a decade before her death at the age of eighty-six on 14 February 2012.  

 

 

 

Use the link below to listen to more great music by lyricist, composer and cabaret/stage performer DORY PREVIN: 

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dory+previn

 

 

 

 

Special thanks to everyone who takes the time to upload music to YouTube.  Your efforts are appreciated by music lovers everywhere.

 

 

 

 

 

Use this link to read a long post by JUSTIN LEVINE about the connections between DORY PREVIN and the more lurid aspects of the ALLEN/FARROW scandal:

https://levine2001.medium.com/the-woody-allen-controversy-reader-did-dory-previns-song-lyrics-influence-mia-farrow-in-accusing-6cb1f83038fe

 

 

 

 

 

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Words for the Music 006: DAVE FRISHBERG

 

 

Words for the Music 008: LORENZ HART

 

 

Words for the Music 021: BOBBIE GENTRY 

 

Words for the Music 026: NANCI GRIFFITH

 

NANCI GRIFFITH

6 July 1953 – 13 August 2021

 

 

 

 

THERE'S A LIGHT BEYOND 

THESE WOODS,

MARY MARGARET

NANCI GRIFFITH

from the 1978 BF Deal LP

There's a Light Beyond 

These Woods,

Mary Margaret

 

 

 

 

 

THERE'S A LIGHT BEYOND 

THESE WOODS,

MARY MARGARET

 

 

There's a light beyond these woods

Mary Margaret

Do you think that we will go there

And see what makes it shine

Mary Margaret

It's almost morning

And we've talked all night

You know we've made big plans

For ten year olds

You and I

 

Have you met my new boyfriend

Margaret

His name is John

And he rides my bus to school

And he holds my hand

He's fourteen

He's my older man

But we'll still be the best of friends

The three of us

Margaret, John and I

 

Let's go to New York City

Margaret

We'll hide out in the subways

And drink the poet's wine

Oh but I had John

So you went and I stayed behind

But you were home in time

For the senior prom

When we lost John

 

The fantasies we planned

Well I'm living them now

All the dreams we sang

When we knew how

Well they haven't changed

There's never been two friends

Like you and me

Mary Margaret

 

Nice to see your family growing

Margaret

Your daughter and your husband there

They really treat you right

But we've talked all night

And what about the light

That glowed beyond our woods

When we were ten

You were the rambler then

 

The fantasies we planned

Oh Maggie

I'm living ’em now

All the dreams we sang

Oh we damn sure knew how

But I haven't changed

There'll never been two friends

Like you and me

Maggie can't you see

There's a light beyond your woods

Mary Margaret

 

 

 

Words and music

NANCI GRIFFITH

 

 

 

© 1978 BMG Rights Management

Universal Music Publishing Group 

 

 

 

 

 

The unexpected death (of undisclosed causes) of North American country/folk artist Nanci Griffith on 13 August 2021 came as a great shock to her many fans all over the world and triggered an outpouring of grief on YouTube and other social media platforms as we struggled to come to terms with what remains, for all of us, a deeply felt loss.

 

It's no surprise that many of these of comments were posted by people who said that Nanci Griffith's music had helped them to survive the rough times in their lives — divorce, mental and physical illness, the death of their significant other, the list goes on.  This is a testimony to her gift for telling stories through the medium of music that consistently captured people's hearts, something she possessed an almost uncanny ability to do from the beginning of her recording career in 1978.  She wrote in plain language but the stories she told were anything but plain, inhabiting that haunting world between the real and the imaginary that novels, if they're good, also inhabit.

 

There's A Light Beyond These Woods, Mary Margaret is one Griffith's tenderest tunes, with words that never fail to bring a tear to my eye each time I hear them.  (She must have been especially fond of the song because she re-recorded it for her 1987 LP Lone Star State of Mind.)  The fact that the song tells an entirely true story — her best friend while she was growing up in Texas was named Mary Margaret and her high school boyfriend John did die in a motorcycle accident after escorting her to her senior prom — only adds to its poignancy, conjuring up the vanished world of childhood, its hopes and dreams and disappointments, before seamlessly time-shifting to the present day.  While the song is undeniably wistful in tone — friends growing up, moving on, fanciful dreams replaced by sometimes harsh realities — there's also a feeling of gratitude as Griffith acknowledges how lucky she was to have such a wonderful friend and how rare those types of friendships tend to be in life.  

 

I'm sure that, wherever she may be, Mary Margaret shares the same sense of grief we all continue to experience at the loss of one of North American music's most gifted and original songwriters.  And for her the grief must be all the more bitter because saying goodbye to a cherished childhood friend is never an easy thing to do.

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to listen to more great music by NANCI GRIFFITH:

 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nanci+griffith

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Words for the Music 002: TOWNES VAN ZANDT

 

 

 

Words for the Music 003: IRIS DeMENT

 

 

 

Words for the Music 005: MARGO PRICE 

 

Words for the Music 025: ROBYN HITCHCOCK

 

ROBYN HITCHCOCK

c 2017

 

 

 

 

BALLOON MAN

ROBYN HITCHCOCK & THE EGYPTIANS

from the 1988 A&M Records LP Globe of Frogs

 

 

 

 

 

BALLOON MAN

I was walking up Sixth Avenue

When Balloon Man came right up to me

He was round and fat and spherical

With the biggest grin I'd ever seen

He bounced on up toward me

But before we could be introduced

He blew up very suddenly

I guess his name was probably Bruce

 

And I laughed

Like I always do

And I cried

Like I cried for you

And Balloon Man blew up

In my hand

 

He spattered me with tomatoes, hummus, 

Chick peas and some strips of skin

So I made a right on Forty-Fourth

And I washed my hands when I got in

And it rained

Like a slow divorce

And I wished

I could ride a horse

And Balloon Man blew up

In my hand

 

I was walking up Sixth Avenue

When Balloon Man blew up in my face

There were loads of them on Bryant Park

So I didn't feel out of place

There must have been a plague of them

On the TV when I came home late

They were guzzling marshmallows

And then jumping off the Empire State

 

And I laughed

Like I always do

And I cried

Like I cried for you

And Balloon Man blew up

In my hand

Balloon Man blew up

In my hand

 

 

Words and music

Robyn Hitchcock

 

© 1988 Two Crabs Music (PRS)

 

 

 

It's unfortunately easy to understand why Balloon Man failed to become a massive Top 40 hit when it was released in 1988.  For a start, it doesn't contain the word 'love' and is completely devoid of even the vaguest suggestion of sentimentality or cliché.  The weird little tale it tells has a decidedly psychedelic flavour that's made palatable to the listener by being cleverly combined with humour (which may explain why it became so popular on US college radio) and an infectiously catchy melody.  There's a marvellous cartoonishness about Hitchcock's imagery that allows him to constantly defeat the listener's expectations by inserting words and concepts — 'spherical, 'Bruce,' '…spattered me with tomatoes, hummus, chick peas and some strips of skin' — that are as odd as they are arresting.  The rollicking chorus is impossible to forget, containing one of the most strikingly original images — 'And it rained, like a slow divorce' — I have personally encountered in a contemporary pop song.  In fact, I can't think of the word 'divorce' now without automatically pairing it with the word 'rain.'  How's that for some powerful mnemonics!

 

The good news is that Robyn Hitchcock is alive and well and living in the US city of Nashville where he continues to record fascinating, thought-provoking and gorgeously melodic music of the same consistently high quality.  His latest vocal LP Shufflemania! was released in October 2022 and showed no diminishment of his considerable gift for penning a memorable tune or lyrics that continue to impress with their rigorous avoidance of everything that is shallow, trite and obvious.  Some critics insist that he deserves to be more famous than he is, but I don't know that I agree with that.  Fame veers toward the banal and Hitchcock's music has always been the antithesis of banality.  It is witty, engaging, insightful and, on occasion, deeply moving and has been since his debut LP A Can of Bees, recorded when he was a member of the Canterbury-based band The Soft Boys, was released well over forty years ago. 

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to listen to more great music by English singer/songwriter ROBYN HITCHCOCK, including tracks from his first-ever instrumental LP Life After Infinity released in May 2023:

 

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/@robynhitchcockweb

 

 

 

 

Special thanks to those who take the time to upload music to YouTube.  Your efforts are appreciated by music lovers everywhere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 

 

Words for the Music 022: PHIL JUDD

 

 

Words for the Music 020: MARC BOLAN

 

Words for the Music 005: KIRSTY MacCOLL

 

Words for the Music 024: JAMES FREUD

 

JAMES FREUD

29 June 1959 – 4 November 2010

 

 

BARBADOS

MODELS 

from the 1985 Mushroom Records LP

Out of Mind, Out of Sight

 

 

 

BARBADOS

 

 

All I see

Is washed away

I am the voice

Left from drinking

I celebrate

My love for you

Into the calm

Say I believe

That all the bitterness

Will last for hours

 

Maybe

I would blind the girl

Who is drowning

In the silence

She turns to grey

Into a cold stare

Into a storm

I have to be

Wake up to anger

And mixed emotion

 

In the sun

I will come

To see Barbados

In the sun

I will come

To see Barbados

 

In the sun

I will come

To see Barbados

In the sun

I will come

To see Barbados

 

All I see

Is washed away

I am the voice

Left from drinking

I celebrate

My love for you

Into the calm

Say I believe

That all the bitterness

Will last for hours

 

In the sun

I will come

To see Barbados

In the sun

I will come

To see Barbados

To see Barbados

In the sun

I will come

To see Barbados

To see Barbados

In the sun

I will come

To see Barbados

To see Barbados

  

 

 

 

Words and music by Models

© 1985 Mushroom Records Pty Ltd Australia

 

 

 

 

 

The following is a notebook entry I wrote on 4 November 2010 after learning that James Freud, bassplayer in the popular Australian band Models, had committed suicide at the age of fifty-one.  If its tone seems bitter that's because it is.  Fifty-one is much too young to die, leaving behind a wife and two sons in their early twenties. 

 

Shocked and saddened to learn that singer/musician James Freud (real name Colin McGlinchey), ex-solo artist & bassist/vocalist in popular 80s band Models, committed suicide in Melbourne today after a long battle with drug & alcohol addiction.

    Although I haven’t heard his music for many years, I was a fan of JF's back in the 80s.  Like so many musicians who can neither live up to nor recapture their early success he became a victim of his own celebrity.  A musician needs to go on making music (as any artist needs to go on creating art) even if their work isn’t applauded by the critics &/or valued by the public.  The music industry chooses to ignore this.  The music & the person who creates/performs it become instantly disposable the minute they/it cease to have an exploitable commercial value.  JF is dead because he stopped being a money-earner & probably struggled to accept that his days of stardom were behind him.  (Is it a coincidence that one of his closest friends was Paul Hester, ex-drummer of Crowded House, who took his life a few years ago by hanging himself from a tree in a Melbourne park?  Doubt it.)

      JF summed up what had happened to him in a 2002 interview:  ‘OK, you were successful once, now you're an old guy, see ya… In the end, I just said, “You win – I've had enough”… For me, the last straw was when we [Models] were taken to court [by former manager Adrian Barker who was suing them for unfair dismissal] and I thought, “I walked out of it with nothing and they want more — more of what I don't even have.”  The music industry won and they eventually always do — unless you're very lucky.’ [The Sun-Herald, 27 Aug 2002].  Despite this, when asked if he felt he’d been ‘badly burned’ by the industry, JF replied: ‘No, I don't think so. How stupid is that?’  Saying that took a lot of class, especially after being told by none other than Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum (the least perceptive, most overrated ‘rock guru’ in the world) that he was ‘a fucking has-been’ & should deal with it.  Being told that by a talentless prick like Meldrum had to have influenced his decision to take his own life.  Had to.

      Been listening to JF's best (?) song Barbados a lot this morning, remembering how unusual it sounded when first released in 1985, not just stylistically but lyrically as well.  The contrast between the upbeat calypso-like melody & melancholy, self-accusing language in the verses makes it clever & intriguing.  Requires real talent to pull off & JF had it despite the industry's decision to ignore him. 

 

Use the links below to read about I Am The Voice Left From Drinking, the bestselling memoir by JAMES FREUD published by HarperCollins in 2002 and his second, much darker memoir I Am The Voice Left From Rehab published by Penguin Books in 2011 which describes his descent into chronic alcoholism and ultimately unsuccessful efforts to combat the disease:

 

 

https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780732274405/i-am-the-voice-left-from-drinking/

 

 

https://www.penguin.com.au/books/i-am-the-voice-left-from-rehab-9781742745534

 

 

 

 

Special thanks to everyone who takes the time to upload music to YouTube.  Your efforts are appreciated by music lovers everywhere.

 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 

Words for the Music 014: DAVID McCOMB

 

Words for the Music 012: JIM MORRISON

 

Words for the Music 017: SANDY DENNY