By The Landlord
“History repeats the old conceits/ The glib replies the same defeats/ Keep your finger on important issues/ With crocodile tears and a pocketful of tissues …” sang a sharp-tongued Elvis Costello in Beyond Belief - telling us in a lovesick way how people are wont to make the same mistakes over and over again, and show how things will likely end where they began – in a right old mess, probably. Cynical? Yes. However, arguably, we perhaps might also try and make the most of that mess, and even enjoy it.
History may repeat itself, so what happens? Politicians and papers tend to stir up hatred about others to blame, thus gathering revenue in advertising, again. Still, some perspective is gained, and perhaps a moment of revelation is made. But then the next generation comes along, and the same thing has to be learned. That may be a little depressing, but also stimulating, even illuminating, as we glimpse the shape of ourselves within a chaotic universe. Meanwhile, with work to do and things to buy, life can be so distracting …
From fleeting fashion to dangerous signs of returning fascism, everything is indeed cyclical, driven by the clockwork reliability of lucrative amnesia. Whether it’s a need for colour or shape, or some people to blame and hate, we are mostly all too busy needing to eat, walk the dog, or just want to belong to something to stop the rot. Perhaps we are, as someone in the past/future put it, just damned dirty apes, just trying to cope, our lives reflected in in the repetitious plots of many a movie or soap. But this time, EU really did it …
But let’s escape all of that, back into the wonderful world of songs. How do they represent the cyclical? Perhaps it’s best to look at this in any or all of three particular ways. Your suggestions might focus in subject matter on setting or story in lyrics. A more playful example than Beyond Belief came in 1968’s wonderful film The Wicker Man, where Sergeant Howie stumbles on a pagan ritual that centres upon the life cycle. Hey everyone, it's time to dance round the maypole. From tree to limb to branch to nest to egg to bird to feather to bed to girl to man to seed to boy to man to grave, out of which, guess what? There grows a tree …
Branching from this, one band particularly keen on life cycle songs is They Might Be Giants. With them you could look at, for example, I, Palindrome, I, a reciprocal, karma-based tale of greedy family murder where sins are repeated on the sinner. Or perhaps from your musical shelf you might pick the more light-hearted and endlessly paradoxical Dead, where the focus might be potatoes, couch or otherwise:
“I returned a bag of groceries/ Accidentally taken off the shelf/ Before the expiration date,/ I came back as a bag of groceries/ Accidentally taken off the shelf/ Before the date stamped on myself … Now it's over I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want (now it's over)/ Or, I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do.”
But in addressing the subject matter of songs about cycles, your suggestions might take on more sociological and political perspective. The other Elvis portrays the cycles of the ghetto in one of his greatest songs where it starts and ends on a cold, Chicago morning where another baby child is born…
Meanwhile in a very different genre, but no less effectively, a perhaps surprisingly good Naughty By Nature number - particularly the album version – reflects on the less than positive chances of a deprived youngster from a similar background, where the cycle continues.
But alongside storylines within songs, perhaps the most fertile ground for this week’s theme will be in the patterns of lyrics themselves, where a song begins and ends with the same line. Ziggy Stardust is best remembered for its otherworldly imagery, Bowie’s stylish look and performance, not to mention Mick Ronson’s glorious guitar sound, but another interesting aspect to this classic is the fact that it both begins and ends with the line “Ziggy played guitar”. So this qualifies - but what does it signify? And again in another very different genre, there must surely be significance behind the fact Karl Orff's tumultuous Carmina Burana begins with “O Fortuna”, and ends, after some of the most powerful passages in all music, with the very same. That's fate for you ...
The third big strand of how songs illustrate the cyclical is in their actual musical form. Bowie’s same Ziggy album contains another example working in this way. Five Years, appropriately for a song about a period of time, doesn’t begin and end with the same lyrics, but with the same fading in – and out – drum beat:
Talking of big strands, there is no finer visual, or simpler example of the cyclical than the Mobius strip, here rather appropriately illustrated in the form of amusical box version with song Deja Vu / We Have All Been Here Before:
So this week it’s also time to delve deep into music's cycles, ending where they begin, and for insight into the classical canon too, possibly the most inspiration of books on this subject is Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, a treasure trove of inspiration on the circular, paradoxical, self-reflexive, including fun analysis of JS Bach’s fugue form. In musical terms it is a bit like Escher’s endless ascending and descending stairs, complex yet simple, mathematical yet magical, timeless and timely.
All of which leads me, rather appropriately, to welcome this week’s guest guru, no doubt continuing to raise the Bar’s bar of creativity to the next level. From last week’s treefrogdemon to the next lily pad, the fabulous flatfrog will take on this week’s playful playlisting. Nominate your songs in comments until last orders are called on Monday, before publication next Wednesday. Please note that in the past, in our familiar song circles, the topics of circles and repetition have been touched upon, but not in the way described above. So here we go again, but not at all in the same way at all …
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Fancy a turn behind the pumps at The Song Bar? Care to choose a playlist from songs nominated and write something about it? Then feel free to contact The Song Bar here, or try the usual email address.