By The Landlord
“Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it's in my basement... let me go upstairs and check.” – M. C. Escher
“Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.” – Theodore Roosevelt
“It's a dark, cool, quiet place. A basement in your soul. And that place can sometimes be dangerous to the human mind. I can open the door and enter that darkness, but I have to be very careful. I can find my story there. Then I bring that thing to the surface, into the real world … For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.” – Haruki Murakami
“Johnny's in the basement mixing up the medicine. I'm on the pavement thinking 'bout the government.” – Bob Dylan
“Hip-hop has always been chronologically misunderstood. Too many times, people are hearing the story from the second floor. Nobody's heard the story from the basement. If hip-hop was a cake, all I can tell you is the eggs, the flour, the sugar, the vanilla - the ingredient years.” – Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
“No matter how low you go, there's always an unexplored basement.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Don't. Go. Down. There," thinks the viewer,
As the character considers that very manoeuvre,
Down to the cellar, or even the sewer.
But they always do. Her
(because it's often at female expense,
for the sake of sexual, prolonged suspense)
Vulnerability, and the dark unknown,
Are heightened by sounds – a scream, a moan.
Clarice Starling edges to Buffalo Bill,
Freddy Krueger carves his tortuous kill,
From stench, rats, mice, or just creepy lice,
It generally turns out to be good advice.
Basements can entomb a sense of some evil,
Chambers of horror, equipment primeval,
But downstairs more often is not such a place
For human activity to so debase.
The 'cellar door' phrase opens and sticks
As a prime example of phonesthetics –
Beauty in language beyond actual meaning,
Promising intrigue, revealed below ceiling,
Coined first for Tolkein's own hobbit hole home,
To Donnie Darko – time portal to roam.
Downstairs can shed strange new lights,
Of mystery and magic for all troglodytes.
Down below ground so much goes on:
Cables and pipes – subterranean babylon,
Society's engines, data and energy,
Tunnels, bomb shelters, networks of synergy,
Metros and tube stations, secretive passages,
Human activities, transporting messages,
Safe, crowded, dangerous, functional, fast,
Built by Victorians, in theory to last.
Modern day Westminster tube station
Stockholm metro
In the past we covered the subject of caves,
But this time below it's the man-made brainwaves
Of architects' plans, then builders' hard hands,
That songs dig into for new musical lands.
Mining's a topic too covered in caves,
So that's off the spade, but that then still saves
Many more contexts for musical shares
On settings and people who live down the stairs.
It's below decks that things will get done,
And that's not just pulling up earth by the tonne.
Taking that lift down to the sub-basement floor
Shows how things run, reveals so much more.
History's posh houses, as in Gosford Park,
Or Downton Abbey, reveals a stark
Contrast of the mingling and mix
Of brains below stairs, not in the rich.
Upper floor class may sip tea, and talk empire,
While servants bring food and stoke up their fire,
But below the stairs, from butler to maid,
Is where the plot happens, decisions are made,
And often of course it's under-stair scenes
Of gossip and sex that enriches the genes.
It's below the stairs that culture springs up
From stately home kitchens to green shoots of pop.
Damp basements of history in cities run-down
Grew seeds of new music that's never top-down.
In Nazi-occupied France, hidden below decks,
Emerged secret cellars of first discotèques.
Jazz clubs in secret would swing underground
Expressing rebellion in movement and sound,
Basements a seedbed of daring and new,
Anti-Vichy, anti-Nazi, in the youthful zazou,
A culture long formed down in New Orleans
Taken upstairs by some Europeans
But basements made hubs of so many new clubs
Under old garages, hotels or pubs.
A place to get down, get dresed up, and sweat
A haven where gays, or oddballs, could let
Themselves and others completely express
Who they were in dance, music, and dress.
Grunewald Hotel cave bar 1912 - one of the first nightclubs
From New York to London, Paris, Berlin,
Basements were often where all could fit in,
Les Enfants Terribles, Blitz or the Batcave,
Underground holes, punk rock to house rave,
Sub Club to Gargoyle, though queues at the door,
To the basements of Paradise, Studio 54,
That is, of course, all long before
Developers killed off and filled in each floor.
A Bill Bernstein photograph of Paradise Garage basement in New York, 1979, from a new book and exhibition
So then it's time to dig down and deep
In your musical brains for suggestions to keep.
As long as songs' setting is down below ground,
Within these foundations your judgement is sound.
And minding our cellar with all taps and barrels
And a keen sense of context, echoes and parallels
Let's welcome a guest guru back to the Song Bar,
To make next week's playlists – the savvy ShivSidecar.
So then, please post your songs set below ground for deadline on Monday night. Lets dig …
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