Thought for the Day-June 13,00

Subject: Thought for the Day-June 13,00
From: GUEST,Peter T.
Date: 13 Jun 00 - 08:54 AM

Reading Greil Marcus' "Invisible Republic" on the music of the 1920's, one is struck by the repertoire of ballad songs, ghoulish train wreck songs, and other derivatives that have virtually disappeared from the musical horizon. This not only raises questions about the shifting tastes and mores of what is acceptable, but (naturally) about the narrowing of what counts as songs to what one could call "personal relationship wreck songs". To take only the train wreck songs, where are the airplane crash songs? Can Woody Guthrie's Deportees be the last well known one of this genre? The two last great flourishings of this form seem to have been "Teen Angel" and the brief eruption of trucker songs. Where are the narrative ballads of grisly murders, bank robberies (hands up the last bank robbery song you remember), etc.? Where are the plaintive little girls confronting their parent's drinking problems? Garth Brooks seems to have dabbled in this a bit with wife beating. What was the last extended ballad to charm the citizenry -- "Ode To Billy Joe"?

Perhaps all these earlier songs were forms of proto-television, or news, that have all been replaced by the real thing, or the National Enquirer. Perhaps listening to a narrative is not what music is for these days -- rather a form of emotional wallpaper. Maybe it is all secret class warfare. But it does remind me of one of the reasons why folk music interests me: completely eclectic mixes of what music can do. And it does make me pine (a little box of pine) for a really good tasteless plane crash song, complete with heroic pilot, dark foreboding, and mangled bodies. I don't know why: just the sweet romantic purist in me, I guess.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day-June 13,00
From: catspaw49
Date: 13 Jun 00 - 09:33 AM

Spaw arrives in his usual tasteless self.....

I heard you talking about this on Rick's show last night Peter. I wondered then and now if you might have a point. We have had ample opps for songs of people croaking in planes from the long line of C-W stars to Ricky Nelson and Stan Rogers. I suppose "American Pie" touches on it to some degree. How about that "Major Tom" thing.....you know, "Ground control to Major Tom, You really are fucked up..." or whatever that thing was. For an episodic ballad, there is "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts?" Gawd knows its long enough if not completely clear as to what's going on.

The only air crash that I can think of where the pilots showed great heroism was the DC-10 at Sioux City. Not to say that others haven't shown heroism, but the advent of cockpit voice recorders have allowed us to see just how hopeless a situation can be and that often a pilot's last words are, "Oh shit." With "glass cockpits" in so many planes today (some are so aerodynamically unstable that they won't fly without the computerized avionics) the thought of a good ol' "Stick an' Rudder" guy fighting for control has been replaced by a poor slob trying to re-program the damn avionics as the plane flies into the ground. Not that the guy isn't heroic, its just that most of us can relate to recalcitrant computers "crashing" in the safety of our homes or offices and know he's screwed.

I dunno' Peter.......I think the field is pretty open. Go for it.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day-June 13,00
From: AndyG
Date: 13 Jun 00 - 09:40 AM

I'm no football (soccer) fan but the people of my home town (the City of Manchester) were devasted by an air disaster in 1958.
The resulting song can stiil be heard, the text can be found by following this link:
The Flowers of Manchester .

AndyG

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day-June 13,00
From: GUEST,Peter T.
Date: 13 Jun 00 - 09:45 AM

I think I am too stuck in the mud middle class to carry it off with the real style that it needs. But who knows??
What interests me about the old songs is the obvious thrill people had in the details -- the scalded engineer, the numbers and names of the trains, the tornados and hurricanes and floods destroying the schoolhouse -- mixed with the most abject sentimentality. Pure National Enquirer, midday TV shows, total trash. And yet turning this into music seems to have disappeared. It seems somewhat odd that millions of people should be watching this stuff, and yet the whole collection of genres seems to have gone completely. Is this not, for example, a gold mine awaiting tapping? ("At the bottom of this mine, lies a big, big man....")

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day-June 13,00
From: Jim the Bart
Date: 13 Jun 00 - 10:21 AM

I think there are people who still work the genre. I think Springsteen is at his best when he's telling stories like he did on Nebraska. Songs like The River may not be based on news stories, but they are balladry at IMHO a pretty high level. And his latest effort - the song "American Skin (41 shots)" about the Diallo shooting in New York - has put him at the center of controversy on police brutality. Good work Bruce!

One reason that I think more people don't do those old fashioned story songs is the temper of the times. Most people are too self-involved to spend time listening to songs about someone else's heroism or disaster. They need re-enactments on tabloid TV to visualize the story. Try to do a great song like The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and all you see are people glancing at their watch. We have become much more cynical about the heroism and nobility that has to be at the heart of a good train wreck song to make it effective.
And if you're not highly skilled as a writer, you're better off not messing. One of the last topical ballads to crack the charts in my memory was Dylan's "Hurricane" which is, again in my opinion, a hack piece with a catchy chorus, nice tune and a few great lines. If I remember correctly although it got airplay he got scalded for it when it came out, particularly when Hurricane was re-tried and found guilty again. It's only lately that both Hurricane, and Dylan's take on him in the song, were vindicated.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day-June 13,00
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 13 Jun 00 - 11:12 AM

I've thought about this quite a bit since you mentioned it last night Peter, and I can't get by a simple fact.

It's hard to romanticize an incident when we now know what bleeding, dying people ACTUALLY look like..through television.

The vast majority of the great train and ship disasters that have made their way into song were prior to television (and for the most part..newsreels)

For a number of years I sung the hearty/hellish IRA songs of the Clancys, but some time in the late 70s I saw TV footage of the actual results of a pub bombing. Needless to say, it was horrifying, and I can't see anyone not directly involved in "the troubles" wanting to write a musical document about it. I've rarely sung one since. Same thing with the horror of Lockerbie and other airline crashes. Where would a songwriter start? The song could be about a "noble" pilot, but the images of body parts in trees would be impossible to turn into entertainment (and that's what songs are for...even dark ones).

If I might try something here. Gordon Lighfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" is arguably his best known song. He gives brief bios of several of the sailors who drowned, and paints a picture of the wild Great Lakes. Had this incident been documented in nightly news clips, culminating in scenes of dredgers trying to find bodies...I doubt if folks would be able to listen to that ballad. Somehow I think the feeling would be that their deaths had been trivialized in a way.

In closing, I suggest anyone who finds this topic interesting, listen to Grit Laskin's masterpiece "In the Blood". A better written song I've never heard...but he CAN'T sing it in public. At it's conclusion, the two or three ausiences who heard it, sat there with their mouths open....staring. The rest of the evening was ruined....by the STRENGTH OF THIS SONG. It's written in 17th century ballad style and is about the man with aids who infected and killed (and is still killing) dozens of women.

rick

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day-June 13,00
From: SINSULL
Date: 13 Jun 00 - 11:48 AM

It is hard to understand how an event like the destruction of the Challenger, witnessed by the world in instant replay, with its effects still felt in our national space program, with "real" people lost hasn't been immortalized in song. But it hasn't been touched by classical musicians, playwrites, or even Broadway.

The Kennedy assassination was - "The Summer Of His Years" and Dion's "Has Anybody Here?" But who sings it anymore?

Sorry for the ramble but I wonder how much our "Instant" access to information influences the songwriting process. A hundred years ago songs told the tale. Now they keep the story alive as a protest, a warning, a reminder.

Dylan's "Hattie Carroll", Springstein's "41 Shots".

I can't stand Rap music but I have a feeling you will find more "history" there than anywhere else in music today. And it is angry.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day-June 13,00
From: GUEST,Peter T.
Date: 13 Jun 00 - 03:04 PM

Thanks for the comments. I had forgotten about the Edmund Fitzgerald. Still puzzled though, in spite of Rick's apposite comments: the thing about the early songs was that the people who wrote and sang them seem to know quite well what violence looked like, and the strength of the songs is in their casual brutality and vividness. That seems to go against the idea that it is because we see violence and its consequences that keeps them from being written. Perhaps our take on violence has changed. I did think of a good song on the experience of global violence on television: Paul Simon's Boy in the Bubble. Not a ballad, but it certainly gives a feel for the images. Must check out the Laskin song....

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day-June 13,00
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Jun 00 - 06:13 PM

I asked in a thread a while ago (probably around April 18th) about why there aren't more songs about (it was the Lockerbie reference that made me think of this) the terrorism of the '80s. The context in which I was asking was remembering my father being killed in the Beirut Embassy bombing. The answer was basically that I should write the song myself as only I can say what *I* was feeling... but I still wonder why there aren't more tragic ballads nowadays, and I don't agree that what happened was a personal tragedy, but rather a worldwide one (oh, OK, at least a national one). I like ballads, and it seems as if all the ones I know are about tragedies (how many songs start off with 2 brothers and end up with 2 brothers? Only Shel Silverstein has a train not wrecking...).

Also, in another aside, the most heroism I remember hearing from tapes on a newscast was the copilot of the Aloha Airlines plane that lost its roof and DIDN'T crash, whoo boy, that woman had ice in her veins. But I don't recall anything about Sioux City other than the video, so I can't compare. Another was the voice of that ABC reporter at Tianenman Square, being chased --and caught-- by the Chinese cops.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day-June 13,00
From: Little Neophyte
Date: 13 Jun 00 - 07:23 PM

As Rick mentioned, Grit Laskin's masterpiece "In the Blood" is a very powerful song.
I also agree that much of the problem has to do with the desensitization we are constantly bombarded with from Network News Drama. How much passion can you feel for an issue when the television live coverage of death and violence assures a numbing to our system.
Deadening the emotions does not make for good song writing.

But then there are people like Grit who can cut clear through to a current issue. So, not all is a lost cause.

Bonnie