I’m not sure if it’s still in print, but in 2000 Townshend put out a Lifehouse box set which included the demos, some re-recordings and live performances and “new” music, and a radio play adaptation that he wrote for the BBC. It wasn’t domestically available when it came out and I had to mail the equivalent of £45 cash to a friend in the UK so they could order a copy and then ship it to me.
He also had a website around 2007 or so where you could upload your vital statistics and download a synthesizer track based on them, which is the same way he composed the synth track on Baba O’Reilly (using Meher Baba’s data). Mine is still on my hard drive somewhere.
If I were Meher Baba (on whatever spiritual plane he may reside), I’d be rolling my eyes at the lyrics for “Baba O’ Reilly” and “Let My love Open the Door”. Both great tunes in their respective styles, but the lyrics are particularly insipid for something written in devotion to a guru.
“I’ll give you a four leaf clover
Take all worry out of your mind”
Letterkenny has some great music to accompany the fight scenes. My favorite such scene is in the Buck and Doe episode. The song is The Hunches’ Your Sick Blooms.
At least the feel of the song is great. I can’t find the lyrics online and they are hard to make out. But from the bits I can discern … these are not nice lyrics.
What’s weird is that it can so easily be cleaned up and keep the colloquial double negatives without screwing up the meter: “'cause there ain’t no one who can give you no pain.” Like, I don’t mind those double negatives – I grew up with them. But “for to give you”? Ugh. I don’t think that’s dialect anywhere.
My kid was listening to some meaningless hippie jam band noodling, and I had an epiphany: “I figured out what genre this music is! ‘We were high as fuck when we wrote this, and we’re counting on you being high as fuck when you listen to it’!”
[note on my parenting: I learned all the good words from my kids]
To be fair, Lennon grew up in a country with a state religion. And the CoE likes to throw its weight around.
While countries like Ireland and Italy share a primary religion, the government-like control of the Roman Catholic Church in the affairs of the society cause a lot of problems. France has struggled for a long time to keep the Roman Catholic Church our of politics and … they’re still working on it.
We’ve seen a lot of effects of church interference in politics in the US, esp. recently.
Most churches just can’t stop trying to control governments.
I know it’s fun to put down KISS, but in their early years, they were a perfectly fine form of that early glam rock period. Yeah, they aren’t know for their lyrics, but were their peers? I love these bands but listen to the lyrics from T Rex and New York Dolls. Bowie would be the exception, but glam wasn’t known for their stellar lyric writing. I still love them.
Maybe. Or instead maybe the intended rhetorical effect is sort of like:
I’d like a pony.
No wait; I’d like a pony and a trip to Disneyland.
No, wait wait; I’d like a pony, and a trip to Disneyland, and a great big ice cream cone!
And don’t forget the pony.
You dance With your lizard leather boots on And pull the strings that change The faces of men You diamond proud hag You’re a gutter gaunt gangster John Lennon knows your name And I’ve seen his
Love Cheap Trick, especially their (very underrated, IMO) debut album. But there is a song on that album that has the creepiest lyrics I’ve ever heard. The song is called Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School. Ugh.
One of my absolute favorite lines in any rock song is from Lick It Up. High brow it’s not, but “You gotta live like you’re on vacation” are words to live by.
(for me, anyway )
)