So, I bought the “Mighty Wind” soundtrack last week after having enjoyed the movie. And I know there’s a lot of subtle and not-so-subtle humor throughout.
But then I’m listening to “Blood on the Coal,” as I drive to work. The song is the Folksmen’s take on the standard trainwreck song, this one taking place in a coal mine, to boot.
Singing along, I get to…
"Ol’ 97 went in the wrong hole,
"Now in Mine No. 60, there’s
"Blood on the coal,
"Blood on the coal,
“Blood on the coal.”
:eek:
Later, the song talks about “slag pits steaming,” “trestle began to groan,” and “the walls began to tremble.”
And while someone could argue in most cases that this might be reading too much into things, due to the nature of the movie (and its songs), I’m sure it was supposed to have this double meaning.
Well, many of Spinal Tap’s songs and albums, both real and imaginary, have titles that are mere fart jokes: “Silent But Deadly,” “Break Like the Wind,” etc. And Spinal Tap’s lyrics are filled with awful sex jokes (“My baby fits me like a flesh tuxedo, I’d like to sink her with my pink torpedo”).
So, I’m inclined to think that Chris Guest & Co. were having naughty fun with some of the lyrics in “A Mighty Wind,” too.
Yeah, but I think they tried to be a little more subtle than they did with “Spinal Tap.” I think with “Wind” they wanted the double entendres to be less obvious, almost as a tribute to past controversies over “Puff the Magic Dragon” and other songs that various Morals Police were sure were going to corrupt the children.
The assumption that because the songs written for Spinal Tap are ill-concealed double entendres, the same should be true of songs written for the Folksmen is a faulty one – a 70’s and 80’s hair metal band would write songs like that and think they were being clever while a folk trio wouldn’t. However, the same folk trio might indeed write a song with that possible interpretation and be completely clueless about it – that’s certainly the joke being made in the lines from the title song quoted by Mr. Wrong. “Blood on the Coal” might be running along a similar track, or it might not; I’d have to hear the song, I think.
I’m with Cliffy. There are some jokes like that in A Mighty Wind, for sure. But it’s subtler and more low-key: the musicians weren’t in on the joke in the title song. Spinal Tap lyrics and titles were intentionally sexual (“Lick My Love Pump”).
Not only are disastrous events common to folk songs, train wrecks seem to be particularly so. Oh, and I googled “Blood on the Coal” earlier - most of the hits were a U2 song.
It’s hard to believe that “Went in the wrong hole” was
a) unintentional or
b) anything but what you think it is.
Puff the Magic DragonIS just a song about a dragon and a little boy named Paper. Mr. Tambourine Man, on the other hand, is not about a guy playing a percussion instrument. My point being that there were things you COULD NOT SAY in a song in the 50’s and 60’s, so you had to “lay it between the lines” and while Puff was not such an instance, Blood on the Coal almost certainly is. (And if you ask them, they’ll swear it’s not–that’s part of the schtick.)
And ‘“Blood on the Coal” might be running along a similar track’ was pretty funny, Cliffy.
Well, yes, I think that’s the point: in both cases the theme is about people who think they are performing at the peak of their art, but are oblivious to how stupid it comes out to an disinterested outside observer. The characterizations are based on that Spinal Tap, as a metal band, uses the pretense of pushing daringly on the “fine line between Stupid and Clever” as an excuse to be crass and unoriginal; while the Folkmen are really so sincerely caught up in their well-intentioned groove that they just don’t realize what could be wrong.
Here’s my thought: I can see what the first line or two would mean if its a double-entendre. What would “blood on the coal” mean? It doesn’t make any sense to me.
I GET it, I mean that it sounds like an extremely, extremely forced (heh) joke.
JonScribe, whatever this bit means, you realize there were plenty of other jokes like this, right? It IS made by the Spinal Tap crew - what were you expecting?
The more I think about it, the more I think it’s unintentional. There’s too much in the song that doesn’t support that interpretation. The stuff about being in the warm Kentucky sun, the Irishman named Murphy, etc. If the FM were going to write a song about anal sex, I think they’d be more clever in other parts of the song.
I think it’s just a parody of train/mine/disaster songs.