So listening to Morrissey, as you do (and not even feeling particularly depressed or broken up with ) and again reminded of this verse in Irish Heart, English Blood which as has always bugged me:
I’ve been dreaming of a time when
The English are sick to death of labor and Tories
And spit upon the name Oliver Cromwell
And denounce this royal line
That still salute him and will salute him forever
Seriously, the royal line of England will salute Oliver Cromwell? The guy who famously executed their predecessor? Never mind spitting upon his name, they had his body dug up, beheaded, and his head displayed on a spike.
I get a poor grasp of history is not the most serious allegation that can be leveled against Morrissey and his opinions of late, but still it bugs me. Anyone else have a song that bugs them like this for historical reasons?
From The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down:
“In the winter of '65
We were hungry, just barely alive
By May the 10th, Richmond had fell
It’s a time I remember, oh so well”
WTF? LIncoln was shot April 14 and went to Richmond after it fell, so it’s perfectly obvious it fell well before May 10. April 2, to be exact.
Maybe it’s intentional - the previous line was “sick to death of Labour and Tories”, which are the two opposing parties, so maybe he’s hoping for a time where the English denounce both Oliver Cromwell (whom the Irish really hate) and the royals. I don’t know how the last line fits in, though. Maybe Morrissey meant that the English salute Cromwell symbolically by oppressing the Irish?
Walk the Dinosaur claims that there were dinosaurs around 40 million years ago. Now, it could have been talking about avian dinosaurs, but it doesn’t seem to, from context.
Bonus: Steve Martin was really confused on the biography of Tutenkham.
I think Occam’s razor is the best approach here, sure there could be some deeper metaphor we are missing, but the most likely explanation is Morrissey did not have a good grasp of what occurred between the British Royal family and Oliver Cromwell, only that that they both did bad things in Ireland.
Not that it should really matter (especially compared to some of the other opinions Morrissey has voiced), I mean I’m not picking up a historic tome on the history of the British Royalty and their relationship with Ireland and the protectorate when I’m a disaffected 18 year old and my girlfriend dumps me But it bugs me.
Oh God, not Paper Lace again. As I point out every time we discuss this song and its alleged error, Chicago has an East Side!
It’s in the southeast, right against the Indiana border. It’s a Chicago neighborhood just like Pilsen or Streeterville. There are craploads of businesses with “East Side” in their name, and if you ask people from there where they live, they’ll say “the east side”.
It’s a remote part of Chicago that many locals never visit, or even thin about, BUT IT EXISTS!
In light of the above exchange, let me point out that whatever the B-52s might have sung, historically, “Krakatoa” is west of Java, not east.
And “historically” isn’t a bad way to think about it, since the volcano basically blew itself completely up in 1883. There is a growing volcano there now, but it is known as “Anak Krakatau” (child of Krakatau).
Which brings me to a second correction: the volcano is “Krakatau” not “Krakatoa.” However, that is such a common mistake in most of the world that it is essentially just the “foreign” name of the volcano. (It apparently arose when a hasty telegraph in 1883 included that misspelling. Or so says Simon Winchester, author of the authoritative if terrifyingly footnote-laden book on the subject of the 1883 eruption.)
Georgie Fame’s The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde contains historical inaccuracies, the most glaring of which are in this stanza:
A federal deputation laid a deadly ambush When Bonnie and Clyde came walking in the sunshine A half a dozen carbines opened up on them.
The posse that killed Bonnie and Clyde wasn’t federal. It was composed of a Texas Ranger, a former Ranger who worked for the Texas Highway Patrol, a Louisiana sheriff and his deputy and two deputy sheriffs from Texas. Bonnie and Clyde weren’t “walking in the sunshine”; they were in a Ford V8 containing an arsenal of weapons and several thousand rounds of ammo, that paused on a country road near Gibsland, Louisiana to check out a stopped vehicle belonging to the father of one of the gang members. Lastly, they were shot down by semi-automatic rifles (not carbines to my knowledge), as well as shotguns and pistols.
North to Alaska (the movie) The song is off both historically and geographically in the song. First it says that Big Sam struck gold in 1892. Not that he couldn’t have, but the gold rush didn’t start until 1899, and the movie clearly depicts a gold rush camp. The lyric “found the bonanza gold below that old White Mountain just a little southeast of Nome.” White Mountain is actually a bit northeast of Nome. Anything southeast of Nome, whether a little or a lot puts one in the middle of Norton Sound.
Mexicantown-Southwest Detroit is a down-to-earth neighborhood filled with informal restaurants offering traditional Mexican food, … and laid-back bars and tiki lounges serve margaritas.
) and again reminded of this verse in Irish Heart, English Blood which as has always bugged me:
Daddy was a cop on the east side of Chicago… 
