I watched an America concert on TV the other day. I like that there music, it’s simple and nostalgic. A Horse With No Name that I sometimes call The Song That Doesn’t End has the simple lyric “There were plants and birds and rocks and things…” and for some reason I love that lyric in the song, no idea why. By itself it sounds like it was written by someone who needs a thesaurus.
So, just wondering if anyone else things there’s something magical in that lyric, or any other rather simple lyrics that work well for them. Or any thoughts about America (the band). Or anything else on your mind.
Dopers in particular seem to have a beef with America that doesn’t extend to other bands with “stupid” lyrics. I could easily list ten equally as bad lyrics from top bands, but America is the only one that gets ganged up on. Goo Goo ga-joob, baby.
I’ve loved the song since it was new. I like Sister Golden hair, Ventura Highway, Sandman, I Need You, Don’t Cross the River, Tin Man, Lonely People, Daisy Jane. And the Nameless Horse is still good.
If you’re going to pick on them, at least pick on Muskrat Love.
I think there’s something magical in it and many others, such as Clarice and Donkey Jaw. I love their guitar playing - better than that of C,S&N (who also love)?
“Plants and birds and rocks and things” is a very simple lyric that is also (to me, anyway) highly evocative.
From the very first time I heard the song, that line somehow painted a picture of an entire desertscape in my head, and still makes the song come alive for me.
So yeah, I get where you’re coming from, TriPolar. I can’t really explain it, but it’s music; I don’t have to.
I saw America at a concert once. They weren’t performing that night, they were in town with a day off, and they took the opportunity see a Roy Buchanan concert. Small venue - somewhere around 200-300 people. I thought it was mildly interesting that I saw America at a concert that wasn’t an America concert. I COULD have seen them perform - I won tickets to see them perform the day before - but my buddy and I decided to pass, and we ended up ‘seeing’ them the next day anyway.
To me, that line always kinda seemed to peter out, to dissolve into vagueness, which is really very desert-appropriate. Like a painting that gradually looses detail in one direction until it’s nothing but vaguely hinted at forms, like heaps of sand. Just things, really.
It’s exactly the way someone who’s out in a desert in the sun riding a horse for way too long would describe it to the paramedics who eventually found them raving and took them off to the hospital for a nice rest and several banana bags of neutral saline. Yeah, I like it too.
Okay, I guess I’m not the only one. A lot of the appeal is nostalgia, I loved the 70s, sort of, at least the parts I didn’t hate. It is evocative, it is the way you’d describe a ride through the desert. I’m not a musical person generally but some songs break through the barrier and let me enjoy them in this way.
I look at America about the same way as I do Soul Coughing–the vocals are more like another instrument rather than being intended to convey a lot of specifically verbal meaning. Soul Coughing uses vocals like percussion, America uses them like a woodwind section. I mean, nobody expects scat singing to make sense, right? Same thing, seems a bit more like traditional vocals but it’s not, really.
I’ve lived in California virtually my entire life, seen many, many alligator lizards (caught a fair share as well), but I’ve never, ever seen one “in the air”.
I wasn’t around in the '70s. I like that song, not so much because of the semantics as the metre. But I’ve always been about rhythm and melody over semantics. It’s a very easy-going song rhythmically.
“There were plants and birds and rocks and things…” gives me the feeling that it’s his first time in the desert. He doesn’t know the names of anything, but he still enjoys them.
So, what would “things” be? He already covered animals, vegetables and minerals.
To his credit, he couldn’t even remember his own name. Cause there ain’t no one for to give him no pain.
I do like the song.
Back in what my kids call “the hippie days”, I knew kids (hell, I was kids) that’d just wander around. “Whatcha doon tomorrow?” “Dunno, might go out to the desert.” You never had to ask what they were going to do there, that question would’ve been met with confusion. “Do? Whadja mean Do? We’re gonna be in the desert, man…” Might be some weed or edibles or Serious 'Shrooms involved.
Horse with No Name is a perfect portrait of three city guys wandering around the desert. Thirsty, sunburned, but contented and full of like*, insights,* man…
Oh, those “rocks an’ things and the heat was hot and dude I totally just saw lizards in the air”? Also high as fü¢k.
I kind of like the use of the generic terms so that the listener can form their own picture of what it would look like, and I also think that’s a great storytelling technique.
“Plants and birds and rocks and things”… instead of specifics, like “cactus and eagles and boulders and stuff like that…”
The ocean is a desert with its life underground
And a perfect disguise above
Under the cities lies a heart made of ground
But the humans will give no love
