That translates to Columbus,Columbus, it's holiday time!
But you don't need to know that to enjoy the song. They say music has no language,don't they?
Well,guess what, for once they are right,whoever they are,cos they seem to say a lot of horseshit too at times.I hate them!
Anyway, the point is, at times ,you really don't need to understand the lyrics.In fact,if you're listening to Tamil or Telugu songs,it sounds much better if you don't know the language,cos then you don't pay attention to the meaning,which in most cases, is mind-blowing,speaking very very euphemistically.Sample these for instance,from the song Kaadhal Yannai from the Tamil smash hit Anniyan,which I was lucky enough to watch some time back(with subtitles of course.Music is fine,but you do need to understand the dialogues occasionally):
hiroshima neethano nagasakiyum neethano
un meethu thaano en kaadhal bomb oh
harappa vum neethano mohanjadarro neethano
aayvaalan naano arayaa lamo
Roughly translated, this means,
You are Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I'm the love atom bomb.
You are Harappa and Mohenjodaro,I'm your researcher.
Ouch!Yea that's what I said.It sounded so cool in Tamil.The subtitles spoiled the fun,really.
The dance club, IIT Kanpur has made a tradition out of dancing to popular Tamil numbers.This was probably my initiation into south indian movie music.In my first year, our seniors danced to Chandralekha. Great song, and they did a damn good job on the choreography part too. Both the song and the dance were a hit with the local junta.It became something less than a legend in the short and until then unillustrious history of dance club.
The following year we danced to Saregame (the telugu version) from the cult hit Boys(what a gay name!). An even more amazing song.but I don't know what went wrong with the dance.Something did, that's for sure. The practice took the life out of us. For 15 days, we could think of nothing else.Most of us had injured different parts of our bodies in trying out some rad move or the other.I,being the bulkiest and the most unfit,was really at the receiving end.I can't really blame our seniors who choreographed the dance. They didn't want it to be a normal, chalta hai kind of dance. And the truth is,neither did we.We wanted bakchodi. Something that would bring the audience to the edge of their seats. We tried our best,all of us did. And even today, some of our ardent supporters(read the people who had seen us toil with their own eyes) try to convince us that it was extraordinary.But it wasn't.We just had to see the video once to find that out for ourselves. We looked too bloody tired, at least I did. Absolutely no energy,completely betraying the spirit of such an energetic song.
Marchi ve se,thats what we say
Translation: We want to change, thats what we say
Anyway, the experience is vivid enough to be a part of another post.Maybe someday I'll cover it in an entire post,but then again, maybe I'll not.
Coming back to the issue of vernacular music, other songs I've heard are Girlfriend (also from Boys) , Pachchai Nirmae from Alai Payuthey (Saathiya's Tamil original by Mani Ratnam), Endrendrum Punnagai (also from Alai Payuthey, this one was the original version of O humdum suniyo re, a smash hit in its own right) ,Chikubuku Raile( from Gentleman) which introduced Prabhudeva to the world and some other songs from Anniyan. I do enjoy them a lot, which reminds me of Shvet's recent comment on Pink Floyd's stress on lyrics. He remarked that probably Floyd and The Doors were the only rock groups to give so much importance to lyrics.I partly agree with him. He was a bit narrow in his analysis. Groups like Iron Maiden and to some extent, Led Zeppelin were heavily influenced by literature in their lyrical content. While Maiden directly told stories as it is in their songs such as Rime of the ancient Mariner, To tame a land and Seventh son of a seventh son, Led Zep mostly alluded to famous pieces of work indirectly in a couple of songs, most notably Battle of Evermore and Misty mountain hop, which are said to be inspired by J.R.R Tolkien's works. The fact that they used famous literary works as their background made the lyrics very important. But Led Zep did pay attention to lyrics even when they were not literarily inspired. Two of their most beautiful songs, Kashmir and Stairway to heaven are testimony to that fact. While the former is an amazing vivid description of the Sahara desert(yea,yea its got nothing to do with Kashmir.Robert Plant just liked the name), the latter is arguably the most widely interpreted song in rock history. Among other things, the hidden meanings people generally relate with the song are sex,drugs(what about rock'n'roll?) and satanistic influences(they claim that if you play the song backwards,it literally sounds like a prayer to Satan himself). The last allegation was quite common to rock musicians in those days. They were widely considered children of the devil by chrisitian assholes. Meanwhile,Robert Plant has been pleading not guilty ,all these years saying that the song is just a product of his imagination and partly influenced by a book he was reading at that time(Magic Arts in Celtic Britain by Lewis Spence).His claim does hold water too, since the book contains clear references to May Queens, pipers and bustling hedgegrows. Conclusion: for all the hype, the song is just poetic gibberish, meaning absolutely nothing at all.(Its still a great song thoh).Disappointed,eh? So was I.
And then there was Bob Dylan.Not strictly a rock musician, but he had tremendous influence on the genre and in turn was himself influenced by it.But he was essentially a poet.Even today, meaningful lyrics in Rock music are referred to as Dylanesque . Bruce Springsteen, the person who revived the role of lyrics rock with some extremely poetic and thought-provoking stuff, is said to be the modern day Bob Dylan . Some of his songs are musically not so rich,but the lyrics,man! I listened to Streets of Philadelphia at least 50 times at a stretch once,as much for the beautiful melancholy rhythm as for the amazing lyrics. The record still holds. And then Blood Brothers . I became addicted to this one solely because of the lyrics. A sample,
Now the hardness of this world slowly grinds your dreams away
Makin' a fool's joke out of the promises we make
And what once seemed black and white turns to so many shades of gray
We lose ourselves in work to do and bills to pay
And it's a ride, ride, ride, and there ain't much cover
With no one runnin' by your side my blood brother.
Guess what I did after first listening to the song? Sent it to my brother,what else? He loved it too.Who won't,really?
But there is no doubt that most rock groups of the 60's and 70's were just out to have fun and play their kind of music. Rolling Stones made the simplest of songs, both musically and lyrically,but composed the catchiest of tunes. The Beatles could make a song out of anything, a case in point being their song Why don't we do it on the road? from The White album or another more famous one which goes Happiness is a warm gun from the same album.Apparently, John Lennon got the idea for the song's name from an advertisement for guns that he saw in a magazine. It is creative without doubt. But just check out the last few lines,
I need a fix 'cause I'm going down
Down to the bits that I left uptown
I need a fix cause I'm going down
Mother Superior jumped the gun
Mother Superior jumped the gun
Mother Superior jumped the gun
Mother Superior jumped the gun
Happiness is a warm gun
Happiness is a warm gun, momma
When I hold you in my arms
And I feel my finger on your trigger
I know nobody can do me no harm
Because happiness is a warm gun, momma
Happiness is a warm gun
-Yes it is.
Happiness is a warm, yes it is...
Gun!
Well don't ya know that happiness is a warm gun, momma?
Make whatever you want of it,cos that's what Lennon intended I'm sure.Some say it's about cocaine,others point out to the obvious Freudian connection and claim that it's all about sex.Thats what I believe too partly.But only because of the And I feel my finger on your trigger part. The warm gun thing was borrowed from an ad, and Lennon didn't intend to drag Freud into it,I'm sure.
Another Beatles era band,probably not half as popular as them but which is said to have a much greater influence on the Rock'n'Roll movement was The Who. Its chief songwriter, Pete Townshend, was a person with a poetic tinge too, just like Jim Morrison and Roger Waters. One of their biggest hits, Won't get fooled again, is an amazing satire on the futility of revolution as a means to bring about change in the society. It describes a revolution in complete earnest for seven-and-a-half minutes out of eight and then ends with a
Meet the new boss, just like the old boss.
Hehe,clever man!
Bands like AC/DC and Rolling Stones often chos Rock'n'Roll itself as the subject, particularly the former, with songs like It's a long way to the top, Rock'n'Roll ain't noise pollution, even the immensely popular Highway to hell to an extent.As I have pointed out earlier, they were mostly looking to have fun.They did it quite well too. This was partly the message implicit in the music created by the bands of the punk era as well. In fact, Floyd had been at the receiving end of scathing criticism after Wish you were here from bands like The Sex Pistols and The Ramones for becoming too complicated in their song structure and lyrical content,drifting away from the simplicity of early rock'n'roll. Hmm...I don't quite agree with them,but they were probably right in their own way(!) Rockers were rebels,they didn't want to stick to conventions,either musically or lyrically,which is why they insisted on keeping it simple and different.Yea I don't like punk rock either!
And then there was a band coloured Deep Purple. No prizes for guessing. They were quite a mix. No wonder, since their lineup changed every couple of years. But like most Purpleheads(I invented that), I prefer the Mark-II lineup to all others. Ian Paice on drums and percussion, Roger Glover on bass, the legendary Ritchie Blackmore on lead guitar and the hugely underrated Ian Gillan on vocals made a terrific combo. They were an interesting band lyrically. Take their most popular album, Machinehead for example .
Highway star is a song comparing a girl and a car, referrring to both as killing machines . Intriguing? you bet!
Nobody gonna take my car,I'm gonna race it to the ground
Nobody gonna beat my car, it's gonna break the speed of sound,
Ooh its a killing machine,it's got everything,
Like a driving power big fat tyres and everything
I love it and I need it,
I bleed it yeah its a wild hurricane
Alright,hold tight, I'm a highway star
Nobody gonna take my girl, I'm gonna keep her till the end
Nobody gonna have my girl, she stays close on every bend,
Ooh she's a killing machine she's got everything,
Like a moving mouth, body control and everything,
I love her,I need her, I seed her(!)
Yeah she turns me on
Alright,hold tight, I'm a highway star
Interesting? You bet!!
Smoke on the Water from the same album has much more simplistic lyrics,directly describing an accident which the band were eyewitnesses to.During a Frank Zappa concert, some fan fired a flare gun setting the place on fire and Deep Purple watched from their mobile van as there was smoke on the water,fire in the sky, referring to the Lake Geneva nearby.
But one of my favorites from the band's stable is Child in time from the album Deep Purple in Rock . This one was the inspiration for Anu Malik's composition Aisa Zakhm diya hai from the movie Akele hum Akele tum . It is a eight-line song covering more than ten minutes which means the lyrics are not given the highest importance. But they still make a mark. Based on the Vietnam war, which was still fresh on the American psyche at that time(it still is actually), the lyrics go,
Sweet child in time, you'll see the line
The line that's drawn between good and bad,
See the blind man shooting at the world,
Bullets flying, taking toll.
If you've been bad, oh lord I bet you have,
and you've not been hit by flying lead,
You better close your eyes, and bow your head,
and wait for the ricochet.
Clearly, these guys weren't just looking to have fun.
And then, there's Floyd. I feel I can write an entire post about Floyd lyrics alone, but perhaps I'll do that in my Floyd blog
Anyway, so I guess it's a matter of genre and at times of opinion,whether lyrics really are important to the song.Love songs really woudn't go anywhere without mushy lyrics. So the one fact that is established is that you can't ignore them. They are not just a vehicle for music, but can be an equally important part of the song.
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