11 years ago
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The Lurkers - Shadow - The Lurkers were one of my favorite bands, and "Shadow" was one my favorite singles. Many people will recognise the simple riff at the beginning. The Lurk...
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My fond farewell to the Bath Chronicle and the city - After six and a half very happy years (and more than 330 in-paper columns!), I will be leaving my position as editor of the Bath Chronicle on Friday, June ...
13 years ago -
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Can't cut and paste into the ost but can as a comment. Go, as they say over there, figure.
ReplyDeleteThis is Taylor Parkes, late of Melody Maker, analysing some Jam lyrics. Hilarious. Not to be missed, even if you're a fan.
2005.09.06 02.06
The Comedy Of Jam Lyrics - An Occasional Series
"TIME FOR TRUTH"
This unusual song is from the first Jam album, written in 1977 when Paul Weller was 18. Now that in itself lets him off the hook slightly, as few 18-year-olds are going to be able to write a convincing political song, especially those whose formal education has been in the British Secondary Modern system, where even the brightest kids spend half the week doing metalwork. But nonetheless, "Time For Truth" is so bad it deserves closer examination.
Presumably, the idea to write a song directly challenging the government came from Weller's then-heroes The Clash - but whereas Strummer filled up his lyrics with slogans and soundbites pinched from a whole slew of left-wing or anti-establishment sources (Marx and Lenin, Jamaican and London rastas, South American communist guerrilas, even a dash of Baader-Meinhoff), you have to suspect that Weller's lyric was pretty much based on whatever he heard his dad moaning about over breakfast as he flipped through The Sun (these being, don't forget, the darkest days of the Callaghan government - moaning about this crew of mongs was hardly unreasonable).
But what makes the song vaguely interesting as well as accidentally hilarious is the way you can see Weller's natural lefty politics gestating beneath the layers of bullshit. The young self-proclaimed Tory Royalist tut-tuts at the Labour 'police state' (while most people were griping that "the unions run the country these days"), just as elsewhere on the LP he growls about the lack of new council houses and the growing gap between rich and poor. Right idea, wrong solution. You miserable-looking streak of piss.
What you trying to say that haven't tried to say before?
You're just another red balloon with a lot of hot gas - why don't you fuck off?
Callaghan should have done a speech where he said "no Paul, why don't YOU fuck off?"
And you think you've got it worked out
And you think you've got it made
And you're trying to play the hero
But you never walk home in the dark
Just five short years later, the death of Olof Palme would prove that Jim knew something Paul didn't.
I think it's time for truth
And the truth is you've lost, uncle Jimmy
Paul thinks the 1979 election has already happened.
Admit your failure and decline with honour while you can
The first great malapropism in a Jam lyric; does he mean resign? Stand down? Go to the country? Whatever, it's a safe bet he doesn't mean 'decline'.
And you think you've got it sussed out - ha!
And you think that we're brainwashed - no way!
And you're trying for a police state
So you can rule our bodies and minds
Recently declassified documents from 1977 meetings of the 'Lib-Lab Pact' do indeed disclose plans to 'rule the bodies and minds' of every human being in the country, but it's thought this project was the baby of David Steel, so technically this can't be blamed on Callaghan himself. In the end, the idea was shelved on account of the dustman's strike.
Whatever happened to the great Empire?
You bastards have turned it into manure -
Tell the young to stick together now
One of the most puzzling of the young Weller's many non-sequiturs. Opinions vary on what exactly happened to the British Empire, the most common view being that by the early part of the 20th century the sheer cost of maintaining so many colonies, as well as the added strain of slaughtering recalcitrant locals when they wanted to run their own country, simply outweighed the revenue generated by controlling other people's natural and human resources and siphoning off the profit. Weller is not the only commentator to take the less popular view that it was "turned into manure" by no-good centre-lefties, but is the only one to have first made his name in the "punk explosion" of the late 1970s.
The solution proposed - that the young should 'stick together now' - sounds alarmingly like a veiled call for fascism, which would clash somewhat with Paul's evident resentment of the Labour 'police state'. So if there is any other way in which the young sticking together (now) could rebuild the 'Great Empire', that's probably what he means.
I bet you sleep at night with silk sheets and a clean mind
While killers roam the streets in numbers, dressed in blue
And you're trying to hide it from us
But you know what I mean
Yeah, Paul, everyone knows what you mean.
Bring forward those six pigs
We wanna see them swing so high
I was almost disappointed when I found out that this didn't refer to the Birmingham Six - which would have been too perfect a cherry on top - neither is it "sex pigs", which would at least have sounded funny. In fact, it's a reference to Liddle Towers being kicked to death in police custody, quite a hot topic among punks at the time (cf Angelic Upstarts' "The Murder Of Liddle Towers", even less sophisticated than the current lyric, but at least consistent). It is a tribute to the clarity and sharpness of the young Weller's writing that this only became clear when, at gigs following the release of the LP, he took to shouting "Liddle Towers!" after these lines - presumably in invisible parenthesis.
So in summary, Weller's anti-Callaghan song, for all it's effing and blinding, contains only two reasons why its subject is a bad man (real reasons, that is, not things like being "a red balloon"). The first is that he has silk sheets on his bed - which would indeed suggest a certain hypocrisy after all that beer and sandwiches. Unfortunately, the point is slightly weakened by the fact that Paul just made it up, and in fact wouldn't have had the first clue about the bedlinen in Number Ten (it's surprising he didn't accuse hapless, hangdog "English Jimmy Carter" Callaghan of sleeping on a mattress made out of gold, and bathing not in water, but in, you know, some money or something).
The second blast is that Uncle Jimmy is responsible for crazed regiments of murderous bobbies, slaughtering the populace with brutal efficiency. In fact, the Home Secretary at the time was Merlyn Rees, fresh from a dubious spell in Northern Ireland, where he was 'credited' with creating something not too dissimilar to Weller's grim visions of a police state - but since it was one of the remaining crumbs of the 'Great Empire', Queen-fan Paul presumably favoured a tough stance on Ulster (though perhaps with Republicans kept in check by young people in England 'sticking together now') - but it's hard to see how, say, racist policemen beating black men to death was a direct result of soft-left Government policy, except in Paul's spiky, aggressive-looking head. Still, he was backing the right horse by "voting Conservative in the next election": when we compare the police response to picketing during the Winter Of Discontent with the police response to the Miners' Strike, or the Wapping pickets, we can only thank Thatcher for steering us away from Weller's teenage nightmare.
"CARNABY STREET"
You can't diss Paul and let Bruce get away. You might look at the lyrics to "Time For Truth" and wonder why neither of his fellow bandmembers - both a few years older - questioned what on Earth they were supposed to be singing about here. Part of the answer can be found in Rick Buckler's face - like an amateur boxer without the charm and brains - and the rest is found in lyrics like these, which Bruce Foxton was writing around the same time.
Take a look at the great street
It don't seem the same
Remember how great it should be
Ten short years, and the hub, the very nub of Swinging London stood desolate. A wasteland of glow-in-the-dark blow-up skeletons, Taiwanese imitation RayBans and lousy T-shirts that were all you got when your brother went to London. An angry Bruce, in his flared mohair suit, mullet trailing behind him, stomps past "Soccer Scene" with murder in his eye. He has a plan, a vision: one day the great street will once more be full of raccoon-pattern shoes, plastic macs that dissolve into napalm three seconds after brushing against a naked flame, and fake Ben Sherman shirts stitched together in a sweat miasma by some four-year-old Indonesian girl, the HIV-positive semen of her fat laughing boss still pouring out of her bruised arse. Bruce knows, because he has seen the future. Within three years, The Merc would open its doors for the first time.
Shops are full of fashion
People told what they want
Oh shit, hang on. Right, forget what we just said - the fashion is the bad part of Carnaby Street, because it just means people being told what they want. We should probably assume, then, for now, that Carnaby Street once qualified for greatness in Foxton's eyes due to the excellence of the beans on toast available in its numerous greasy spoons.
The street that was a part of the
British Monarchy
British Monarchy
Burke's study of the peerage does confirm this - Carnaby Street was nineteenth in line to the throne until 1971, when the succession was altered to remove the loophole that allowed parts of Westminster full Royal privilege. It is thought that Carnaby Street still receives monies from the Civil List, although it has to share them with Ganton Street.
Who wants kaftans and all that?
We don't need them now
I've never, ever listened to Bruce sing this line without starting to laugh monstrously. He sounds so... hot and bothered.
Why should we accept the change
And buy clothes of today?
Now that's an interesting question. Why indeed should we accept the change? Not only do we not need kaftans and all that, but maybe we should just stick with kaftans and all that. Better than being told what you want. To be fair, The Jam did follow a Third Way on this issue, dressing neither in kaftans and all that, nor in anything resembling the clothes of 1977.
Kids repel the change and
Bring back the street
Shops filled by whole nations
Carnaby Street
Carnaby Street
Bruce, mate. Maybe you should just start by writing down your ideas on a piece of paper.
The street is a mirror
For our country
Reflects the rise and fall
Of our nation
To be honest, as someone who has just stressed his dislike for fashion, Bruce will have explain to me in what other way Carnaby Street reflects the 'rise and fall' of Britain. Or indeed what 'rise and fall' he could be talking about that happened between the early Sixties and the late Seventies, that didn't involve fashion.
The street that was a legend
Is a mockery
A part of the British tradition
Gone down the drain
You don't need no glass ball
To see it's faults
Now I've thought about this. What kind of 'glass ball' do you use to see the faults in something? The only one I could think of was the glass ball in a spirit level. Bruce, then, must be protesting that Carnaby Street is no longer as level as it used to be, to the extent that this is visible to the naked eye without using a spirit level. The British tradition of nice, smooth, non-sloping streets is going down the drain, thanks to things like fashion, and kaftans and all that.
Take a walk along that street
And you'll see what I mean
More to the point, take a walk along that street while pushing a pushchair and you'd better be sure baby is strapped in tight.
But yeah, Bruce, everyone sees what you mean.
Ho Ho. Did anyone see Bruce on the Weller programme on BBC4 the other night. He seemed close to tears when he was talking about the Jam splitting... but it seemed more like the way you would talk about turning up at work one morning to find that the car factory had been bought out by the Chinese and you're out of a job.
ReplyDeleteLike Brian Lacey when Bacons closed. Oi!
ReplyDelete