File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9805, message 157


Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 11:30:41 +0100
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-TH: But I like it...


Rob S writes:

>Now if your language is Yiddish or Icelandic, this presents a problem.  A
>good pop song is one you can bellow happily to yourself in the shower, and
>one sung in a language of which you know nothing is seriously disadvantaged
>on this criterion.  The answer is to make sure your choruses have lots of
>redundancy in 'em.  Sounds rather than words, preferably - 'Yeah', 'baby',
>etc have alway done fine service, but do-be-doos, sheedoops, yip-yip-yips
>are especially appropriate to the Eurovision challenge.

What about Hava Nagila? Or la Bamba? Or Day-O? Or the deathless "Tutti
Frutti I wanna rutti". They just don't write songs like that any more...

One of my favourites is Yip-yip-whip-bop-chee-boom-chiddeley-boom-chiddeley

>And I reckon mediocre lyrics and pedestrian music are
>as much a marker of 'globalism' as Terminator 2 (where even the star need
>not deploy is halting English often).

What's halting about "I need a vacation!" or "Hasta la vista, Baby!" --
seriously pragmatic stuff. And don't knock Terminator 2 -- when did you
last see a vision of nuclear holocaust like that? Or such an expose of the
heartless,mindless evil of corporate inhumanity and the servility of
technical experts doing its dirty work for it? Or such prominent *strategic
thinking* (goddamit!) roles for women and kids? Leaves Aliens or Home Alone
standing. Christ if only we could get Cameron to wake up to the evil of
capitalist exploitation and spend some bucks on a film about real
revolution, we'd be laughing. As a film, Reds was virtuous enough but
hardly memorable. Rosa was even less memorable. Land and Freedom was
better. Ah well, I suppose we'll have to wait till after the event till we
get our own Battleship Potemkin.


>Kylie Minogue or the Spice Girls
>simply have the glamour and the wordlessness to reach parts other acts
>cannot reach (Dylan, Billy Bragg etc).

That's entertainment.

As Mike B said:

>I would just like to finish by quoting (paraphrasing) Emma
>Goldman, who said something along the lines of "You can stick your
>revolution if I can't dance."

If ya cant dance if ya cant dance -- if ya cant dance if ya cant dance --
if ya cant dance if ya cant dance .....

Was Lenin thinking of the samba or the boogie, or just a plain old conga
when he said revolution is the carnival of the people?

Whop-bop-a-loo-bop--a-whop-bam-boom

See ya later,

Al E Gater

PS It was probably no coincidence that Little Richard chucked all his
jewels into the sea from Sydney Harbour Bridge. What had you been giving
the poor bloke?

Noss Talger

PPS The Eurovision Song Contest is *meant* to be mediocre. Anything catchy
or hip-shaking there is a major failure of quality control. Puppet on a
String just about sums it up -- as does the friendly petty-bourgeois
Portuguese salesman me and my girlfriend hitch-hiked with in 1967, who took
us home to his family and showed us the little room he'd converted into a
curtained shrine with telly and tape-recorder -- all for the Song Contest!
Wow...

Sandy





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