Dec 112007
Townsman Trolleyvox suggested the following Main Stage point of discussion: Rock Zen Koans. I’m digging the thought; you might too.
First up, Bryan Adams:
It cuts like a knife
But it feels so right
The conundrum: How can it cut like a knife, yet feel so right? The girl breaks up with him and he didn’t see it coming. He’s in pain. Yet, somehow it simultaneously feels so right.
Meditate on rock koan until mind goes blank.
Dylan was a master of this:
… there’s no success like failure
and failure’s no success at all.
“When I’m in doubt, I whip it out.”
-Ted Nugent
“Now I wanna sniff some glue
Now I wanna have something to do”
Make up your mind, Joey.
Also, if you ask me, much of Charlie Watts’ drumming is a zen koan. And I don’t mean that snarkily, or as a diss. Billy Cobham sounds like someone getting a 1600 on their SATs. (Again, I like him, and that isn’t a put down – much – either) but Charlie is something else again.
“The farther one travels, the less one knows” is probably a ringer. Maybe “Got to be good-looking ‘cause he’s so hard to see.”
“The ghost has got the monkey by the tail/And all they both can do is wail” or “Nothing from nothing leaves nothing” or “Even when I’m with you I’m not there” all seem to fit in the more classic sense, in their own ways,
How about “Seems that I was busy doing something close to nothing, but different than the day before”? That’s the one for me.
Then there are the faux koans (kaux-ans?), epitomized by most everything Lennon sings in “Al You Need Is Love,” such as:
There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung
… etc. Boy, do I hate that lyric. The worst of the lazy-ass Lennon “mystical” nonsense.
I can’t help but think of what Janis Jopin sings when she sings “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose/Nothin’, nwah nwah mwah mwah mamamama!” What the hell does she sing at the end of that couplet? How many Dylan albums did Kristoferson play before sitting down to write that line?
I don’t know much about Zen, but I think Paul Westerberg writes lots of stuff like that. The ones currently in my head are from Mono (his Grandpaboy alter ego).
I need a leap of faith, or a jump of stupid
Either way, I don’t know what I’m doin’
I also like
Got an idea
And one is too many
Got an idea
And a whole lot ain’t enough
I also like the way people from the South turn a phrase, like “I thought that she wanted me, she was thinking something else.” They just look at things differently than I do.
Now, I’ve got to get to work being a Stones fanboy for you guys. I’ve dug around and I’ve found some other versions of Silver Train that I’ll have to post.
“I would have made this instrumental, but the words got in the way” – No Language In Our Lungs
I give a pass to some of the All You Need Is Love lyrics since they were written for a global (not necessarily English speaking) audience, and I like how the “but you can learn how to play the game” throws in a bit of needed cynicism, however he meant it.
That said, yeah, I’ll skip those lyrics any day for the decidedly more straightforward “Go to a show, you hope she goes,” my personal favorite of his lines.
Yo, 2000 man! You gotta post those alternate takes of “Silver Train” — pleeeeze!