critics and songs about songs

sebadoh: gimme indie rock

"Paul Johnson, DJ Funk, DJ Sneak, DJ Rush, Waxmaster, Hyperactive, Jammin Gerald, Brian Wilson, George Clinton, Lil' Louis, Ashley Beedle, Neil Landstrumm, Kenny Dope, DJ Hell, Louie Vega, K Alexi, Dr. Dre, Armando, Gemini, Jeff Mills, DJ Deeon, DJ Milton, DJ Slugo, Green Velvet, Joey Beltram, DJ ? (sounds like 'Ast'), Roy Davis, Boo Williams, DJ Tonka, DJ Skull, DJ Pierre, Mike ? (sounds like 'Damon'), Todd Edwards, Romanthony, CVO, Luke Slater, Derrick Carter, Robert Hood, Parris Mitchell, Dave Clarke, Van Helden, Armani, Surgeon".

Add assorted catchphrases "in the house" and "DJs on the low". I missed a couple but googling the pop-up ridden lyrics sites brought up insane results. Planet Earth, complete and use my list. That is all.

Oh and ! I have generally found this kind of practice involuntarily corny at best or cynically calculated at worst.

American Pie
Don McLean
United Artists 5535
Released: October 1971
Chart Peak: #1
Weeks Charted: 48
Certified Gold: 1/3/72
Don McLean's "American Pie" has ripped out of nowhere and taken the country by storm both in its album and truncated single versions. It took exactly two weeks to shoot to the top of the charts, everybody I know has been talking excitedly about it since first hearing, and, even more surprisingly, it has united listeners of musical persuasions as diverse as Black Sabbath and Phil Ochs in unbridled enthusiasm for both its message and its musical qualities.

All of which is not so surprising once you've heard it, because it is a brilliant song, a metaphor for the death and rebirth of rock that's at once complex and immediately accessible. For the last couple of years critics and audience alike have been talking abut the Death of Rock, or at least the fragmentation of all our 1967 dreams of anthemic unity. And, inevitably, somebody has written a song about it. About Dylan, Buddy Holly, the Beatles, Stones, Byrds, Janis and others. About where we've been, the rush of exhilaration we felt at the pinnacle, and the present sense of despair. Don McLean has taken all this and set it down in language that has unmistakable impact the first time you hear it, and leaves you rubbing your chin -- "Just what did that line mean?" -- with further listenings because you know it's all about something you've felt and lived through. A very 1967ish song, in fact, in the way it makes you dig for deeper meaning, but not the least bit mawkish.

It opens with a slow, mournful sequence abut reading the headlines about the deaths of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper while delivering papers as a child, then into the chorus: "Bye bye, Miss American Pie/Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry/Them good ole boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye/And sayin' this'll be the day that I die." Then all at once it rears up and charges through the years in a giddy rush: "I was a lonely teenage bronckin' buck/With a pink carnation and a pickup truck," the "Book of Love," sock hops in the gym and puppy jealousy, and then into the heart of the myth, where Dylan is a Jester "in a coat he borrowed from James Dean," laughing at the king "in a voice that came from you and me."

The halycon days of Sgt. Pepper are brilliantly caught: "The half-time air was sweet perfume/As Sergeants played a marching tune," but suddenly the Jester is on the sidelines in a cast, the stage is taken by Jack Flash ("Fire is the devil's only friend"), and Altamont, the Angels and the despairing resentment the Stones left many fans pass in a dark panorama. Finally coming down to the levee again, where the good old boys are draining the bottles and talking as if it's all over, as they did when the plane bearing "The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost" fell and as they will again and again through the years. It's just the old Calvinist sense of impending apocalypse and perdition, but they're good old boys anyway and we can't resent them because we too "believe in rock 'n' roll/And [that] music can save your mortal soul." Because they're us.

"American Pie" is a song of the year, and its music is just as strong as those lyrics, propelled with special resonance by the piano of Paul Griffin, who played with the Jester when his myth was at pinnacle. If you've ever cried because of a rock & roll band or album, or lain awake nights wondering or sat up talking through the dawn about Our Music and what it all means and where it's all going and why, if you've ever kicked off your shoes to dance or wished you had the chance, if you ever believed in Rock & Roll, you've got to have this album.

- Lester Bangs, Rolling Stone, 1-20-72.

Destroyer big time

Pavement did some of this, too ... the Smashing Pumpkins / STP lyrics in "Range Life" (which definitely feel dated now) and that one b-side that was all about R.E.M. ....

if so, they've been beaten to it by more than a few people

"Brucie dreams / Life's a highway / Too many roads bypass my way / Or they never begin [...] But look at us now / (stop drivin) / some things hurt more much more than cars and girls"

where do answer songs like kitty wells' "it wasn't got who made honky-tonk angels" fit into this? that's certainly a song about a song, though i'd argue she's not talking about "wild side of life" the way a critic would; she's talking about it the way an average woman would. for whatever that's worth.

The group cut the record
The record hit the charts
Someone in the newspaper said that it was art
Disco Casanovas had it heavy on their breath
The local teenybopper band was playing it to death

They called it rock

xxx
The boys are getting hot
They're jetting off to Rio and some other sunny spots
Some senorita said "The singer sounds terrific"
Their personal appearances are stopping the traffic

They called it rock

Hey long distance, it's a rock and roll romance
CBS are gonna pay a great big advance
Hey Atlantic, come on and take a chance
Arista say they love it but the kids can't dance to it

They cut another record
It never was a hit
'Cause someone in the newspaper said it was shit
The drummer is a bookie
The singer is a whore
The bass player's selling clothes he never would've wore

They called it rock

Tired epileptic charade
Get on the plane and fly away
I knew you when
I knew you when
You had something to say
The Twentieth Century
Has not been particularly kind to me
So when asked to define
You feign the benign
And you decline to answer properly

You feel threatened now
There's other icons flying higher now
As you grab for the past
You know it won't last
There's no need to describe it

I hope someone else is driving you
I hope someone else intelligent
is driving you
Now the myth disintegrates
Nothing else is permanent

My own selections.

Image search results for Robert Smith(?)