I hold hands with the business plan for the guillotine man

[sovay]

I have slept about six hours total in the last two nights. My recently prescribed inhaler may not be doing the job it's supposed to. It is my opinion that nothing about this month needed to be as difficult as it has been.

I don't think I have once in my life in the Boston area rented an apartment that resembled the configuration in which it was originally built, meaning my prosaic first reaction to this post is a solid bet on stairs to a former mother-in-law apartment or Philadelphia-style shared second floor that was walled off during a previous renovation; the ominous scratches around the deadbolt look entirely consistent with socketing it into the door well after the fact with about the level of competence I have personally experienced in property-managed repairs. The only part that strikes me as unusual is the accessibility of the stairs. The ones in our bedroom closet are blocked off.

Earlier this week I was stuck listening to a rather terrible cover of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" (1989), but it made me realize how much the original song impresses me for creating a narrative with nothing more than a list of cultural references and almost no verbs; it's the way it accelerates. The first verse spans events from 1949 to 1952, the second from 1953 to 1956, the third from 1957 to 1960, the fourth from 1961 to 1963, and then suddenly as if the Kennedy assassination broke time—what else do I have to say—the final verse hurtles from 1965 into 1989, leapfrogging pop culture and atrocity into an overwhelming pileup of history that will keep on coming as it always has whether the narrator can take it or not. Among other faults, the cover threw its post-Cold War references together without regard for chronology, which seemed to kill the entire point.

In my intermittent way of colliding with music videos, Spoon Benders' "Dichotomatic" (2023) strikes me as one of the better variations on the vampires of capitalism since Peter Strickland's In Fabric (2018), less fetishistically sexual and more working perhaps literally stiff. I also just like their lo-fi sludge-wall of sound.

I miss my little cat.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

That song irritated me when it was first on the radio. So, the formative events of his youth get some sort of artificial US-centric clarity, and it's a mess for everyone lateral or subsequent? Thanks. OTOH, that is kind of how we've come to have an "OK, Boomer" meme, characteristically.

ETA context: I think the song landed differently because of immigrant parents.

[sholio]

I ran across a remake on Youtube a while back that used post-2000 events, but the singer mixed them all together, which completely ignores everything that makes the original song meaningful! It was just a random jumble of significant events from the 2000s, and it annoyed me so much I had to turn it off halfway through, even though I liked the general concept.

[theseatheseatheopensea]

I hope you can get some sleep and feel better soon. This month can end any time now!

I've always thought that "We Didn't Start the Fire" would make a great karaoke song! XD I was in second grade when the album came out, and I remember because the singles got played all the time on the radio--I still think this one is really impressive, but I prefer "Leningrad" (about a Russian circus clown) and "The downeaster Alexa" (about a fisherman from Long Island). I guess I think he's better at telling smaller stories?

I miss my little cat.

I'm so sorry. *all the hugs*

[mrissa]

It was only two years after "We Didn't Start the Fire" that "Right Here, Right Now" came out.

And that song makes me cry so hard now. Because I remember when it came out, when I was a kid, how it didn't feel ridiculous that they were singing, "watching the world wake up from history," with the Berlin Wall coming down and the fall of communism in the USSR, the Singing Revolution in the Baltics and Solidarity in Poland and Mandela getting out of prison in South Africa that...as a kid, maybe yeah? maybe this was the opposite kind of break from what Billy Joel was singing about, he was singing about everything collapsing into this maelstrom of catastrophe, but two years later, I'm alive and I'm waiting, waiting, I'm alive and I'm waiting for you.

And then...everything since. Because history isn't something you can wake up from. But whenever people talk about the cynicism of the '90s, I think of that song, I think of Natalie Merchant's voice fronting 10,000 Maniacs singing "These Are Days," and I think...yeah. So cynical, if that was the only story you were willing to hear....

[starlady]

Was it the FOB cover? Because you're totally right.

[selkie]

Is bad cover. Very callous-feeling.

I’m sorry your inhaler is screwing you over, given how breathing is so central to sleeping. *hugs*

[ethelmay]

My house has a closet with stairs to nowhere. It's in the basement and used to go to a part of the back yard that is now covered with more house. It would make rather a good wine cellar if we were that sort of people.

[kore]

People were pushing that cover on me and I was just like, ugghghgh, I'm not a giant fan of the original but that take is really shallow plus a total mishmash. It's not in order! They're not even singing in fucking key!

I really like your idea about the song structure -- to me it also reads as very personal (he was born in 1949) so of course there's that big focus on 63, which was like a prelude of 68 when everything really came crashing down. The video kind of does that too, altho it weirdly falls down with the last verse. And like Mrissa says, it came out in late 1989, less than two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolution. de Klerk meeting with Mandela. And the supposed birth of the WWW, altho I don't know if Joel knew about it -- but the song eerily forecasts that too, with its hectic pace and five-second clips and fleeting references. It is super US-centric, but when I think of it as the musical summing-up of a Boomer who actually lived through all that, it bugs me less.

But Seriously Yolks: Avengers Didn't Start The Fire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-onk-Qm7ATw

[asakiyume]

I miss your little cat too. I miss his adventures--for me! As a reader. And more, I miss him for you.

[alexxkay]

You make me wonder if Billy Joel was at all influenced by Tim Curry's (and Michael Kamen's) "I Do the Rock". A wee bit of googling shows that I am not the first to make the comparison.

[aurumcalendula]

*hugs* I hope you get more sleep and your inhaler does it's job soon!

I haven't had the misfortune to hear that cover, but it sounds terrible! (and now I kinda want to see if I can find a good cover)