Since Aristophanes and Homer wrote the Iliad and Lysistrata

So I am listening to Yes, Virginia . . . for probably the dozenth time in a row, and thinking about quotation and allusion in song lyrics. Probably it's the obvious line in "Sing" that did it, that life is no cabaret . . . we're inviting you anyway—the unmistakable echo-refutation* of John Kander and Fred Ebb's Cabaret, a musical that itself recalls the collaborative work of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill (and look at the original casting for Frau Schneider if you don't believe me). And while I've noticed other allusions in passing, and generally smiled at them, this is the first time I've taken an active look at the phenomenon in the music of the Dresden Dolls. And I'm impressed.

Keep in mind that I'm limited in any case to allusions that I can recognize lyrically. But I do like the way that familiar lines are tweaked to suit situations their original composers might never have expected—an extra fillip of hopefulness and cynicism to the Doors' "Hello, I Love You" in "The Perfect Fit" (hello, i love you will you tell me your name? / hello, i'm good for nothing—will you love me just the same?), a comic riff on the Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black" in "The Jeep Song" (i see a red jeep and i want to paint it black), and Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" gets a reckless gloss in the insanely catchy "My Alcoholic Friends" (I'll be on my best behavior / taking shots for mother nature). The opening lines of "The Time Has Come," if not the title, should trip the alarm bells of anyone who has read Lewis Carroll (the time has come to speak of many things / of jacks and queens and kings), while the chorus of "Sex Changes" tips its hat to Shakespeare, or Aldous Huxley, if you prefer: tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. It's all very nicely Alexandrian, in the poet-sense.**

I'll have to look at further songs in the morning. For example, the number of potential Holocaust references in "Mrs. O" only struck me a few months ago: heaven knows how they got into the fireplace / but everybody's saying grace / and trying to keep a happy face . . . april trains may bring strange showers . . . will you tell about the time they made you go / all alone to the palace where they took your only clothes / we all know / there's no hell and no hiroshima . . . there's no hitler and no holocaust . . . but you can stop the truth from leaking / if you never stop believing . . . The one about "no Hitler and no Holocaust" is impossible to miss, but consideration of the others provides a fascinating possibility for the narrator: a Holocaust survivor who is now a Holocaust denier? I'm left wondering what else I've missed. I'm also having fun watching the evolution of lyrics in songs like "Backstabber" and "Dirty Business," whose original versions I suspect are no longer online. Well, that's what bootlegs are for . . .

But mostly, it's very excellent music. And that's a good thing right now.

*Open to interpretation. Based on the original cast recording and the only stage production I've ever seen, by Lexington High School in the fall of 2000, I'm not at all sure that the Dresden Dolls would have clashed with Kander and Ebb. The song "Cabaret" is itself an escapist philosophy: there is no sanctuary to be found within its encouragements, as the wider world closes in. But I imagine it's taken frequently out of context.

**There's another quality of allusion contained in title and subject matter that I suspect I am too tired to approach properly: it's the way that "Glass Slipper" and "Thirty Whacks" more or less straightly rework material from the stories of Cinderella and Lizzie Borden, or "Missed Me" carries a playground rhyme to extremes that should be illustrated by Nabokov and Edward Gorey. Yeah. The image of that last collaboration proves it's too late at night for these footnotes.