TheMilford wrote:I think N.P. lyrics are a bit contrived and even crap at times. BUT, I actually think most of his lyrics from about 1981 - 1989 are quite good. Very different from his earlier works.

and presumably, his later ones.

May I present 'Nobody's Hero' from 1993's 'Counterparts'.
So worthy and so clumsy at the same time.....

"I knew he was different, in his sexuality
I went to his parties, as a straight minority
It never seemed a threat to my masculinity
He only introduced me to a wider reality

As the years went by, we drifted apart
When I heard that he was gone
I felt a shadow cross my heart
But he’s nobody’s ---

Hero --- saves a drowning child
Cures a wasting disease
Hero --- lands the crippled airplane
Solves great mysteries

Hero --- not the handsome actor
Who plays a hero’s role
Hero --- not the glamor girl
Who’d love to sell her soul
If anybody’s buying
Nobody’s hero

I didn’t know the girl, but I knew her family
All their lives were shattered
In a nightmare of brutality
They try to carry on, try to bear the agony
Try to hold some faith
In the goodness of humanity

As the years went by, we drifted apart
When I heard that she was gone
I felt a shadow cross my heart
But she’s nobody’s ---

Hero --- the voice of reason
Against the howling mob
Hero --- the pride of purpose
In the unrewarding job

Hero --- not the champion player
Who plays the perfect game
Not the glamor boy
Who loves to sell his name
Everybody’s buying
Nobody’s hero

As the years went by, we drifted apart
When I heard that you were gone
I felt a shadow cross my heart

Hero"

russ wrote:

TheMilford wrote:I wish TheSwede was here to back me up.

Drop it dude. It's getting old.

Dude, please relax. It was just a passing comment... It wasn't my intent to piss you off. He was my best friend for a spell in school. And we did trade Iron Maiden and Rush records.

If you would prefer I will replace "TheSwede" with "Matthew William Kohnle" on all of my posts...

In honour of this Mr. Kohnle, this is the song he referred to us learning the bass line together:

Unstable condition,
A symptom of life,
Of mental and environmental change.
atmospheric disturbance,
The feverish flux
Of human interface and interchange.

The impulse is pure;
Sometimes our circuits get shorted
By external interference.
Signals get crossed
And the balance distorted
By internal incoherence.

A tired mind become a shape shifter,
Everybody need a mood lifter,
Everybody need reverse polarity.
Everybody got mixed feelings
About the function and the form.
Everybody got to elevate from the norm.

An ounce of perception,
A pound of obscure.
Process information at half speed.
Pause, rewind, replay,
Warm memory chip,
Random sample, hold the one you need.

Leave out the fiction,
The fact is, this friction
Will only be won by persistence.
Leave out conditions,
Courageous convictions
Will drag the dream into existence.

A tired mind become a shape shifter,
Everybody need a soft filter,
Everybody need reverse polarity.
Everybody got mixed feelings
About the function and the form.
Everybody got to elevate from the norm...

steve wrote:
"Skin as thick as thieves?" This phrase has no meaning. "Thick as thieves" as an expression means that a group of people have a close camaraderie, as in a band of thieves bound together by adventure, risk, and the excitement of an illicit lifestyle. "Skin as thick as thieves?" Pure bullshit.

By presuming a tortured poetic license, I can discern one possible meaning: "...hearts upon our sleeves(,) or skin(.) (We are / were) As thick as thieves." If our poet genius intended this reading, then this is a truly perverse construction. I have trouble thinking that was his intent, but if it is, then he is still a terrible writer, as the expression "thick as thieves" generally refers to a group, and his lovemaking (as described so far) implies nothing so adventurous.

Keep 'em coming!

This term uses thick in the sense of “intimateâ€

i think i know what the problem is with rush lyrics.

suddenly, ahead of me, across the mountainside
another fussy couplet shoots towards me, two lanes wide

fussy - that's it in a thimble. fussy stanzas from the fussiest drummer in canada. issued from his fussy drum-cubicle*

-r


* thribbida dibbida doopita doop

night_tools wrote:May I present 'Nobody's Hero' from 1993's 'Counterparts'.

I'll reduce these thousand lines of ABAB monotony to a haiku as well:

When regular people die
Sometimes I am sad
But "heroes?" No. Mere peasants.

This is fun, this reductio ad-minimus of Canadian culture. I shall persevere.

TheMilford wrote:In honour of this Mr. Kohnle, this is the song he referred to us learning the bass line together:

This is a pretty typical example of lyrics rendered in a manner that suggests they have meaning, but do not. Stylistically, they offer us a tragic brew of tortured syntax, pseudo-technical babble (cribbed from whatever users' manual is at hand), mixed metaphor, awkward literary and historical references, a truly childish ABAB structure (when discernable structure exists), atrocious puns and pure tongue-tying bullshit. If it is this hard to say, it must have some meaning, right?

You're going to hate me. Here goes:

Unstable condition,
A symptom of life,
Of mental and environmental change.
atmospheric disturbance,
The feverish flux
Of human interface and interchange.

This is it in a nutshell. A wordy and faux-intellectual presentation of a simple idea: People, the world and their interactions are complex. Molto profondo, maple leaf.

The impulse is pure;
Sometimes our circuits get shorted
By external interference.
Signals get crossed
And the balance distorted
By internal incoherence.

For a start, circuits don't get "shorted" by external interference. This is literally impossible, as you, an electronically-literate person would know. Using an impossibility as a metaphor is retarded. I'll throw one of my own out there so you can appreciate how bad it is:

Sometimes our plumbing gets blocked
By a bear shitting in the woods

See what I mean?

A tired mind become a shape shifter,

Grammatically unsound and contextually impossible. A "shape shifter" is a mythical (well, D&D mythological) being that can physically transform itself at will. A mind is not physical. I cannot pretend that he intended this dissonance of language, but conclude that our poet is an idiot, using words incorrectly because he likes the way they sound.

Everybody need a mood lifter,
Everybody need reverse polarity.

Again with the meaningless use of technical jargon. What the fuck does "everybody need reverse polarity" mean? Well, it means nothing, but what does our snowblind idiot poet think it means?

Everybody got mixed feelings
About the function and the form.

Here the Randian obsession with architecture comes to the fore, with a misapplied misreading of the Louis Sullivan axiom. The whole point of the creed "form follows function" is that good design is unmistakeable -- would engender no "mixed feelings" -- because the form would be the natural outgrowth of the function.

Everybody got to elevate from the norm.

Again, pure nonsense. If everybody "elevate from the norm," then that elevated position would be the norm. Pure bullshit.

An ounce of perception,
A pound of obscure.

Ben Franklin pointlessly punned and obfuscated. Again, to no effect other than the sound of the words.

Process information at half speed.
Pause, rewind, replay,

Very briefly, there was a micro-trend in record mastering of cutting lacquers at half-speed, to increase the resolution of high frequency detail. This reference to the recording and mastering process exemplifies how desperate Rush were to include technical terms, no matter how irrelevant, into their lyrics. When writing lyrics on a deadline, one must use whatever inspiration is at hand: "...Geddy, what do the buttons on that cassette recorder say?"

Warm memory chip,
Random sample, hold the one you need.

Another tragic technobabble pun, this time inspired by the sample-and-hold function on a synthesizer that was in plain sight in the control room on the day the vocal was due to be recorded.

Leave out the fiction,
The fact is, this friction
Will only be won by persistence.

Jesus fuck a Tim Horton Maple Brick, in what sense can someone "win" a friction? A friction? That's the best nonsense rhyme you can come up with for "fiction?" How about "miction?" That means pissing! It's much better, and I'd rather imagine someone "winning" it.

Leave out conditions,
Courageous convictions
Will drag the dream into existence.

Why leave out the conditions? And where did this dream come from all of a sudden?

A tired mind become a shape shifter,
Everybody need a soft filter,
Everybody need reverse polarity.
Everybody got mixed feelings
About the function and the form.
Everybody got to elevate from the norm...

We've been through this all before, except for the addition of another synthesizer setting, the "soft filter." It's still pure bullshit.

Don wrote:The rap on "Roll the Bones" cannot be beat. That's right - there is a rap on a Rush song. Rush, they are so white, YYZ notwithstanding.

"YYZ" proves the whiteness point, actually. This song features a rhythm derived from the morse code rendition of the letters YYZ, the FAA designation of Toronto's Lester B. Pearson International Airport.

So white. So nerd. So music geek. So Canadian chauvinist. So utterly, utterly lame.

Steve,

I love that these Rush lyric dissections are keeping you up until 3:47am. I think your full on commitment to this shows exactly how awful said lyrics are. One can not just say they are bad and go to bed. He must stay up ALL NIGHT to prove the point.

I take my hat off to you sir, once again.

Okay, I'm on a Rush tear. I'll relate a story.

In 1980-something, Big Black played a show in San Francisco, at the I Beam. The opening band was a band I'd never heard of, Jane's Addiction. I learned that the group's singer was Perry Farrell, whose previous band, Psi Com, I had hated outright. I did not look forward to their set.

After their set, the singer asked me what I thought of it. I said, "I've never actually heard Rush, but that's what I always imagined they sounded like."

He left me alone after that.

Brett Eugene Ralph, you're a real poet. How about a little help critiquing this bullshit?

Mayfair wrote:Steve,

I love that these Rush lyric dissections are keeping you up until 3:47am. I think your full on commitment to this shows exactly how awful said lyrics are. One can not just say they are bad and go to bed. He must stay up ALL NIGHT to prove the point.

I take my hat off to you sir, once again.

This is nothing. I've read the whole goddamn Bible, just so I can use proper annontation when I tell christians to go fuck themselves.