Imaginos remakes and outtakes

[Carl E. Anderson]

> >> >really, who cares that the boat left New Orleans in 1829 ? I think that
> >> >the "morale" behind this is just that you can give so much power to
> >> >an apparently meaningless phrase just by using the "proper rock
> >> >intonation
>
> I think that the line is more important in a timeline aspect of the Imaginos
> Saga...imagine a study of WWII with no reference to the dates of important
> events...
> some lyrics may appear to the naked eye as being meaningless, when they very
> well may be misunderstood...

        Oh, I was never suggesting that the lyric was _meaningless_
(except when taken out of context, when, as has been pointed out, nearly
all lyrics are meaningless ;)
        My story was merely intended to illustrate what happened when
my old BOC-listening buddies and I _took_ the lyric out of context.  It
is a line that more or less jumps out of the song, and we had very little
idea of what was going on in the story of Imaginos.  We were sure it
had meaning--it was delivered with such conviction, after all--but what
that meaning might of been was not readily transparent.

        Really, in the end the point was: _Imaginos_ is really a timeless
and facinating album.  Where else can you here such a bizarre line as
"My boat left New Orleans in 1829" (which I don't think, true to usual
Pearlman form, rhymed with the other lines--another break in "standard
rock" tradition :) belted out with such forceful "rock intonation" and
know that somewhere deep within the story it _has_ a reason for being
set up the way it was?
        It's one of the lines that sticks with me from the album for
some bizarre reason ... usually the lines that stick with me do so because
the engage my imagination and set my mind to try and at least draw aside
the veil of mystery and illusion that surrounds the story.

>From "I am the One ...": "... his hilly eyes, and too green rings ..."

        OK, the hilly eyes are weird, true.  But it's the "*too* green
rings" that gets me.  I'm of course, risking deportation to Cygnus by
quoting the lyric book like this ;) but when I read the lyrics I saw that
the rings were _too_ green, rather than there being _two_ of these green
rings.  Far out.  Rings which are a lot more green than they have a
right to be.  A great image, to my mind.

>From BOC: "We understand, we understand, we understand ..."

        Something that few fans who've studied the story can say, I think ;)
I great a great eerie feeling when I hear the description of this chattering
on the tide.  _They_understand_.  Almost certainly one of those things
Man Was Not Meant To Know ...

>From Siege: "World Without End!"

        Ah!  Such fabulous baroque Faustian imagery it conjures!  No
more need be said.

>From Magna: "Grand-daughter!  It's a foreign mirror taken from the jungle
        by crime!"

        Now that is a very weird thing to say.  I _know_ the significance
of the lyric, but it doesn't make it any less weird.  The bizarre phrasing
just makes it all the more disturbing.  How many people do you know that
generally discuss mirrors, foreign or domestic, that are lifted from
rain forests by techniques of questionable legality?  Totally strange.
Immediately you know something, very very strange is going on.  And
Al's voice hinges on unwilling dementia here.  Or incipient madness, anyway.
Tremendous.

the best lyric is the one that doesn't spell it
> out for you and is open for interpretation...although thru interpretation,
> you may be violating copyrights : ]

        As demonstrated above ;)
        Maybe I can hide-out from the copy-right cops in Kazakstan ... ;)

Cheers,
Carl