OFF: Lyrics (was Duran Duran)

[Alex S. Garcia]

Keith pursues :

>> Hmm... Do you ever read any novels ? I mean, it's the same.
>
>Yep...occasionally.  And because they just happen to be the same novels that
>are the basis for much of what Hawkwind writes lyrics about, it makes for an
>easy comparison.  And no, it's not the same.  Although Bob Calvert's (or
>Brock's) lyrics may represent the same basic ideas and may even tell a story to
>a certain extent, I can't say I get very much out of reading the lyrics

Well, there are different kinds of lyrics, you know. I'm not familiar (yet)
with HW's so I can't talk about them. But in general, you have three basic
kind of lyrics :

1) meaningless lyrics (like the ones you mentioned in your previous message)
2) lyrics which convey a message
3) and lyrics which tell a story.

Now of course, you can mix those together to have for instance lyrics
telling a story while conveying a message, others will tell a story but in
such a way that they seem meaningless (not an easy task, actually) and you
can also convey a message within meaningless lyrics (oh yes, that's possible
alright !). Anyway, my point is that a lot of songs tell a story but not
necessarily in such a way that you won't understand them. Take the lyrics to
"Veteran of the psychic wars", "Sole survivor" or "Black blade" which speak
by themselves. They really do tell a story in a very linear way. And in that
sense, I say it's pretty much the same as a novel (or rather a short-story,
because of the length).

>Musical lyrics are a bad way of telling a story it seems.  They're difficult to
>understand often

Listen to (or read) the lyrics to the songs mentioned above - I don't think
you can call those "difficult to understand". And BOC wrote quite a few
lyrics of this kind.

>and the metered nature of the tune limits one's abilities to
>convey a sequence of ideas/events.

I don't think so. "Imaginos" precisely plays with this notion, since the
story is told "out of sequence". Very skillfully, IMO.

>And what is Imaginos anyway???  I quite like that album, but never realised
>until reading the Goldmine article that it was supposed to be about something -
>sorry, Albert.  I suppose musical artists *want* to try to be 'novelists'
>through their own work, so I guess it's probably disappointing to them when
>their audience just doesn't *get* it, or doesn't even really try.

Haven't you even read the liner notes ? They pretty much sum up the story.



Alex S. Garcia.

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Generation Scenario
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