A short tale of 3 random songs
And why I’m stuck in a moment I can’t get out of whilst the sun shines on Leith and nothing ever happens. Sort of.
And why I’m stuck in a moment I can’t get out of whilst the sun shines on Leith and nothing ever happens. Sort of.
I have long posited the notion that music should simply have declared the war over on 21st May 1997 when Radiohead released their Zeitgeist defining album OK Computer. But we carried on, and the boys from Oxford almost, almost topped their own unbeatable abstract piece of dystopian art with their release of A Moon Shaped Pool 19 years later and almost exactly to the day of the release of their 1997 bleak, doom laden predictions of a constant noise, buzz, hum and the unnatural sounds from the electronic equipment that now perversely pervade all of our lives. OK Computer still rules, OK? But only just and only because A Moon Shaped Pool doesn’t quite capture or shape the mood of the era that OK Computer did. But we’re not here today to discuss Radiohead, as lovely as that subject forever remains to be. This article is more about synchronicity and happy coincidences, revelations and ruminations, and how three randomly colliding songs set my neurons firing in all directions today.
Act One: “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” (U2)
U2 were my first musical love. I cheated on them if I’m honest with, shall we say, the softer of rock in my earliest musical memories as Bon Jovi, Europe and Def Leppard occupied the initial stirrings before I joined both College and the Britannia Music Club and alongside my old pal and legendary blog folk hero Gareth, we tasted The Joshua Tree together for the first time and I haven’t looked back since. The early proviso to this Act is I no longer classify myself as a U2 fan and haven’t done since the mid 2000’s though I still purchase every album as they continue to be a worthy and rewarding listen.
Here’s my U2 arc: Joshua Tree, then immediately backwards for The Unforgettable Fire, War, October and Boy, and forwards with great pleasure and delight with Rattle and Hum, Actung Baby, Zooropa, Pop and All That You Can’t Leave Behind. U2 have been a constant and welcome companion for most of my life but for the past generation or so we’ve drifted apart. I still return to their first two albums (Boy and October) as it’s some of the rawest rock n roll you could wish to hear and a song such as A Day Without Me is now well over 40 years old and light years ahead of it’s 1980’s time.
“Starting a landslide in my ego
Look from the outside
To a world I left behind”
Quite.
As with all of these three songs it was played randomly (here during an unrelated podcast I was listening to) and hence not at my choosing. Yet the song itself immediately resurrected so many memories of the time of it’s release on the album All That You Can’t Leave Behind in 2000. It was somewhat of a constant friend during the following year as 2001 became the year of achieving so many sporting dreams, meeting a beautiful lady who would shape not only my life for over a decade but with her smart musical choices too, and an album that contained massive worldwide U2 hits such as Beautiful Day and Elevation and album favourites such as Kite, Grace and The Ground Beneath My Feet. Track 2 was “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” and another firm favourite of mine and a song that has long resonated with me with it’s superficial retort of being stuck in a situation, a mindset or a difficult position that continually tortures your essence of being. Lead singer Bono is high in the mix and as his actual voice rises higher and higher toward the denouement of the song so too does his determination and resolve for resolution and “this time will pass” lyrically ends a quite beautiful song.
Songs are often synonymous with a back story and a raison d’etre and I pride myself with being obsessively educated enough to know or reason why, or postulate as to why a song exists in the catalogue of my favourite bands, and yet it’s taken over two decades for me to learn why this beautiful song exists and the awful tragedy behind the lyrics.
According to music legend as well as an interview Bono conducted with Rolling Stone magazine, the song centre’s on the suicide of his friend Michael Hutchence and lead singer of the Australian rock band INXS. Reading the above lyrics in light of this deep friendship really struck a pun intended chord with me as I adored Michael and INXS almost as much as I did Bono and U2, and around the same time period of 1987 through to the late 1990’s too. I fell in love with their album Kick and immediately delved backward into their earlier albums and especially The Swing and Listen Like Thieves as well as collecting several 12 inch (extended) versions of any single releases. I still have the gatefold sleeve version of their magnificent love song Never Tear Us Apart in a box in the loft. I remember the cover sleeve as being beautifully and artistically arranged amid a maze of mini folders just to get to that precious vinyl, and it resides in a box with 12 inch versions of Dancing in the Dark and Born in the USA from The Boss and a regular 45 single of U2’s Pride (In the Name of Love). I never collected a huge amount of vinyl but these are remnants of a past I’ve never parted with.
Songs and song lyrics are brilliantly and often thrillingly open to various interpretations, and songwriters such as Bono may confirm or even allude to their meaning in interviews such as the one often cited with the American magazine above. At the time of Michael’s tragic death both he and Bono were stratospheric in the popular consciousness, lead singers of incredibly successful rock bands who packed stadia around the world and were mega stars akin to anyone in today’s world. I simply don’t have enough knowledge surrounding Michael’s passing to pass any comment other than I recall stories of the time always centring on the same theme from his closest friends and band mates: he simply struggled with life, had mental health issues and was perhaps stuck in moments that Bono lyrically wrote about, and struggled to raise himself from them.
The phrase of being “stuck in a moment” tends to be overwhelmingly associated with a more depressing tone, and particularly so with the image evoking word “stuck”. Those moments could be long in length or fleeting, darkly tinged or just simply infuriating, but being “stuck” in that moment affects a good majority of us and lyrics such as being a light bringer or being a fool “to worry like you do” and even the finale’ of “It’s just a moment. This time will pass” may resonate with many more of us than we care to imagine.
I often describe myself as being “stuck” and as I write these words toward the end of January 2022 I’m approaching an anniversary that I wouldn’t wish on my dastardliest of enemies, and with it being a first year anniversary I’m stuck in a moment that I will get out of, but it may take some time. I miss and mourn a stubborn old lady who loved music to her very core. I miss making her laugh, hearing how proud she was of a grandson she barely saw but because he was my son she adored him just that little bit more. I miss the daily telephone calls that varied wildly from surreal to just the plain old bizarre, and I dearly wish she’d stop being so stubborn and obstinate and just give me a call, you know, and just let me know she’s ok. My night’s “run over” and my day’s “won’t last”. I know this time will pass, but I’m stuck in a moment and I’d give anything to hear that grand old lady’s voice once more.
Act Two: “Nothing Ever Happens” (Del Amitri)
And so there I was, sucking on the end of my pencil whilst waiting for a telephone to ring and for those moments to pass slowly on by when a radio show was ending to the strains of Del Amitri’s “Nothing Ever Happens”, and I smiled broadly as I often do when I hear this song. I also smiled as the synchronicity of the turntable of life had struck so randomly again, and so quickly, with a favourite old song that whilst perhaps not as universally known or recognised as the above songs from U2 or INXS it’s been ingrained on my musical consciousness for just as long as my adoration for these two previously noted bands. The song itself was initially released here in the UK on the first day of 1990 and is perhaps their most recognised song alongside “Kiss This Thing Goodbye” and “Always The Last To Know” but these things are very subjective and often personal and my rating is based purely on the higher chart position gained by our song under discussion. I bought their 1989 album Waking Hours on the back of this song alone and throughout the 1990’s I also bought their next album Change Everything and both a greatest hits album and a highly recommended album full of B-Sides and alternate takes on an album named Lousy with Love. Then, as with U2 and INXS I tuned out almost completely other than cocking an occasional ear whenever a new song or album was released.
“Nothing Ever Happens” kicked me squarely in the guts in 1990 when I first heard it and it still generates the same visceral reaction within me 32 years later. If you haven’t heard this beautiful ode to existentialism it’s a simple affair of acoustic guitars and an accordion with lead singer Justin Currie leading us on a beautiful if bleak ramble through a Scotland or UK or perhaps even further afield: of 1980’s decay, excess, success, frustration, inequality and a circle of life that we witness, may rail against, yet as the titular refrain suggests, nothing ever happens, “and the needle returns to the start of the song, and we all sing along like before”.
It is beautiful if bleak and as with every song it is open to varying interpretations and I’ve always seen this song as very much of the zeitgeist and sadly, every zeitgeist, every era, every decade, every changing of the political guard, every empty notion of levelling up and every vacuous phrase used to placate an enraged populace that know in their human gut that things have to change and the system is broken beyond repair but we are propagandised, dumbed down and convinced that our own existentialist perceptions are wrong, ill conceived and that something will indeed happen and just be patient. And whilst you’re being patient, we’ll just return the stylus to the start of the tune and we’ll all go along to get along, because change is going to happen. Just not yet.
Verse 1
“Post office clerks put up signs saying “Position Closed”
And secretaries turn off typewriters and put on their coats
And janitors padlock the gates
For security guards to patrol
And bachelors phone up their friends for a drink
While the married ones turn on a chat show
And they’ll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow”
As well as the biting commentary of a 1980’s society that has simply forgotten about a silent majority not swept up or swept along with the excesses of the decade, the song is also a strong existentialist ode to the worthlessness and emptiness of a dull, uniformed and regimented life, and from a life many will retreat into themselves, alone and lonely, before the rigmarole of life and circle starts all over again.
Verse 2
“Gentlemen time please, you know we can’t serve anymore,
Now the traffic lights change to stop, when there’s nothing to go
And by five o’clock everything’s dead
And every third car is a cab
And ignorant people sleep in their beds
Like the doped white mice in the college lab”
6 lines of lyrics and we journey from the mundane ending of a night at the pub or the ending of work day at 5pm. Stagnant waiting for the lights to change in an empty city devoid of life to the crunching gear change of the juxtaposition between ourselves and medicalised mice and despite our protests and desires for these abominations to change (see following verses), nothing ever happens, “nothing happens at all”.
Verse 3
“Telephone exchanges click while there’s nobody there
The Martians could land in the car park and no one would care
Closed-circuit cameras in department stores
Shoot the same movie every day
And the stars of these films neither die nor get killed
Just survive constant action replay”
Recognise this world growing up or today, in 2022? Last year, the US Department of Defence (a misnomer if ever there was one) announced they could not account for the aerial vehicles performing physics defying feats and that they were almost certainly likely to be of an alien origination not of this world. In the middle of a pandemic too! Did we all celebrate and wish our alien cousins well? Did we all go screaming for the hills in terror at these invaders. No. We collectively shrugged with indifference and the needle returned to the start of the song. Again. In the mid to late 1980’s Closed Circuit TV (CCTV) was being installed everywhere in the UK. Everywhere. Look at the evidence around you now and over 30 years later. Now we are the stars of the film and we only survive the Tik Tok constant replays if we’ve made a meme or a funny video or a particularly prescient one. And we’ll all be lonely tonight, and lonely tomorrow?
Verse 4
“And bill hoardings advertise products that nobody needs
“Angry from Manchester” writes to complain about all the repeats on TV
Computer terminals report some gains in the values of copper and tin
While American businessmen snap up Van Goghs
For the price of a hospital wing”
I’m guessing the song itself was written in the late 1980’s but again do you see the resonance with today or previous generations? Bill Hoardings? Ha! What a quaint old fashioned phrase. Now we have them screaming at us with every website visit, every new App and driving through a major city now you’re bombarded with hi-tech visual advertising boards akin to the original Blade Runner movie. The second line of “Angry from Manchester” comes from a short BBC show that aired for decades entitled “Points of View” and people would write in to complain and air their grievances about certain shows or indeed the absence of their favourites. How quaint that sounds in 2022. And finally we have that age old “story” that’s trotted out so often of a person or a syndicate of people who have stumped up incredible amounts of money for a piece of art or memorabilia. That in itself is worthy and representative of the supposed value of the art piece but is it newsworthy? It is really? Does it change your life or anger and frustrate you? If the voluminous cash transaction took place under a regular interaction and there was no “news” coverage of it, would it make it any less significant? What is the real value of this being a news item?
Quixotically, here’s two regular news items today: (1) Mega Billionaire builds a rocket to go into space and (2) The Military Budget is increased. Every. Single. Year. “For the price of a hospital wing” read a billionaire going into space or for the increase of the USA Military Budget in 2022 alone you could end homelessness in America. Forever. But whilst there’s universal approval of diverting cash from certain death into a more certain life, nothing ever happens.
It’s just a song, Stephen! I know that. But the needle always, always, returns to the same old song and we have to sing along like before. Whether we wish to or not.
Act Three: “Sunshine on Leith” (The Proclaimers)
Whereas I was a youthful devotee of U2, INXS and Del Amitri (and you could throw in fellow Scottish band Simple Minds into the mix too), The Proclaimers, also from Scotland, missed my musical consciousness. I was naturally aware of the twin brothers of Charlie and Craig Reid and their ridiculed appearance of two guys in glasses and their poppy, throwaway (if mightily accomplished) songs such as Letter From America, I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles), I’m on My Way or their cover version of King of the Road. But it wasn’t until the turn of the 21st Century and after they’d been a band together for well over 20 years that I ventured into their back catalogue and have done so ever since. In addition to the song here I heartily recommend older tracks such as Throw the R Away, Shadows Fall, Love Can Move Mountains, Cap in Hand or The Joyful Kilmarnock Blues and if you enjoy relaxed, acoustic guitar driven rock n roll feel free to delve further into their back catalogue and particularly so the titular Sunshine on Leith album from 1988.
On the same day (now as I conclude this article, 2 days ago) I randomly went from an old U2 classic to a cruelly under heard tune from Del Amitri we end with another Celtic band and another hometown and personal song and a beautiful reason to believe that my son both loves me and knows me oh so very well. We have numerous mini traditions between us and one we occasionally roll out is his choosing of a song with which to accompany me on my short journey back in the car after dropping him safely home. We keep it a secret until I’ve waved him goodbye and back into the security of his devoted Mother and as I set off on my drive home I pressed play and was delighted at his kind and thoughtful suggestion. The song itself is a sensational ballad or love song and whilst open again to varying interpretations it’s a superficial love song to a special someone who has taken care of a broken heart, mended it and the narrator proclaims their thanks for the carer of the heart to have been born, been kind and pieced together their broken heart. A piano ballad that’s lyrically repetitive (but joyously so) the joyous nature continues with two interludes of a beautiful fiddle solo to end the first part of the song and at it’s heart jumping and pleasing denouement.
Although very late to The Proclaimers party, I adore this song and it never, ever, fails to move me and now I have my beautiful son to thank for an additional memory to sit alongside so many more associated with this fantastic song. Youtube is full to the brim with live versions, acoustic only versions and all manner of others across the years and if you haven’t listened to this magnificent song before please delve into a good quality version of a live song as the crowd reaction will tell you everything you need to know about the sky high esteem in which this song is held and far better than I could ever convey in words here. Furthermore, the song became synonymous with Hibernian Football Club in Edinburgh during a long drawn out battle for control of the club many years ago and due to the local association with the song their fanatical supporters adopted the song as their own and again, should you wish to disappear into a Youtube hole just search for “Sunshine on Leith Hibs” and you’ll find some magnificent crowd versions of this wonderful song.
3 random songs, all with a Celtic/British tinge and all of whom collided unexpectedly on one day evoking memories of growing up in the 1980’s, meeting an incredible lady who bore me a wonderous son and a love song that I should keep in perspective but always spectacularly fail to do so! I hope your very own “Chief” shines on you dear reader, that you have a trusted keeper of your heart, you’re not stuck in a moment you struggle to wriggle free from, and that something happens, for our human family, and we can all play some different songs in a brighter, human led future.