Poetry& Lyrics of Rock's blog

Where is the Love - Black Eyed Peas

WHERE IS THE LOVE - Black Eyed Peas

What's wrong with the world, mama
People livin' like they ain't got no mamas
I think the whole world addicted to the drama
Only attracted to things that'll bring you trauma
Overseas, yeah, we try to stop terrorism
But we still got terrorists here livin'
In the USA, the big CIA
The Bloods and The Crips and the KKK
But if you only have love for your own race
Then you only leave space to discriminate
And to discriminate only generates hate
And when you hate then you're bound to get irate, yeah

Black Eyed Peas- Where Is The Love

Madness is what you demonstrate
And that's exactly how anger works and operates
Man, you gotta have love just to set it straight
Take control of your mind and meditate
Let your soul gravitate to the love, y'all, y'all

People killin', people dyin'
Children hurt and hear them cryin'
Can you practice what you preach
Would you turn the other cheek

Father, Father, Father help us
Send some guidance from above
'Cause people got me, got me questionin'
Where is the love (Love)

Where is the love (The love)
Where is the love (The love)
Where is the love
The love, the love

It just ain't the same, always unchanged
New days are strange, is the world insane
If love and peace is so strong
Why are there pieces of love that don't belong
Nations droppin' bombs
Chemical gasses fillin' lungs of little ones
With ongoin' sufferin' as the youth die young
So ask yourself is the lovin' really gone
So I could ask myself really what is goin' wrong
In this world that we livin' in people keep on givin'
in
Makin' wrong decisions, only visions of them dividends
Not respectin' each other, deny thy brother
A war is goin' on but the reason's undercover
The truth is kept secret, it's swept under the rug
If you never know truth then you never know love
Where's the love, y'all, come on (I don't know)
Where's the truth, y'all, come on (I don't know)
Where's the love, y'all

People killin', people dyin'
Children hurt and hear them cryin'
Can you practice what you preach
Would you turn the other cheek

Father, Father, Father help us
Send some guidance from above
'Cause people got me, got me questionin'
Where is the love (Love)

Where is the love (The love)
Where is the love (The love)
Where is the love
The love, the love

I feel the weight of the world on my shoulder
As I'm gettin' older, y'all, people gets colder
Most of us only care about money makin'
Selfishness got us followin' the wrong direction
Wrong information always shown by the media
Negative images is the main criteria
Infecting the young minds faster than bacteria
Kids wanna act like what they see in the cinema
Yo', whatever happened to the values of humanity
Whatever happened to the fairness in equality
Instead in spreading love we spreading animosity
Lack of understanding, leading lives away from unity
That's the reason why sometimes I'm feelin' under
That's the reason why sometimes I'm feelin' down
There's no wonder why sometimes I'm feelin' under
Gotta keep my faith alive til love is found
Now ask yourself

Where is the love
Where is the love
Where is the love
Where is the love

Father, Father, Father help us
Send some guidance from above
'Cause people got me, got me questionin'
Where is the love (Love)

Sing with me y'all
(One World, One world)

We only got( one world,one world)
that's all we got( one world,one world)
and somthins wrong with it(yeah)and somthins wrong with it(yeah)
and somthins wrong with the wuh wuh world uhh
We only got( one world,one world)
that's all we got( one world,one world)

.............................

Generated from all the headlines and media according to the writers. The message is an old one, the context new c2004. Shame that it need to be re-stated. Good that someone is restating it though. I like this track - played over and over - it stood out from other songs on Radio Galaxy that year - it said something important.

Dangling Conversation - Paul Simon

The Dangling Conversation by Paul Simon (Recorded by Simon and Garfunkle)
Its a still life water colour,
Of a now late afternoon,
As the sun shines through the curtained lace

Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme: Remastered

Simon & Garfunkel

And shadows wash the room.
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference,
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
Are the borders of our lives.

And you read your Emily Dickenson,
And I my Robert Frost,
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we've lost.
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm,
Couplets out of rhyme,
In syncopated time
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
Are the borders of our lives.

Yes, we speak of things that matter,

Dangling Man

Saul Bellow

With words that must be said,
Can analysis be worthwhile?
Is the theater really dead?
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow,
I cannot feel your hand,
Youre a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation.
And the superficial sighs,
In the borders of our lives.
..........................................
"the multi-layered poetry of "Dangling Conversation",
Listen to the song on You Tube....

Chrono Cross - Dangling Conversation

I chose this one because it was the song that inspired me to write lyrics when I was 15. The lyric was juxtaposed next to pop lyrics like the Trogg's With a Girl like you. Every other line was 'baba ba ba ba'. I did like the raunchyness of the Troggs and Reg Presley wrote some poetic lyrics too like Night of the Long Grass and Love is All around, but the power of Paul Simon's lyric hit me straight away. Inspired by a popular novel of the time - Dangling Man by Saul Bellow the lyric depicts a relationship well past its sell-by date. Much of Simon's work of the time explored the theme of alienation in different guises. Each verse takes a different art form - Art - Poetry - Drama and the imagery paints a picture using words and images that reflects a relationship that is not just going through the motions eg -  "It's a still life water colour"  "a now late afternoon" "curtain lace" "now shadows wash the room" "superficial sighs" "borders" - there are more if you look at it. Emily Dickenson and Robert Frost symbolise the gender differences and I think some survey in in America reflected that they were the most popular poets and men tended to read and identify with

Robert Frost

Robert Frost and the women - Emily Dickenson

Emily Dickenson

according to one of my students, although I have no evidence of it.

The line about measuring their lives with bookmarkers is an allusion to TS Elliot's line about measuring his life with coffee spoons.
have measured out my life with coffee spoons; from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

As that verse is on the poetry theme, the allusion to TS Elliot is doubly appropriate.One student wondered why Simon had used the archaic 'Unto' in the third verse, until someone else pointed out that the verse was centered on the theatre and 'unto' was porbably an allusion to Shakespearian theatre - which actors often like to break into to impress! There's a lot of subltlety and multi-layering here and one of Simon's best. Paul Simon worked at his lyrics and wrote slowly - his output for the Simon and Garfunkle is great compared with other writers in terms of quantity but the quality of his work is often outstanding. .

Synopsis (3 Versions) : Dangling Man

Take a man waiting - waiting between the two worlds of civilian life and the army, suspended between two identities - and you have a man who, perhaps for the first time in his life, is really free. However, freedom can be a noose around a man's neck.
............

Written in diary format, the story centers on the life of an unemployed young man named Joseph, his relationships with his wife and friends, and his frustrations with life. Living in Chicago and waiting to be drafted, the diary acts as a philosophical confessional for his musings. It ends with his entrance into the army during World War II, and a hope that the regimentation of army life will relieve his suffering. Along with Bellow's second novel The Victim, it is considered his "apprentice" work.

..................

Expecting to be inducted into the army, Joseph has given up his job and carefully prepared for his departure to the battlefront. When a series of mix-ups delays his induction, he finds himself facing a year of idleness. Bellow's first novel documents Joseph's psychological reaction to his inactivity while war rages around him and his uneasy insights into the nature of freedom and choice. 08-The Dangling Conversation, Live 1967, Simon & Garfunkel

Louisiana Blues

LOUISIANA BLUES (Country Blues song as sang by Coventry's Last Fair Deal C. 1970 and Muddy Waters))

Well I’m goin’ to Louisiana

Maybe behind the sun.

Well I’m goin’ to Louisiana

Maybe behind the sun.

I just found out, my trouble just began

Muddy Waters

 

Well I’m goin’ to New Orleans

Give me a mojo hand

Well I’m goin’ to New Orleans

Give me a mojo hand

I’m gonna teach all dem women

What they don’t understand.

 

Well if the river was whisky

Louisiana Blues

And I was a divin’ duck

I said if the river was whisky

and I was a divin’ duck

I’d dive to the bottom,

and drink my way back up.

(The You Tube version here is strong on the Dobro guitar but the vocals)

Here's another version - If I find a better version in regard to the vocals - I'll put it on - or if Last Fair Deal put a version on You Tube I can link it! (Hint)

Muddy Waters diving duck blues

There are different version of this song See here (as with blues in general) with different singers incorporated good lines or verses into their own blues. Hence there are 'song families' with song related by linked verses or phrases.

In terms of the Poetry of the Blues  (read the article here)  I love that last verse.

In the Jazz Scene by Francis Newton (AKA Economic Historian Eric Hobsbawm)

The jazz Scene (A Penguin special)

Francis Newton

Newton makes the following points about the poetry of the blues in the chapter Jazz and the Other Arts -

• The Poetry of the Blues is unique with the unique talent of its original practitioners for making poetry out of words of one syllable.
• The blues are unquestionably the finest body of living folk-poetry in the modern industrial world. They consist mainly of 5 stressed rhyming couplets with the first line repeated, which are combined, modified and augmented to taste.
• Like other folk-poetry they are concerned almost exclusively with straightforward statements, questions or appeals and not at all with literary ornamentation. Even their similes are used for precision and not evocation.

  Got the world in a jug,
  Got the stopper in my hand,
  I'm gonna hold it back
  Until you come under my command

  or

  Love is just like a faucet
  It turns on and off.
  Love is just like a faucet,
  It turns off and on.
  Sometimes when I think its on baby,
  It has turned off and gone.

• Their symbols and poetic props are either straightforward or standard formulae such as any minstrel uses as fill ins. The sun rises and goes down, the railroad, the house, the wind, the graveyard.

  Sun rises in the east
  And I declare it sets in the west.
  Sun rises in the east
  And I declare it sets in the west.
  Ain't it hard to tell which woman will treat you the best?

  There's three trains ready
  But none ain't goin' my way.
  There's three trains running
  But none are going my way
  But the sun's gonna shine in my backdoor some day.

• The blues are therefore not poetic because the singer wants to express himself in a poetic manner. He wants to
  

  The Story of the Blues

  Paul Oliver
  Bluesay what has to be said as best it can, as in the famous Make me a pallet on the floor.

• It's remarkable how complex and sophisticated an effect can be achieved by the slight variation of repeated lines in words, rhythm and context.

  (Since the consonants are very slurred in Southern US speech the rhymes are true rhymes - e.g. 'flo','do' 'know')

  The casual way in which the blues gets its effects, rather as pebbles are shaped by water, may be illustrated by a specific example - The Red River Blues.

  Which way, which way do that blood red river run?
  Which way, which way do that blood red river run?
  Run from my back door to the rising sun.

  I hate to see that rising sun go down
  I hate to see that rising sun go down
  It makes me feel I'm on my own last go roun'

  Which way, which way do that blood red river run?
  Which way, which way do that blood red river run?
  Run from my window to the rising sun.
• The blues is full of poetic bricks, to be put together by the singer as he chooses. Verses and particular standard lines which the minstrel can insert whenever they can't think of anything else or want to return to familiar ground.

• But behind the elementary, though remarkably effective poetic apparatus of the blues, there lies a view of life, which that apparatus is designed to express with he utmost direction and economy of means. It is this which gives the blues their remarkable power, even when they are little more than doggerel.

  I'm goin' away babe, just to wear you off my mind
  I'm goin' away babe, just to wear you off my mind,
  If I stay around here, I'll be troubled all the time.

  So help me honey, but I don't love you
  So help me honey, but I don't love you,
  Well I just don't like them funny ways you do.

  It's rainin' here, babe, stormin' on the sea
  Raining here, storming on the sea
  You mistreat a good man when you mistreat me.

  I'm sorry baby, Sorry to my heart
  Sorry baby, sorry to my heart
  We've been together so long now, now we've got to part.
  Joe Turner

• This view of life is adult, truthful, totally without illusion and humbug, which is why so much of such poetry sounds like the verse of Bretch, who in turn drew his inspiration from the directness of popular songs.
• Truth is what is in the blues. Truth is what blues singers cherish above all and the word recurs time after time again in their conversation when they grope for an explanation of what they are after and attempt to separate their own songs from those which are merely made to make money.

• No one beats about the bush in the blues. Neither about life, death, drink, money or even love. Self-pity and sentimentalism are not in the blues - instead there is the fundamental assumption that men and women must take it as it comes, or if they cannot stand they must die. They laugh and cry because they are human, but they know it cannot help them. In this world 'a good man is hard to find' and when he is found, he won't bring unmixed advantage.

  Now ashes to ashes,sweet papa, dust to dust
  I said ashes to ashes, dust to dust
  Now show me the man any women can trust.

• Like the worlds of the disorganised and beaten down labourers among whom this wonderful idiom grew up, the world of the blues is tragic and helpless, as Bessie Smith once put it: -

  You caint trust nobody, you might as well be alone

  Bessie Smith

• Like all folk poetry, the blues is intended to be sung and nobody who has heard Bessie Smith or Ma Rainey sing can read the words as other than a faint shadow of the real poetry of the blues. For it is the timbre of the voice, the passion and the marvellous flexibility and rhythmic suspension of the vocal line which turns lines like ' When I was nothin' but a child' or 'Now I'm growing old' into statements definitive of their kind as any of those found in the classic poets. But even a s a verbal skeleton the blues are a literary achievement of considerable importance.

Links -Mojo Morgan's Blues

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Dobro Guitars John Alderson's Delta Resonator Guitars

Johnald1

THE BUILDING BLOCKS AND SRUCTURES OF A SONGWRITING

Some background information the structures and building blocks of songs - useful for studying lyrics or writing them.

Only a northern song

While there many ways to structure a song, there are certain building blocks common formats that writers use, knowlingly or intuitively. of couse it's still possible to break the so called rules and come up with something that works, but wa working knowledge can help give direction, trouble shoot, provide starting points etc. Terminology is not always consistent for example there is a technical difference between a Refrain and achorus but the terms are often used interchangably and American writers may term things differently to English writers. Here's some guidlines.
How to Structure a Song

ONLY A NORTHERN SONG - THE BEATLES

Harrison)

If you're listening to this song

You may think the chords are going wrong
    

Yellow submarine

But they're not

He just wrote it like that



When you're listening late at night

You may think the band are not quite right

But they are

They just play it like that



It doesn't really matter what chords I play

What words I say or time of day it is

As it's only a Northern song



It doesn't really matter what clothes I wear

Or how I fare or if my hair is brown

When it's only a Northern song



If you think the harmony

Is a little dark and out of key

You're correct

There's nobody there



And I told you there's no one there

n - Ray Stevens

MR BUSINESSMAN - RAY STEVENS c1968
Itemize the things you covet
As you squander through your life
Bigger cars, bigger houses
Term insurance for your wife
Tuesday evenings with your harlot
And on Wednesdays it's your charlatan

Night Flight - Mr. Businessman

analyst, he's high upon your list

You've got air conditioned sinuses
And dark disturbing doubts about religion
And you keep those cards and letters going out
While your secretary's tempting you
Your morals are exempting you from guilt and shame
Heaven knows you're not to blame

Refrain:
You better, Take care of business Mr. Businessman
What's your plan?
Get down to business Mr. Businessman if you can
(Before it's too late and you throw your life away) 1st time

Did you see your children growing up today
And did you hear the music of their laughter
As they set about to play
Did you catch the fragrance of those roses in your garden
Did the morning sunlight warm your soul,
Brighten up your day
Do you qualify to be alive
or is the limit of your senses so as only to survive
Hey yeah.....

Spending counterfeit incentive
Wasting precious time and health
Placing value on the worthless
Disregarding priceless wealth
You can wheel and deal the best of them
And steal it from the rest of them
You know the score, their ethics are a bore

Eighty-six anesthetic crutches prop you to the top
Where the smiles are all synthetic
And the ulcers never stop
When they take that final inventory,
Yours will be the same sad story everywhere
No one will really care, no one more lonely than
This rich important man, let's have your autograph
Endorse your epitaph

refrain

.........

The best lyric I come across from Ray Stevens - but what a lyric - packed full and still relevant today especially in this age of Targets and form filling and assessments and surveilance etc etc. The vocabulary immediately grabbed me. "Itemize the the things you covet" etc. Bob Dylan had opened up the doors a few years yearlier and revolutionised the concept of the pop lyric (at least for some). It speaks for itself and some one has made a cartoon from it on you tube - although it doesn't sound like Ray Steven's version of the song.