National Ransom--The Lyrics

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Ypsilanti
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National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by Ypsilanti »

Since we've had a couple of weeks to digest the delicious meal of NR, I thought it might be time for a thread devoted to the amazing lyrics. Lot to talk about here. C'mon, Neil--you're the best at this...

One thing occurs to me this morning...

Very much liking the nursery rhyme motif Elvis uses in Dr. Watson, with the "4 & 20 blackbirds" and the counting crows and so forth. Personally, I've counted crows all my life--it's a superstition I can't shake--so this song really speaks to me.

One will follow
Two unknown sorrow
Three for laughter
Four ever after
Five-foot flood when the waters hit
Six feet deep, the eternal pit

Seven prayers and seven pleas
To eight imagined deities
Cat o' nine tails
Cat of nine lives
Brides turned into old wives tales
Your complexion colours then it pales
And into the sunset it sails


It's a beautiful, sad incantation and very deftly written. It has the appropriate Gothic-creepy edge of a real nursery rhyme. And I love how it reads differently than it sounds because of "two and "four". But I imagine there is some sweetness behind all of this--I'm sure Elvis is deeply involved with nursery rhymes and counting games right now because of those little boys.
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by Jack of All Parades »

Not so certain I hear 'nursery' rhyme in this song as a subtler echoing of the deadly sins as they reverberate within the 'mountain' music that Watson has celebrated and played throughout his distinguished career. The playing off his 'secrets', his purity-'the honey from the comb' against the 'sins' that play havoc in this world[so often caught in Appalachian ballads] is revealing and life affirming. Will love to have a longer go at this when I have some time. One thing -this is not 'Gothic' - it comes from a long tradition dating back to the early middle ages and the provencal and later anglo-saxon poetic motifs that crossed to our shores with the old English and Scotch ballads. This is a song that grows stronger with repeated listens in my head.
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by Poor Deportee »

Well, nursery rhyme is part of the folk tradition of making music out of 'found' elements. Just look at Froggie Went a-Courtin with its unsettling reflections on predation inserted in the midst of Wind in the Willows-type whimsy.

I loved 'Dr Watson' from the get-go - perhaps because I have enough of a foundation in old-timey music represented on The American Anthology of Folk Music and other such collections (including Bob Dylan's great duo of folk albums, Good as I Been to You and World Gone Wrong) to be able to respond immediately to that kind of lyric. I could not believe how adroitly EC took that language, hitherto mostly foreign to his work, and 'Costello-ized' it with deft wordplay while remaining completely true to the dark, unsettling, mysterious spirit of such ancient songs as Coo Coo Bird. LOVED it right away. And maybe because the idiom is slightly foreign to much of EC's audience I feel that tune has been mostly overlooked in early discussions of the album. It's absolutely a key track on the album in my book. (If you like more of this sort of thing, check out Gillian Welch's great album, Time the Revelator!).

All that being said, I don't want to over-analyze it or pull it apart. I'm happy revelling in the craft, melody and uniquely jittery sound - the whole feel of that track - and interpreting it would kill some of the mystery for me. Indeed, I find the lyrics on this record to be so superb that I don't want to intellectualize too much about them just yet. I'm still responding to them on a visceral level. I mean,

She woke up and called him Charlie by mistake/
and then in shame began to cry...

What more can you say, really? That's a novel.
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by Jack of All Parades »

PD- you are well on the trail and may the hellhound gloriously pursue you. Do not stop there, one can go back Dylan's "Seven Curses" or J Cash's interpretation of "Delia", there are just so many examples. The Gillian Welsh album that most comes to mind for me with this song is "Hell Among the Yearlings"[ironically produced by Mr. Burnette}- in particular with songs like "Caleb Meyer" and "A Miner's Prayer". That EC has tapped in is not a surprise-remember when he appeared on a special which celebrated that Songbook. There is just so much reverberating within the album "National Ransom".
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by Jack of All Parades »

"Five Small Words" Elvis Costello

Maybe you'll recognize in time
Maybe one day you will discover
All the pain that lies behind
You and your unfortunate love

Somebody might be more
Unsuitable and strange
With eyes that offer everything
And are capable of danger

My mind turns over lies you told
Things said to your other lover
Sweet as they had been to me
You lay there telling them to each other

Now I stand outside the door
My head is filled phrases
Inside someone's calling out
Their voices rise with praises

Five Small Words
"I don't want you anymore"
Five Small Words
"I don't need you anymore"
Five Small Words
Coward that you are, you would faithlessly implore
"Baby please don't leave me"
"Why don't you believe me?"
"Why did you deceive me?"

It didn't take some shiny dagger
The tattooed fingers grip and hone
I walked under some dark ladder
Heard your final loving moan
All your indiscretions are
So merciful and brief
Genteel poison sprinkled on your Spanish handkerchief

Five Small Words
"Don't you love me anymore?"
Five Small Words
But then who is keeping score?

Coward that you are, you would so faithlessly implore
"Baby please don't leave me"
"Why don't you believe me?"
"Why did you deceive me?"

Maybe in time you'll want me more
Accidentally like this ‘45
This ‘44

Tucson, Arizona, 1978

Five opening chords- E D A E D, five stanzas, five small words all echo, reverberate and recycle in this strong EC love[or anti-love]song [even the fifth song in the tracking list]. What could easily be a mundane kiss-off song is turned adroitly by the author into an interlocutory self examination- the pain and hurt of being cheated upon[and who necessarily has done the cheating] perhaps stops short of the 'shiny dagger' or the '44'-the five small words morph from the spiteful 'I don't want you anymore' or 'I don't need you anymore' into 'Baby please don't leave me'. That opening stanza is most telling with its hint that time will perhaps prove the wiser; reflection will reveal the 'pain' of this poisoned relationship. More to the point time may make the spurned all the more appealing- which so runs counter to the initial anger and resentment voiced in the opening stanzas. That is the paradox of an EC love song- "odi et ami"- is it the love notes of 'this '45' or the anger of 'this '44'? Never does quite get resolved and that gives it its peculiar power for me as a song.

It also helps that the words are ably assisted by that wonderful bass line as put down by Mr. Farragher and EC's unexpected skilled usage of the Mastertone Open-Toned Guitar with that delicious reverb. The underscoring of the Farfisa Organ is icing. The shaded longing that I hear in his vocal serves to effectively accentuate the inner dialogue within the lyric. Well done and a strong update of "Delia" for me.
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by Ypsilanti »

Christopher Sjoholm wrote:Not so certain I hear 'nursery' rhyme in this song as a subtler echoing of the deadly sins as they reverberate within the 'mountain' music that Watson has celebrated and played throughout his distinguished career. The playing off his 'secrets', his purity-'the honey from the comb' against the 'sins' that play havoc in this world[so often caught in Appalachian ballads] is revealing and life affirming. Will love to have a longer go at this when I have some time. One thing -this is not 'Gothic' - it comes from a long tradition dating back to the early middle ages and the provencal and later anglo-saxon poetic motifs that crossed to our shores with the old English and Scotch ballads. This is a song that grows stronger with repeated listens in my head.
You are correct, of course, about the Gothic thing. Thanks for straightening me out. I was using that term too loosely/incorrectly. I only meant to refer to "scary" aspect of nursery rhymes, which rival only Grimm's Fairy Tales & circus clowns in the Traditional Childhood Terrors Department. In an age when there is a new sexy vampire movie every 15 minutes, "Gothic" seems to have become shorthand for anything "dark".
I am actually descended from Scots who settled in Appalachia so I have some awareness of how those ballads came to our shores. As to the nursery rhyme theme, here is the original...
One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for a girl
Four for a boy
Five for silver
Six for gold
Seven for a secret, never to be told
Eight for a wish
Nine for a kiss
Ten for a bird you must not miss

Here is Elvis' reworking of it...

One will follow
Two unknown sorrow
Three for laughter
Four ever after
Five-foot flood when the waters hit
Six feet deep, the eternal pit

Seven prayers and seven pleas
To eight imagined deities
Cat o' nine tails
Cat of nine lives

Also, the original...

Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds,
Baked in a pie.

Elvis...

Blackbird in a crust no more
They fell down 4 and 20
Bloodstained the land of want and plenty
So I keep this fancy to myself
I keep my lipstick twisted tight
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by Poor Deportee »

Christopher Sjoholm wrote:"Five Small Words" Elvis Costello

Maybe you'll recognize in time
Maybe one day you will discover
All the pain that lies behind
You and your unfortunate love

Somebody might be more
Unsuitable and strange
With eyes that offer everything
And are capable of danger

My mind turns over lies you told
Things said to your other lover
Sweet as they had been to me
You lay there telling them to each other

Now I stand outside the door
My head is filled phrases
Inside someone's calling out
Their voices rise with praises

Five Small Words
"I don't want you anymore"
Five Small Words
"I don't need you anymore"
Five Small Words
Coward that you are, you would faithlessly implore
"Baby please don't leave me"
"Why don't you believe me?"
"Why did you deceive me?"

It didn't take some shiny dagger
The tattooed fingers grip and hone
I walked under some dark ladder
Heard your final loving moan
All your indiscretions are
So merciful and brief
Genteel poison sprinkled on your Spanish handkerchief

Five Small Words
"Don't you love me anymore?"
Five Small Words
But then who is keeping score?

Coward that you are, you would so faithlessly implore
"Baby please don't leave me"
"Why don't you believe me?"
"Why did you deceive me?"

Maybe in time you'll want me more
Accidentally like this ‘45
This ‘44

Tucson, Arizona, 1978

Five opening chords- E D A E D, five stanzas, five small words all echo, reverberate and recycle in this strong EC love[or anti-love]song [even the fifth song in the tracking list]. What could easily be a mundane kiss-off song is turned adroitly by the author into an interlocutory self examination- the pain and hurt of being cheated upon[and who necessarily has done the cheating] perhaps stops short of the 'shiny dagger' or the '44'-the five small words morph from the spiteful 'I don't want you anymore' or 'I don't need you anymore' into 'Baby please don't leave me'. That opening stanza is most telling with its hint that time will perhaps prove the wiser; reflection will reveal the 'pain' of this poisoned relationship. More to the point time may make the spurned all the more appealing- which so runs counter to the initial anger and resentment voiced in the opening stanzas. That is the paradox of an EC love song- "odi et ami"- is it the love notes of 'this '45' or the anger of 'this '44'? Never does quite get resolved and that gives it its peculiar power for me as a song.

It also helps that the words are ably assisted by that wonderful bass line as put down by Mr. Farragher and EC's unexpected skilled usage of the Mastertone Open-Toned Guitar with that delicious reverb. The underscoring of the Farfisa Organ is icing. The shaded longing that I hear in his vocal serves to effectively accentuate the inner dialogue within the lyric. Well done and a strong update of "Delia" for me.
Interesting that you single this one out. In some ways, I view this as a pleasant but fairly lightweight entry, inasmuch as EC has been over all this terrain many times before - at least lyrically. No question that the craft is strong, though; in addition to all those in-built "fives" (which is, let's face it, entertaining but merely clever), there's the subtle added impact of the final statement - ".44" - falling doubly short of "5" - thus leaving room for the mathematical completion via the single (or doubled) gunshot.

Still, the real appeal of this song is sonic more than lyrical to me, for all the reasons you state. The harmonies are great as well. And yet I have two musical quibbles: first, it takes two minutes to get to the chorus - I appreciate EC's deviousness, but that's too darned long for my taste. The other quibble is with the melody, which is perfect except for one specific passage: the last line of each verse strikes me as "off" every time. Although it makes more sense when it feeds into the chorus (thus leading to one more reason to want the chorus to hit sooner!)

These reservations go to making this an enjoyable enough song for me, but not much more that that.
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by Jack of All Parades »

PD, given my strong antipathy towards "National Ransom's" predecessor, I wanted to show how I find good in even the slightest of songs on this album. The creativity is richer: the palette is expansive both lyrically and sonically. Now to the song that stands out on this record for me, and I suspect for you, and may well be one of the best songs from his pen in some time.


"Jimmie Standing In The Rain" Elvis Costello

Third-Class ticket in his pocket
Punching out the shadows underneath the sockets
Tweed coat turned up against the fog

Slow coaches rolling o'er the moor
Between the very memory
And approaches of war

Stale bread curling on a luncheon counter
Loose change lonely, not the right amount

Forgotten Man of an indifferent nation
Waiting on a platform at a Lancashire station
Somebody's calling you again
The sky is falling
Jimmie's standing in the rain

Nobody wants to buy a counterfeited prairie lullaby in a colliery town
A hip flask and fumbled skein with some stagedoor Josephine is all he'll get now
Eyes going in and out of focus
Mild and bitter from tuberculosis

Forgotten Man
Indifferent nation
Waiting on a platform at a Lancashire station
Somebody's calling you again
The sky is falling
Jimmie's standing in the rain

Her soft breath was gentle on his neck
If he could choose the time to die
Then he would come and go like this
Underneath a painted sky

She woke up and called him "Charlie" by mistake
And then in shame began to cry
Tarnished silver band peals off a phrase
And then warms their hands around the brazier

Forgotten Man
Indifferent nation
Waiting on a platform at a Lancashire station
Somebody's calling you again
It's finally dawning
Jimmie's standing in the rain

Brilliantine glistening
Your soft plaintive whistling
And your wan wandering smile

Died down at The Hippodrome
Now you're walking off to jeers, the lonely sound of jingling spurs, the "toodle-oos" and "Oh, my dears" down at "The Argyle"

Vile vaudevillians applaud sobriety
There's no place for a half-cut cowboy in polite society

Forgotten Man
Indifferent nation
Waiting on a platform at a Lancashire station
Somebody's calling you again
It's finally dawning
Jimmie's standing in the rain

Accrington - 1937

This song has been discussed in some detail on the 'Jimmie' thread. But I do not think it cannot stand continued discussion; it is that good. PD has emphatically stated that EC has punched through to a richer, historical style, that he has found a new voice. I agree and this song exemplifies that approach. There is a strong cinematic quality to the images. I cannot help but think of John Osborne's "The Entertainer' when I listen. Throughout it is anchored with specific details that build this character Jimmie-details that reinforce a downward moving life-third class ticket, stale bread, loose change[not a pocket of pound notes] and not the right amount, working the outer sections of a vaudeville circuit[ an isolated Lancashire station-someone has previously identified as possible the station at Wiggan, suffering from tuberculosis, an act that has died down at The Hippodrome. Within this detailed description of this broken down performer each detail is precise, not a word or image gratuitously placed within the lyric. I read and hear a real man before me who is struggling and the empathy that creates within me is profound.

The neatest trick within this song is that EC has managed to take me back some 80 years to a different era and yet make this man's plight speak for the plight of people around me today as they experience uprootedness in their lives, careers, fortunes, the world's they inhabit and like Jimmie are in despair 'standing in the rain', getting soaked but not with the 'pennies from heaven' that so infused a popular song of the time but with real water, unprotected, in essence dissolving away like the character's life around him. EC is right, this has happened before and will happen again.

As in all good art, there are a variety of ways to read this lyric. Alexv offered an hilarious take on the human relations aspect of the song- Jimmie's dalliance with a stage door Josephine and the hilarious[typical EC twist]of post coitus humiliation by being called 'Charlie'. Yet one more humiliation in a life that is increasingly filled with them. Jardine notes that the melody breaks into a slower New Orleans based funeral march at the 'Brillantine' verse echoing the East St Louis Toodle-oo of Duke Ellington as heard in his "Black & Tan Suite". All there most definitely. One can also see a connection to that old country song "The Long Black Train" as it pulls into the station picking up passengers for their final destination- one such passenger, Jimmie.

When EC performed this song this past summer it was noted by Mr. Foyle that he would frequently introduce it by suggesting that Jimmie carried a case and that within that case could be found a coil of rope and a single poem by John Keats. I have previously played with the notion that the poem could very well be the famous 'Nightingale' ode. As Jimmie is stranded out on the outer edges of England bordering the wild of the moors, Keat's poem speaks to the succor that Ruth perhaps found in exile from Israel from the song of the nightingale, mirrored perhaps in Jimmie's 'soft plaintive whistling and his 'wan wandering smile' as he too thinks of home. The image of dissolving water within the poem is caught in the lyric with the rain falling on the platform. The narrator of the poem longs for a 'draught of vintage, that hath been cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth' much as Jimmie seeks comfort from a hip flask. Both characters are in pain and are 'in half love with easeful Death'. Both are worn down and wish to 'dissolve' from this physical world.

Alexv has as well suggested that a reading of the lyric can be done that finds this song a possible metaphor for the trajectory of EC's career. Not implausible. Just think back to the recent New Yorker profile and its compelling telling of EC's recent performance down in Texas for a business convention.

I like the soft musical touches, the stately understated trumpet, Dennis Crouch's dignified bass line and again EC's intelligent and lively playing of the Acoustic Gibson. In particular I am most appreciative of his vocal. He restrains it, allowing himself to gently underscore the pain of this character. There is an intelligent use of thirties jazz lines throughout the song.

This song, as I hope one can see, offers many ways for a listener to occupy its space. There may be more. The one definitive thing it does is to capture the hurt- economic, social, and psycholgical- that this man is experiencing and to make that pain be universal, both back in the 30's, today, and for generations to come. Well done, memorable, timeless.
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by cwr »

Superb analysis. I love reading these.
Alexv has as well suggested that a reading of the lyric can be done that finds this song a possible metaphor for the trajectory of EC's career. Not implausible. Just think back to the recent New Yorker profile and its compelling telling of EC's recent performance down in Texas for a business convention.
In this respect there is a kinship between this song and "Suit Of Lights", yes?

Reading through the lyrics to the songs on NR makes me wish that someone could go into the EC Wiki page and start annotating all of Costello's lyrics, so any obscure reference or factoid that might be relevant to a particular song or lyric could be linked to a little box that would pop up and explain things. (Sort of like how the Atlantic Monthly website handles the many footnotes in this David Foster Wallace essay from 2005.)
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by Poor Deportee »

Splendid analysis, Chris. Glad to hear that you weren't arguing for 'Five Small Words' as a truly major composition. As for 'Jimmie,' you are absolutely right to identify this as a great song - one of the very finest songs of EC's entire career. I'll merely add that I believe Jimmie just might be meeting his own death at the end, as in:

Somebody's calling you again
It's finally dawning
Jimmie's standing in the rain

Who is calling? What is dawning?

I see the pathetic humour in the 'Charley' line, but I simultaneously find the follow up - 'then in shame began to cry' - devastatingly sad. The whole lyric walks a virtuoso line between funny and tragic; and it's the compassion for this superficially absurd figure that raises the song to its stellar level.

And how tastefully performed! EC's vocals show admirable restraint on most of these songs, including 'Jimmie,' that serves the tunes so well. Any amount of excessive hamming (of the sort that blemishes the splendid 'Church Underground' IMHO) would have proven fatal to the track. One of the great moments in EC's career, both as a writer and studio artist, this song is.
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by Ypsilanti »

cwr wrote:Superb analysis. I love reading these.
Alexv has as well suggested that a reading of the lyric can be done that finds this song a possible metaphor for the trajectory of EC's career. Not implausible. Just think back to the recent New Yorker profile and its compelling telling of EC's recent performance down in Texas for a business convention.
In this respect there is a kinship between this song and "Suit Of Lights", yes?
Wow. "Jimmie" is a metaphor for the trajectory of EC's career? So his career is in a tragic downward sprial? Seriously? You all feel that way? That is really fucking sad. I feel like I'm in Bizarro World.

I guess a reading of the lyric can be done to "find" any conclusion one wishes to find, but this one feels forced and, yes, totally implausible.

Wasn't that wind conference gig pretty much a one-off thing, an anomaly? Not similar to (or indicative of) anything else on the recent tour? Or the tour before that, either? Who knows why he ended up stuck with that gig, but obviously it's not his usual fare. I don't know...I've seen Elvis quite a few times over the past couple of years and the crowds are always large, happy & enthusiastic, the houses full, the encores numerous. No "jingling spurs".

What if "Jimmie" is just what Elvis says it is: a bit of fiction, a story?

And isn't "Suit Of Lights" about the anger Elvis felt at seeing his father disrespected while trying to sing at a football banquet gig?

Meanwhile, as we all sit here behind our nerd-computers, typing away, Elvis keeps flying around the world, doing shows all over the place, shaking hands with presidents, fucking his sexy blonde wife, playing with his healthy children, buying $300,000 guitars, hosting Spectacle, etc. Not very Jimmie-esque, in my estimation.
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by Jack of All Parades »

Ypsilanti, one must tread on egg shells around you- the key word is possible. If you reread the post referred to by Alexv he simply notes that one might give a psychological reading to the lyric that works off a Jimmie/EC dynamic. Within the New Yorker profile EC as much as acknowledges that his career trajectory has altered, that "he has long given up on the idea of building an audience, from one album to the next, and of playing to bigger and bigger halls." No one is saying his career is dying- but it has experienced a sea change over the decades. He has a respectable audience, I count myself as a member, but the trajectory has given him 'Frustration' as is clearly noted in the profile. A telling moment in the profile is the noting that EC must be careful as to how many musicians he books to appear with him to avoid being the only one who is not paid following a given gig. In that sense it is diminished, like Jimmie.
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by Poor Deportee »

Christopher Sjoholm wrote:Ypsilanti, one must tread on egg shells around you- the key word is possible. If you reread the post referred to by Alexv he simply notes that one might give a psychological reading to the lyric that works off a Jimmie/EC dynamic. Within the New Yorker profile EC as much as acknowledges that his career trajectory has altered, that "he has long given up on the idea of building an audience, from one album to the next, and of playing to bigger and bigger halls." No one is saying his career is dying- but it has experienced a sea change over the decades. He has a respectable audience, I count myself as a member, but the trajectory has given him 'Frustration' as is clearly noted in the profile. A telling moment in the profile is the noting that EC must be careful as to how many musicians he books to appear with him to avoid being the only one who is not paid following a given gig. In that sense it is diminished, like Jimmie.
Sure. One can speculate the EC can identify and/or sympathize with Jimmie, without thereby concluding that EC's condition is anywhere near as drastic, or that EC even pretends that it is.

It's pretty clear that Elvis was very commercially ambitious from the start, and long held an eye on the charts and sales - that's what Punch the Clock was about for instance - and really, he's never refrained from mentioning the pecuniary realities of his line of work in interviews or presumed to be above that sort of thing. (I suspect commercial marginalization is a universal frustration among high-calibre artists who have to watch as mediocrities get all the fame and, more importantly, fortune). And he's alienated a fair chunk of his own audience over the years with his sundry "side-project" and genre exercises. Perhaps the arc of his career has given him enough of a peek into the rabbit-hole of commercial/popular decline that he can write a song like this from the "inside." But Jimmie would represent an extreme extension of EC's experience. That's how imagination works, after all.
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by jardine »

"It's finally dawning" really is a great, condensed line, caught between what might be the morning light rising on the train platform after a late, failed performance and an even later train, and/or, maybe, just maybe, it dawning on Jimmie just what a fix he's really in.
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by jardine »

but i also love "come back baby, or at least tell me where you are going" from styc
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by cwr »

Ypsilanti, no need to fly off the FUCKING handle. CALM THE FUCK DOWN.

All I said was that there is a kinship between "Suit Of Lights" and "Jimmie Standing In The Rain." That's it. Somehow that sparked a total fucking freak-out complete with insults about how pathetic "we" all are. No one was insulting Elvis. Both songs are empathizing with performers who aren't being respected.

Elvis gets a ton of respect, but he still has instances like the one mentioned in the New Yorker profile where the audiences aren't paying attention. Or people who show up to only hear the hits and have no interest in anything new he has to offer. There are just minor little things, but there are certainly instances where Elvis isn't accorded the respect that he would deserve as one of the greatest living songwriters and performers.

I'm all over this board talking about how I wish National Ransom was a big hit, and how if Dylan released an album with 16 new songs of this caliber we wouldn't be reading reviews carping about "too many" good songs. I want EC to get every ounce of respect and success that a great album like this deserves. I don't think I'm on this board trash-talking about him, and it aggravates me to read a post like yours...
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by Jack of All Parades »

"You Hung the Moon" Elvis Costello

The homecoming fanfare is echoing still
Now tapping on tables
And sensing a chill
Poor families expecting loved one's return
Only summon some charlatan spectre
Oh, when will they learn?

You hung the moon
From a gallows in the sky
Choked out the light
From his blue lunar eye

The shore is a parchment
The sea has no tide
Since he was taken from my side

The lines of the fallen are viewed through a glass
But you cannot touch them at all
Or hear their footfall just as they go past
The drunken ground is where they are bound

You hung the moon
From a gallows in the sky
Put out the light in his blue lunar eye

The shore is a parchment
The sea has no tide
Since he was taken from my side

So slap out his terrors
And sneer at his tears
We deal with deserters like this
From the breech to the barrel, the bead we will level
Break earth with a shovel, quick march on the double
Lower him shallow like tallow down in the abyss

You hung the moon
From a gallows in the sky
Choked out the light in his blue lunar eye

The shore is a parchment
The sea has no tide
Since he was taken from my side

A Drawing Room In Pimlico, London - 1919


When I first heard this song on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz program earlier this year I was immediately struck by it's lyric and the sophisticated usage of the image of the moon. Access now to the song through "National Ransom" has only endeared it to me more. It is my second favorite song on this album.

This tale of the pain a mother or perhaps wife feels at the loss of a son or husband/lover is timeless. Whether set in a drawing room in Pimlico in 1919 or the living room of a young wife in Santa Cruz, CA in 2010 or any home that has had to deal with the death of a loved one lost in war or lost to death in general, the lyric is poignant in its depiction of the deep hurt and desperate need to restore that lost loved one as a living presence. It cannot be done but the effort to do so is heartbreaking. People grasp at opportunities provided by frauds, in this case a seance that will summon the lost soldier.

But all that is restored is a spectre, the moon has often been depicted in this manner in prose and poetry. It is a prevalent image for Hardy. Unfortunately, the only summoned image is the 'spectre' [bleached out] moon which is literally hung in the sky, its light 'choked out' in a grotesque parody of the 'blue moon' of lost love[just think Rodgers and Hart]. There is no sun with its warmth and comfort, just a spectral and diminished moon.

What EC does next is telling- he equates that spectral moon as a dead object- it no longer has the power to pull the tides. It is dead in the sky, as dead as the soldier taken from his loved one's side. The shore no longer has the natural action of waves which can be said to kiss the shore and has morphed into a parchment, and a blank one at that, which can be the tanned hide or skin of an animal once the 'tallow' is rendered from it.

The twist here is that this soldier has been executed for desertion, summarily. The alliteration and rhyming in the stanza which tells of the execution is beautifully executed[bad pun]. The ignominy of a hurried burial in drunken soil[blood filled] dumped into the abyss like tallow is a shattering image and is mimicked tellingly in the musical notes as they tumble out of the score.

Again EC has tastefully presented this song with a muted and reflective vocal performance. When combined with the simple guitar line played by Marc Ribot and yet again the anchoring bass line of Dennis Crouch and the melody assayed by Jeff Taylor you have a tremendous chamber piece. A memorable addition to his catalog.
Last edited by Jack of All Parades on Mon Nov 15, 2010 8:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
jardine
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by jardine »

Wonderful to read these posts.

First small go at Voice in the Dark: I’m loving this song more and more. Over and above the wonderful, energetic melodies and arrangement, there is the singing. It really is fun to try to sing along at full voice and try to have anywhere near enough breath for the whole song.

But the lyrics are really astounding. It isn’t a large and tragic and beautiful story like Jimmie, but it really is playful, teasing, literate, alluding and funny.

Ok, a first go:
Reigning pennies from heaven. (1936).
Bluing the moon (Rodgers and Hart 1934)
Three little fishies (1939).
When you wish upon a star (1940)

And my favorite, in the last verse, when I swear he’s talking about what it is like with someone you really, really love, when you hear someone calling to you:
“A sound both wild and gentle
Daring and confidential
I thought there was music playing. . .”

It sounds like meeting diana, but it is also Harkening to the herald whose an
Angel.
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by jardine »

oh, and, the herald angel sings for the new born king!!!!!!!!!!! yikes i like this guy!
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by Jack of All Parades »

"A Voice in the Dark" Elvis Costello

You can read right through a book of matches
But that won't make you smart
You can laugh in the face of watches
But time will only break your heart

Kings reign beneath umbrellas
Hide pennies down in cellars
And money pours down and yet
Not everyone gets soaking wet

When bores and bullies conspire
To stamp out your spark
Listen for…
A Voice In The Dark

Not a moment too soon as we blue the moon
And a wolf begins to howl in tune
I announced for all mankind
A boon
Stand aside you big baboon
Now I'm the a prize invention
You're the image of yourself
Forget your cares
And disapproving stares
I'm not here to try to jump your borders
Just ask your nieces and daughters


I'm flat as sole, I'm happy as a clam
But they don't know the kind of man I am
Little fish swimming in a jealous shoal
Now my net is overflowing
And I suddenly seem to be all seeing and all knowing
I've got something right there
They you need to hear
But have no fear
Lend a hand
Lend an ear
If your rent-money is in arrears

We'll be striking up a symphony bandstand
Long of hair and loose of tooth
There'll be pirouettes and startling handstands
And who but acrobats know how to tell the truth
When is said that then redundant
They gallivant in peg-leg pants
I‘ll be your servant
You'll be my pal
I'll be ever faithful you know I shall
There's no fool like an old fool
Who blames it all upon his youth
When times are tough and you find you're down
Without a star to wish upon
Just listen for…
A Voice In The Dark by Elvis Costello

I was striking through a box of matches
Hoping that one would spark
I heard somebody calling to me
A voice in the dark
A sound both wild and gentle
Daring and confidential
I thought there was music playing
But it was all and only talk
When liars and bullies conspire to stamp out spark
Fill up that empty space in your heart
Listen up, when the herald says, "Hark"
Believe in just a voice in the dark…

On a Radio Hat - 1931

Jardine- interesting approach EC lyric as an acrostic.

This song could easily fit into a big, splashy Broadway or Hollywood production- Broadway Babes of 2010 or times are tough but music will pull us through. What it most definitely can do is demonstrate yet again that EC when he applies himself can create a song worthy of the Great American Songbook.

There is a delightful tumble of unforced rhyme going on here, as they tumble out seemingly effortlessly not unlike the performing 'acrobats' performing within the lyric. There is no straining for a rhyme, nothing forced; there is no sense that he has had to resort to a rhyming dictionary. One can readily "read right through a book of matches" as rapidly as these rhymes appear in each stanza.

One has to enjoy the play on the 'thirties' anthem "Pennies From Heaven". It is inventive as you are made to feel that deluge of shifting wealth pouring down both verbally and musically. Are you 'soaked' yet? I'm not. I appreciate the effort made by EC with in the lyric to tie in motifs and themes from other songs on the album- the color blue and all its 'hued' alternatives, the big, bad 'wolf' at the door[ as both a pecuniary menace and a lascivious one, as well, the obvious references to Bush and Cheney are somewhat heavy handed- those 'bores and bullies'. I do think the tie into immigration fears and the previous administrations premature announcement that we are in a 'boon' works. 'Forget your cares' as the old song goes- 'come on get happy![a non to subtle reference to the tune which appeared with frequency on setlists this past year.] EC pulls out all the stops with the obvious inspirational echoes back to "Wish Upon a Star" to modern day "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" stopping just sort of declaring "all you need is love" but clearly calling into play Frank Loesser's wonderful "Sit Down Your Rocking the Boat" from "Guys and Dolls" as the 'herald' beckons.

What makes this song most work for me is EC's open-hearted vocal delivery. There is a hell be damned tone that exudes a joyful playfulness as the song progresses. In fact, it is the beautifully controlled vocal performances he gives to most of the material on this record that stands out most for me[outside of the strained hamminess of his vocal on "Church Underground" and the joyless 'rant' that constitutes the title song.]. Whether solo, double tracked, or accompanied by a background singer, I have been made to re- appreciate his vocal talent as I listen to most of the songs on this record. Not my favorite on the album but a solid effort none the less.
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
alexv
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by alexv »

Back to:

You Hung the Moon" (not sure if these are the corrected lyrics, but they are close enough)

The homecoming fanfare is echoing still
Now tapping on tables
And sensing a chill
Poor families expecting loved one's return
Only summon some charlatan spectre
Oh, when will they learn?

You hung the moon
From a gallows in the sky
Choked out the light
From his blue lunar eye

The shore is a parchment
The sea has no tide
Since he was taken from my side

The lines of the fallen are viewed through a glass
But you cannot touch them at all
Or hear their footfall just as they go past
The drunken ground is where they are bound

You hung the moon
From a gallows in the sky
Put out the light in his blue lunar eye

The shore is a parchment
The sea has no tide
Since he was taken from my side

So slap out his terrors
And sneer at his tears
We deal with deserters like this
From the breech to the barrel, the bead we will level
Break earth with a shovel, quick march on the double
Lower him shallow like tallow down in the abyss

You hung the moon
From a gallows in the sky
Choked out the light in his blue lunar eye

The shore is a parchment
The sea has no tide
Since he was taken from my side

I googled "you hung the moon" to see if it was some kind of slang, and found that it's been used to mean someone who thinks highly of him or herself, but it looks as if here our Boy is equating the moon with the soldier so that literally the deserter is being hung and his life is being choked out and the impact on his grieving family is as if the moon had disappeared. It's a neat jusxtaposition and allows for that wonderful parchment section. What I love about these lines, however, has nothing to do with that, but everything to do with his singing, the melody, accompaniment and the beautiful sound (to me) of "blue lunar eye" and the entire shore/parchment and sea/tide section.

As with almost all EC songs, of course, you get an inscrutable (to me) section. For me, that's the one that starts with: "the lines of the fallen". I'm thinking the glass is the table where the seance is taking place, and he's saying you can imagine but can't touch the fallen, but why are they walking on ground that is drunken? Also, for some reason I keep thinking that at some point, way back in the 80s, he had a song where "lines/glass" were used to suggest cocaine. Was it in PTC? Anyway, the whole sections sort of takes away from the melancholy feel of the song, adding a dash of good old EC venom. And the venom opportunity comes right after this section with the deserter stuff so why this section?

Anyway, I love this song. I see that it's being talked about elsewhere, by someone who takes war very seriously, and it looks as if Jardine got involved with some very nice comments. I would love to hear EC's comments referenced below.


http://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/20 ... -costello/
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by Jack of All Parades »

"Dr. Watson, I Presume" Elvis Costello

I sat in a motel room with the doctor
Just before we were supposed to sing
He said regarding this guardian wing
This black and clipped misshapen thing
Hobbling on from claw to ring
Hung upside down and cawing
Pecking at carrion of the fallen
Battalion
Thawing
On frozen mooring

Blackbird in a crust no more
They fell down 4 and 20
Bloodstained the land of want and plenty
Now raven standing at his shoulder
Stared with eyes of molten solder

Dripping on a lacquer box
Introducing keys to locks
Seven talents there where hidden
Mysterious and some forbidden

Take the honey from the comb
Ravel thread around the loom
Dig the dirt up from the tomb
Dr. Watson, I presume

One will follow
Two unknown sorrow
Three for laughter
Four ever after
Five-foot flood when the waters hit
Six feet deep, the eternal pit

Seven prayers and seven pleas
To eight imagined deities
Cat o' nine tails
Cat of nine lives
Brides turned into old wives tales
Your complexion colours then it pales
And into the sunset it sails

Soon these secrets will be scattered
Heaven knows what lies inside
It took a moment to discover
A lifetime to decide

Take the honey from the comb
Ravel thread around the loom
Dig the dirt up from the tomb
Dr. Watson, I presume

Wilkesboro, North Carolina – 2007

A beautiful song and a linch pin for me on the National Ransom album.

Not a song with a hint of nursery rhyme for me- no blackbird, which is a member of the thrush family and can sing[just think Beatles "Blackbird'] but the much richer Raven, a corvid, and its associations with death and evil and seen as a harbinger of doom and destruction. Here it is presented as a guardian angel perched upon the shoulder of a blind musician who is a keeper of the rich tradition of American music that this artist has spent a lifetime keeping alive. But it is the darker, 'black and clipped misshapen thing' that is evoked; the bird that traditionally was noted as an eater of carrion, a bird that would peck out the eyes of the dead feasting on the bodies strewn around '4 and 20 on 'bloodstained' land. But the eyes of our singer are already dead. The eyes may well be the cast eyes of countless soldiers, silent sentinels in so many town squares throughout the North and South to the carnage that enveloped the 'land of want and plenty' over 100 years ago and the ravens that can still be seen perched upon them even today.

Does that 'molten solder' drip on the guitar of our singer or is it tears, a guitar being a 'lacquer box' in essence? Are the fingers of our Dr. the 'keys' that unlock the treasures of this songbook? Perhaps? What I am reasonably certain is that in EC's mind this guitar still holds the 'keys' along with its player to a great tradition of song going back to the first settlers in those hills and mountains around Wilkesboro, North Carolina. It is the Dr. who can still relate the numbered songs of that tradition which tell of loves won and lost or spurned, murder, great joy and great sorrow, songs of judgment and misdeeds, of wronged, scorned and mistreated women whose face's complexions 'colours then it pales', of traumatic events be they the six foot eternal pit, floods, affliction, poverty, despair or war.

This lyric evokes these themes wonderfully and then acknowledges that a great guardian of this heritage will soon be gone. This guardian has the power to find the sweetness and purity within this tradition, within these songs of calamity and human misadventure, to 'take the honey from the comb, ravel thread around the loom, dig the dirt up from the tomb'-"Dr. Watson, I presume".

The instrumental accompaniment is delightful to my ears. The deft shadings by Marc Ribot and Buddy Miller are most enjoyable. And again EC plays with subtlety on his Martin D-18 and even more impressively catches a deft tone of reverence in his vocal. As I said at the beginning, a linch pin song for me and a key for me to entering the other material on the album.
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by jardine »

re you hung the moon. those lines "the shore is a parchment" but especially "the sea has no tide"

the pull of the tide from the moon now gone is a wonderful, distant allusion to the disappearance of the pull of love, but also, even, the pull of fertility, moistness, even, shall we say, "monthliness" and the cyclical tides of fertility that his lover has now lost. it really is quite an intense image, a deep sexual, bodily ache among many other pains, where the pull of life's continuance has been lost
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Re: National Ransom--The Lyrics

Post by Jack of All Parades »

"That's Not the Part of Him You're Leaving"
Elvis Costello


I have a friend
She's just a friend
I tried to comfort and defend
I gave her what you might call advice
But nothing like that comes without a price

The rumour was a cruel surprise
And she dissolved before my eyes
I offered my hand and hers and mine entwined
I thought about back then when I wished that she had been mine

There's no use in shedding any tears
He's no good to you the way he is
He's beyond forgiving and believing
Half of his heart is torn like paper
It's sweet as the syrup from the maple
But that's not the part of him you're leaving

In time they're bound to wonder why
It's just a thrill you can't deny
I offered my shoulder right away
Now people will talk about what I can't say

And yet the whispers still persist
They're getting harder to resist
How am I supposed to stop loving you now I've begun?
And I'm sorry for what I might do more than what I have done

There's no use in shedding any tears
He's no good to you the way he is
He's beyond forgiving and believing
Half of his heart is filled with pain
That's sweet as a lick of sugarcane
But that's not the part of him you're leaving

Love is a many splintered thing
That only cuts roses and ribbons that cling
But that's not the part of him you're leaving

On The Road Between Dismal and Discouraged. Right Now

Last of the songs on this album that I care to write about. A 'mindful pleasure' and perhaps the only 'straight up' song on the album in that it accomplishes the songwriter's intent simply and succinctly. A 'real' country song that crosses borders and perhaps belongs in the accomplished hands and vocal chords of the late Solomon Burke had he had a chance to cut it on his "Nashville" album.

It is a love song, unlike many in EC's catalog, that does not mince words, play with too many conceits and stays true to its emotional core. A sister song to Hiatt's "She Loves the Jerk" as both narrators sneakily 'entwine' their feelings for another within the context of supposedly being sources of comfort and consolation in the guise of being a 'friend'. Yet again EC plays with the "odi et ami" theme of love but this time placing it within the personage of the lover who the narrator states must be left behind- at least the 'part' of the lover's heart that is less than compelling- the 'part of him you're leaving'. The sly thing about this song is that one can clearly believe that the narrator, as much as he may be trying to comfort a love damaged friend, is equally conscious that he, given the same opportunity, might be just as unworthy, 'being beyond forgiving and believing', as well.

I also like the references back to old songs like "Love is a Many Splendid Thing", "Love Hurts" and "Love is a Rose" for starters. It gives the lyric a context and allows it to reverberate with these previous songs in my head.

Once again EC provides a subtler vocal support for this lyric and has the musical accompaniment be suitably restrained. It is an adult love song and written with a strong psychological understanding of the nuances that go into that emotion when people 'enter-twine'.
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
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