“For those not yet properly acquainted with this man’s compendious oeuvre, a riveting encyclopedia of human frailty awaits your exploration”*
Mar 31st, 2011 by Donagh
Yesterday evening I went to our CD rack just after dinner, and in act that is completely out of the normal rhythm of that part of the day (which usually involves ushering our kids to bed after dinner, corralling them up the stairs, marshalling them in to the bathroom to brush their teeth, and so on) I pulled out an album I hadn’t listened to in years to here one particular song. The album was Smog’s or Bill Callahan’s Julius Caesar. Not my favourite album of all time and certainly not my favourite Smog album but it contains certain oddities that has you going back to it now and again to see if it still seems as off-the-wall, rough and underdeveloped, and well, unlikeable as you remembered.
One of the most off-the-wall, rough, underdeveloped and unlikable songs on it is I Am Star Wars Today.
But I like it. And I think the reason that I played it last night when I should have been doing other things is that it’s sole and regularly repeated nonsense lyric “I am star wars today/I am no longer English rain” is just the kind of thing you need to stick in your head to avoid the trauma of trying to get your head round the implications the so called banking strategy, and the inevitable pushing of so much private debt on to the back of an economy that cannot endure it.
The implications of this act, served up with an apparent dispassionate rationality, is mind blowing. So, to save my head, I think jamming it with a dull yet leftfield and original lyric is better than having to try and understand what is happening at the moment in our soon to be post-stress world.
So, if you’re into it, sing along.
I am star wars today/I am no longer English rain….”
“I am star wars…..24 billion!! today….”
“I …24 billion!! am star wars…..today….”
“24 billion!! Wars today”
24? No longer…
I am….some of which would be paid back through sales of assets, but not fire sales? What planet are these people on? Wars today/I am no longer English…
Here’s some more decent tune for those who like Smog, I mean, Bill Callaghan.
The more carefully-crafted and lyrically elaborate Bathysphere
The first Smog song I heard on No Disco with Donal Dineen was I Break Horses. The video was black and white, bleak, and Callahan’s voice and the song’s sparseness reminded me of that other early swansong for the annoying, wordy, socially retarded young single male Ohio River Boat Song.
The line “I break horses, I don’t tend them” representing a kind of disaffected malevolence that a fella could really latch on to.
And Eid Ma Clack Shaw, which sounded great when I heard it for the first time today.
* From the Guardian interview today, unsurprisingly.
Update: More on singing about Star Wars
From EC, Rumble - Star Wars
“My Local Looks Like the star wars bar
I’d sure like to blow up a death star
with a lightsabre in my hand
with a lightsabre in my hand
I’ve got in in my hand
I’ve got it in my hand”
http://soundcloud.com/one-of-dead-elvis/rumble-star-wars
I think that deserves to be embedded. I’m going to listen to this all day
I love Smog too - especially earlier material. He is a really brilliant lyricist.
I bought Dongs of Sevotion and gave up on them. I saw them play twice. First time as a three piece - drums, Geetar and Piano doing songs from the album with ‘Blood Red Bird’ on it with the audience sitting on the floor. One of the best gigs I ever saw.
I also still deeply identify with the narrator of ‘Ex-Con’. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmsMvra1WR8
“Whenever I get dressed up,
I feel like an ex-con trying to make good.
Alone in my room
I feel such a part of the community
But out on the streets
I’m like a robot by the river
Looking for a drink.’
Never saw them/him, which is a little odd considering how many times I’ve seen Will Oldham. But the first Smog one I really got into was Red Apple Falls, and when you mentioned ex-con the line “like a robot by the river” popped into my head.
In Dublin it seems at certain times there is one or two bands/singers that people, maybe I’m thinking of those who used to go to Whelans alot, got fixated by. I think Smog had that honour around the time of Dongs of Sovotion. Or maybe it was that around the time of that album the over-saturation occured.
Seem to remember he played support to Will Oldham at one of those Whelans gigs in the nineties, Donagh. Were you not at that one ? Or have the bankers/blueshirts wiped your memory banks ??
Ohhh, yeah, you’re right. It’s coming back to me now through a fog of many billions tossed to bankers by democratic revolutionaries.