So what are your favorite song lyrics?

Hm, well, let's try that again. I wasn't happy with those English translations I found. Mercedes Sosa, "Gracias a la vida," translated by Mach yours truly. My Spanish isn't that great, mind:

* "Y luz alumbrando/La ruta del alma del que estoy amando": I'm never quite sure about these lines, could she not be saying "La ruta del alma de que yo estoy llamando"? (The light lighting the way of the soul that I shout out about). However with each couplet until of course the very final one ending with her love for a very real man, I guess it holds up as it stands. I find either interpretation ambiguous in its precise meaning, anyway.

This thread probably needs a little controversy.

I submit the lyrics of the Original Rock'n'Roll Record (in my opinion).

Rocket 88 by Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats


However someone seems to have sanitized these lyrics along the line. Listen to the real thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbfnh1oVTk0

(Would still need to check out the above and so get back on it, Dave.)

I've mentioned this before, but came across the soundtrack to Delhi Belly again, to be found through http://mio.to/. Apparently the music director is Ram Sampath.

It reminds me a lot of shall we say 1980's Eastern European punk rock. Down to the language, even; you might as well be listening to Polish or somesuch (no, I don't know those languages.)

Amazing stuff. Guess I should check out the movie when I can.

Again no lyrics here (or not by me, I obviously can't understand those languages), but another album to be found through http://mio.to/, Euphoric Sufis. (I think they may feature permalinks, but never sure how permanent those are.)

Some of it might as well go into the Indian Fusion music thread; amazing stuff again.

East Euro punk eh! They’re must have been a few of them i s'pose, mind you there was much that needed revolution over there, then... wonder if any later become New Romantics and e.g. dug Spandau Ballet?

back to some singing in English - let's have alisten to Ronnie Lane and his own tunes on 12 string, there’s something of the east end troubadour about him. Simple cool melodies, beautiful arrangements and tight playing on stories about what could have been yr life, or was down the road anyway.

Back in 1972 on the B side of the Faces, Stay With Me, was Ronnie’s, Debris (clip Courtesy of the BBC 1974) The tune’s about his old man. Debris probably refers to post-war London where they all came from, large areas remained waste ground until the sixties at least. Second track Ooh La La…

When you want her lips, you get her cheek
Makes you wonder where you are
If you want some more then she's fast asleep
Leaves you twinkling with the stars

The early Faces seem to be much underrated, they were astonishing live, highly talented unit with especially Lane’s lyrics, Wood’s playing, Stewart’s early vocals before the make-up phase – no posing, all for real and Stewart singing Debris is Chicago R&B. Ronnie sadly died young from MS, but is easily up there amongst one of the best British player writers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar3uIUv-874

I left you on the debris
At the Sunday morning market
You were sorting through the odds and ends
You was looking for a bargain

I heard your footsteps at the front door
And that old familiar love song
'Cause you knew you'd find me waiting there
At the top of the stairs

I went there and back
Just to see how far it was
And you, you tried to tell me
But I had to learn for myself

There's more trouble at the depot
With the general workers union
And you said, "They'll never change a thing
Well, they won't fight and they're not working"

Oh, you was my hero
Now you are my good friend
I've been there and back
And I know how far it is

But I left you on the debris
Now we both know you got no money
And I wonder what you would have been
Without me hanging around

Yes. I hung around with some of them.

Pussy Riot support actions, anyone?

(Member 2Cents was in town again this weekend, he and his friends took me to the Magneet Festival here that I'd never heard of before. Nice and hippie'esque, albeit that costs a bit more than it once did. I guess the times they indeed are a-changin'.

Anyways Nina Hagen made a surprise appearance here, great as ever she was, and of course famously a refugee East German singer. Perhaps less known to the general public, she is of course the stepdaughter of famous then-East German protest singer and dissident, Wolf Biermann.)

The funny thing is in my enthusiasm I got up front as far as I could, then started doing the pogo, the good old bouncy up-and-down thing on your own square half meter, of course I'm not gonna be slam-dancing there, and the place was indeed absolutely packed. Some people around me started objecting, I'm like well there's also the option of stepping back to where you don't need to be in the middle of it. Sweetly, some other old punk rockers none of whom I'd ever met before formed a circle around me so I could do my thing. Smiles and hugs and love all around and etc. I mean I am unexpectedly seeing Nina Hagen live here!!!, I think she'd not been to town for fifteen years or so, when indeed I happened to stumble into the gig, just as well. Think we managed to wiggle our way onto the guest list or so then.

I currently have a giant bruise on my arm by one of those ladies who tried to stop me, btw. Thanks, and I guess it's how you know you had a good night out. The other was like this giant ex-marine type of fellow. Says I indeed, there is an outside to this tent we're in for you to retreat to and still listen, as well. Now hit me if it makes you feel like a real man, and otherwise don't mind me if I dance a little more.

I asked the stage crew afterwards if maybe I could say hi to La Hagen backstage (which would have been a first to me), they didn't even seem to find it a stupid question, but kindly informed me she was probably already on her way to her hotel again.

UB40, "Burden of Shame"

The much discussed and debated tune that by many opinions is loaded with subtle references to The Beatles, Byrds, Stones & extraordinary events of the late 1960s ........ whatever, a very provocative piece:

Lykke Li - Dance Dance Dance

Felt btw that maybe I should specify it's just another song I happen to have been humming of late; it might as well go "I'm a Dutch subject not proud of it..." etc. to me.

Watching that awful news on the South African miners' protests and deaths again of late (now said to have been resolved -- at a wage increase of some 20%, not the 200% they were calling for, or at least so one is told, last I saw of it), I couldn't help but think that in the 1980's/90's when we were protesting against Apartheid, those hi-tech armored vehicles with all their cute on-board crowd-control gadgets you see cruising around there were said to have been diligently developed by the Dutch Royal Philips, and of course delivered to some other friendly regimes, as well. I don't know but am sure EMI and the likes may as well have been involved (that or similar would then namely be no doubt what UB40 here is referring to), and they may all quite well still be. (Yes, perhaps not as widely known, besides being a well-known record label, they're also a major player in the arms industry. Perhaps somewhat like Philips, come to think of it. Technology always goes a lot of ways, doesn't it, and you the consumer often seeing just some happenstance final by-products of it. Gee, who'd have thunk that tank or rocket design would lead to your latest kitchen blender innovation.)

Must be quite the improvement to now get beaten up and shot down by your fellow black not to mention socialist powers-that-be, instead. And indeed care of your friendly etc.

On EMI btw, the irony of course would have it that it seems UB40* themselves were under contract with them at some point.

That is far from unique: British DIY band Chumbawamba stood at the forefront of a boycott EMI movement, then later infamously signed up with them. Caused a lot of in-fighting in the "scene," when we might have had better things to do.

Oh well, so things go.

* From the useless tidbits dept., word has it that used to be the title of the form to sign up for unemployment benefits in the UK. Hence their first album title, Signing Off.

That's just splendid stuff, btw. Had never heard of her before; thanks.

The Jam, "Going Underground"

(Sorry, folks, I'm actually pretty happy these days, but getting a little recalcitrant because of it. As a good friend once remarked to me: Mach, you're a rebel, not a revolutionary. He was of course right, and it gave me a good insight, then-and-there.) Mrs. Smith once again: