| Author | Message | ||
     Sloan Nevidy Member Username: Rockandrollfriend Post Number: 3 Registered: 07-2005 |
as others, i've been pulling out some of the lesser heard tracks. any ideas about what these lyrics are about? | ||
| Matthias Treml Member Username: Matthias Post Number: 97 Registered: 05-2005 |
I always thought it was about the slave trade. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 17 Registered: 10-2006 |
Just listened to the Before Hollywood version for the first time last night...what a belter of a pop song! And a real passion and bite in Grant's voice. But, as usual with the GoBs, far from conventional pop words... in fact,it seems to be another GoBs death song: the first part seems to be set at a funeral, with someone, presumably a kid, told "not to leave the hearse", so it could be another refence by Grant to his dad's early death. But the second part goes into folk ballad territory with ships, harbours, captain, etc. The death theme is carried on with the convicts dying in the holds, but there's no narrative link to the first part, unless the "family curse" there involves descending from convicts, perhaps? And the black girl? She just pops in there in the chorus out of nowhere: unless, wearing flowers, counting the hours, she's an image herself of death. Ah, just a pop song. What a band. | ||
| Matthias Treml Member Username: Matthias Post Number: 161 Registered: 05-2005 |
I really think the song is about a black girl on a slave ship. The convicts rowing are shackled and forced to row. The girl could be being sold into slavery or as a bride. Family curse referring to enthicity and basically have to deal with the life you've been born into. The lyircs are not on this site - oddly - so I can't really reflect further. | ||
| Richard Forster Member Username: Baby_stones Post Number: 5 Registered: 03-2008 |
So, I have a post in the guitar tabs area requesting the lyrics to "This Girl, That Girl", but perhaps I'll ask here too. Surely someone would enjoy transcribing them for me? To add to the discussion here, my interpretation, based on a very loose memory of this song, well, I always found it a little bit elusive or impenetrable, but pleasurably so, as if the song is sort of hesitantly asking that we don't overtly deconstruct everything beautiful in the world. "These lilies of the air" is such a superbly evocative yet ambiguous line. I never necessarily took the song to be about the slave trade per se, but more situated in an Australia that has inherited a suffocating colonial legacy... It seems likely that the song is at least informed by Grant's experiences of growing up in a racist, anti-intellectual North Queensland. (I like Stuart's suggestion that it is in part a meditation on the death of the father.) The drama played out on the ship perhaps represents the brutal heritage underlying the realities of life in Qld in the 20th century... Then again, there is a strong cinematic feel, isn't there? I wish I had a copy of "1978-90" on me - Can anyone remind me, what do the liner notes from that gorgeous collection have to say about this song? |