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Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

""In the government yard in Trenchtown""

17 Comments -

1 – 17 of 17
Anonymous tommy said...

That's very funny because I've had the lyrics to Desmond Dekker's "007 (Shanty Town)" in my head a lot the last few days.

0-0-7
0-0-7
At ocean eleven
And now rudeboys have a go wail
'Cause them out of jail
Rudeboys cannot fail
'Cause them must get bail

Dem a loot, dem a shoot, dem a wail
A Shanty Town
Dem a loot, dem a shoot, dem a wail
A Shanty Town
Dem rudeboys get a probation
A Shanty Town
And rudeboy bomb up the town
A Shanty Town


Must be something with reggae.

11/17/07, 8:52 PM

Anonymous Fred said...

Great post, Steve. You should write more about music -- you have a talent for it.

Procol Harem quoting "No Woman No Cry" reminded me of something similar. I once saw Better Than Ezra in concert when they quoted a few bars of Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" in the bridge of their song "In the Blood". In BTE's case, they were probably influenced by the song they quoted.

11/17/07, 11:32 PM

Blogger Cedric Morrison said...

>"Last spring, his guest was Mika, a Beirut-born English pop singer with operatic training. So, Jonesy started by playing on his guitar Mika's latest hit for his guest to sing, then segueing instantly into songs by Mika's influences, such as Freddie Mercury (an English Parsi gay) and George Michael (an English Greek/Jewish gay), then into songs that influenced Mika's influences, such as going from George Michael and Wham's "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" to Martha and the Vandella's Motown "Heat Wave." Mika valiantly followed Jonesy' lead, scat-singing when he couldn't remember the lyrics, turning the ten minutes of live music into a seminar on a half century of one thread of pop history.
___________________________________

I got chills reading that. I hope someone recorded it. That is the kind of thing where copyrights get in the way. It doesn't have much money-making potential, and all of the rights involved make it not worth ever legally releasing. But it is still something that a lot of people would love to hear, and no one is losing anything if they get to do so.

11/17/07, 11:43 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The best Bob Marley song:

http://tinyurl.com/2auyvr

11/18/07, 2:00 AM

Anonymous Tailspin said...

Song lyric tourism might be a potentially pecunious niche market, but it's Sunday morning, so the only one that comes to immediate mind is I drive up to Muswell Hill, I've even been to Selsey Bill.

11/18/07, 5:11 AM

Anonymous Vanya said...

The chord progression (C-G-Am-F) of "No Woman, No Cry" is the same progression as the Beatle's "Let it be". You can very easily sing one song over the other - try it sometime. A decade later U2 managed to turn the same chord progression into yet another hit by changing the key and creating "With or without you".

"Whiter Shade of Pale" is in the same key, mostly same chords but in a different order - C-Am-F-Dm-G7-Em, which I suppose sounds more more "Bachian" as it keeps alternating between between the major and relative minor, a very common progression in 18th century music.

11/18/07, 5:18 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

One of the best 'mashup' -- avantla lettre -- was an early-eightes mix of Michael Jackson's Billy Jean with Steely Dan's 'Back Jack, do it again' (don't know the title). It really works.

11/18/07, 5:39 AM

Anonymous Proofreader said...

At least Marley's lyrics make sense, despite the Jamaican dialect. Compare it to the waste of time of trying to figure out what the lyrics to a "whiter shade of pale" mean. They do sound right to the music, granted.
That would make for a great topic: "great songs with crazy lyrics".

11/18/07, 6:07 AM

Anonymous derf said...

i think it was chris blackwell who insisted on putting keyboards all over the wailers tracks, to make them more palatable for a paler audience.

another famous borrowing was in buffalo soldier, where bob sings the theme from the 'banana splits' kids TV show.

11/18/07, 9:15 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Day-um! What a densely packed essay! I got to read this one twice,maybe 3 times! :0 Now I must be off to YouTube to listen to these songs.Incidentally, I always suspected that his "Redemption Song" was derived from an older Celt-folk song.It just sounds like it...Uhm,care to take a crack at that one,smart guy??:) (The 1st line sounds like "sailors rabbi"-possible reference to Marleys Syrian-Jew roots. Who'd a thunk Marley and Jery Seinfeld have a point of commonality? O'course Marley believed in his looney Rasta religion...and Seinfeld practiced Scientology...hmmmmm!

11/18/07, 12:03 PM

Anonymous Butt-head said...

Heh heh. "Air On a G-string" heh heh heh.

11/18/07, 1:06 PM

Anonymous sonny said...

in addition to the melody, instrumentation and marley's singing, i always felt that the lyric "i remember when we used to sit..." was powerful in its ability to be nostalgiac, for the old days, when we were young and poor, but happy. or get wistful about times and people no longer around.

he goes on to mention individual people by name (georgie) and food and sharing.

and of course, 'everything is gonna be alright'

11/18/07, 6:16 PM

Anonymous Mark said...

That would make for a great topic: "great songs with crazy lyrics".

That topic begins and ends with Jon Lennon's "Imagine," though there's plenty of other stuff in between.

11/18/07, 10:34 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's posts like these that make Sailer such an interesting writer and give him a surprisingly large readership among liberals and leftists-- the poisonous nature of his comment section aside. Oh, and Redemption Song is basically a bunch of Biblical quotes spliced together-- mainly the Joseph story from Genesis and lines from the Four Gospels.

11/19/07, 2:07 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Steve,

This was a great little post. I'd like to see more stuff like this.

11/19/07, 4:01 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Actually, here in Toronto, on of Canada's "rock gods", Kim Mitchell, is now a DJ on the premier "classic rock" station, Q107. And he regularly pulls out the guitar to play on air with guests.

He also has a great bit about "Songs I Wish I Wrote".

11/20/07, 8:38 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

another famous borrowing was in buffalo soldier, where bob sings the theme from the 'banana splits' kids TV show.

Okay ... so I'm not crazy.

For years I thought I was the only person who noticed this.

11/23/07, 9:39 AM

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