That 'official u75s music taste thread'

[dodgepot]

do people understand what "tongue-in-cheek" means around here anymore?

 

[Iam]

Insulting the Beatles = srs bzness!

 

[Kizmet]

do people understand what "tongue-in-cheek" means around here anymore?

Yes. But generally it means your own cheek...

.. and, usually, the ones in the mouth...

 

[dodgepot]

so who's licking whose arse then, kizmet?

 

[Kizmet]

Aww. I thought you understood what 'tongue-in-cheek' meant....

 

[dodgepot]

i do. but even if you're making a not-entirely-serious accusation of arse licking, you're still going to be basing it on something, and i was just wondering what that was?

 

[killer b]

presumably this 'dubversion' character. not seen him round here lately though...

 

[Kizmet]

It wasn't entirely serious and based on a combined total of about a billion posts....

 

[El Jefe]

Tomorrow i'm going to analyse Macarthur's Park.

It deserves to be understood.

It's by Jimmy Webb and it was written for a bet

 

[Nanker Phelge]

I thought that Richard Harris bet Webb his rolls royce that the song would flop - not that it was written as a bet?

 

[quimcunx]

That's what i thought.

Tomorrow, tomorrow.


If I remember.

So let's discuss the lyrics of MacArthur Park.

There are several themes running throughout, I think. Primarily I would say it is driven by loss. Note that the narrator has lost a recipe for a cake he made.

I'll never have that recipe again

He also no longer has the cake itself. Nor has he eaten the cake, which I can only suppose makes his sense of loss all the more bittersweet. Compare to Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter;

and;

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

with

Spring was never waiting for us, girl
It ran one step ahead
As we followed in the dance

Someone left this cake out in the rain, which seems naive at best. Frankly I think it was nothing less than foolhardy. I hope he at least got to lick the bowl out.

What themes can you see?

Spring was never waiting for us, girl
It ran one step ahead
As we followed in the dance
Between the parted pages and were pressed,
In love's hot, fevered iron
Like a striped pair of pants

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
and I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

I recall the yellow cotton dress
foaming like a wave
on the ground around your knees
The birds, like tender babies in your hands
and the old men playing checkers by the trees

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
and I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

(BRIDGE)
There will be another song for me
For I will sing it
There will be another dream for me
Someone will bring it
I will drink the wine while it is warm
and never let you catch me looking at the sun
And after all the loves of my life
after all the loves of my life
You'll still be the one.

I will take my life into my hands
and I will use it
I will win the worship in their eyes
and I will lose it
I will have the things that I desire
and my passion flow like rivers through the sky.
And after all the loves of my life
After all the loves of my life
I'll be thinking of you
and wondering why.

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
and I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

 

[killer b]

apparently (athough i take the story with a large pinch of salt), webb simply noted down random snippets of overheard conversation at a party, and then wrote a tune to go with it...

 

[Hi-ASL]

What themes can you see?

Or finish my homework for me. With loss there is also hope. Good times lie ahead:

There will be another song for me
For I will sing it
There will be another dream for me
Someone will bring it
I will drink the wine while it is warm
and never let you catch me looking at the sun

But they'll be tainted and not fully enjoyable because:

And after all the loves of my life
after all the loves of my life
You'll still be the one.

Loss and hope and hopelessness; a yearning for things to be ok again but pessimism about the possibility because, once you've left your cake out in the rain, and the icing's melted off, you can never eat that cake again. Which is a pity, because it was the most delicious cake of all, the like of which he will never taste again.

 

[quimcunx]

apparently (athough i take the story with a large pinch of salt), webb simply noted down random snippets of overheard conversation at a party, and then wrote a tune to go with it...

 

[Hi-ASL]

Er.. wrong thread. I'll leave this bit:

/facepalm

 

[quimcunx]

Or finish my homework for me. With loss there is also hope. Good times lie ahead:

But they'll be tainted and not fully enjoyable because:

Loss and hope and hopelessness; a yearning for things to be ok again but pessimism about the possibility because, once you've left your cake out in the rain, and the icing's melted off, you can never eat that cake again. Which is a pity, because it was the most delicious cake of all, the like of which he will never taste again.

I think you're right here. He may find some solace in pleasures of the flesh, but these will be hollow, soulless distractions. These corporeal couplings can never be a match for the cakey goodness with green icing he hoped to enjoy the spring with.

 

[killer b]

sorry.

as you were.

 

[Hi-ASL]

That's very well put.

 

[quimcunx]

sorry.

as you were.

Don't leave killer b. What do you get from MacArthur Park? Have you got a cake recipe?

 

[killer b]

i'm interested in the pressed pants. is it significant that they are striped?

 

[quimcunx]

i'm interested in the pressed pants. is it significant that they are striped?

Spring was never waiting for us, girl
It ran one step ahead
As we followed in the dance
Between the parted pages and were pressed,
In love's hot, fevered iron
Like a striped pair of pants

I think this is largely symbolic. I don't think you can press human beings or, for that matter cake in a (flower) press, the pages of a book or a Corby trouser press.

The significance of the stripedness of the pants may be a reference to his pessimism about finding true cakeyness again. Would you give a cake to man in stripey pants?

 

[Hi-ASL]

He's refusing to accept responsibility for the cake's demise. Clearly it was him.

Someone left the cake out in the rain
and I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again

Or, he's refusing to name the guilty. It was her, but he doesn't want to say it because he can't bring himself to say anything bad about her, or because he thinks that if he doesn't publicly blame there's a chance she might come back, or because he is concerned that if he points the finger she may sue.

Why not name names? Clearly he knows who left the cake out (by accident? on purpose?) but, for reasons that he omits to say, he omits to say.

He's hiding something.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=dpDckbqhpW8

 

[quimcunx]

He's refusing to accept responsibility for the cake's demise. Clearly it was him.

Or, he's refusing to name the guilty. It was her, but he doesn't want to say it because he can't bring himself to say anything bad about her, or because he thinks that if he doesn't publicly blame there's a chance she might come back, or because he is concerned that if he points the finger she may sue.

Why not name names? Clearly he knows who left the cake out (by accident? on purpose?) but, for reasons that he omits to say, he omits to say.

He's hiding something.

Maybe if he admits to himself that she made this one mistake, has this one imperfection, his whole inner world of nostalgic fantasy will collapse and he will be forced to view his love for her as self-deception. Some people just can't handle the truth.

 

[Hi-ASL]

90: http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/G/greatest/pop_records/results.html

Why is American Pie only at 81?

 

[quimcunx]

90: http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/G/greatest/pop_records/results.html

Why is American Pie only at 81?

That list is obviously bunkum.

MacArthur Park is genius.

 

[quimcunx]

Perhaps it is just about the impermanence of love. Perhap as this girl is his cake left out in the rain, the next girl will be his danish pastry with the sultanas picked out by pigeons. They will all be unique and uniquely lost.

 

[bluestreak]

The cake is a lie

 

[quimcunx]

The cake is a lie

Interesting supposition. Do you mean that the cake was a metaphor or that he was claiming there was a cake, it was left out in the rain, there had at one time been a recipe that is now lost, but this claim was falacious?

 

[El Jefe]

The cake is a lie

It's a made-up drug