Now I know most of you won't need it, but for those who do need
a bit of help here, Google defines ennui as:
"a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack
of occupation or excitement".
OK, so if that was the case and I was feeling at a loose end
(which isn't the case) Ennui Go/On We Go isn't a bad double meaning by my
standards.
But back to Arthur Lee and the song. Some of my posts will
be entirely qualitative, but most have an element of quantification in there
somewhere. I feel a lot of folk are swayed by entirely qualitative arguments,
appealing to emotion, which don't stand the scrutiny of quantification. So I
was looking for something to do with numbers. And music is often going through
my head...
I missed out on Love in the 60s - a bit cult and American,
not chart stuff. But Mrs H and I caught up with it and listened to Love a lot
in the 70s. And sporadically since. Quite recently, driving along, I said
"you know, this song is amazingly like the early Clash, but from 10 years
beforehand". The song was 7 and 7 is.
When we got home, I browsed Arthur on Wikipedia, which I found says: “Love's music has been
described as a mixture of folk-rock, psychedelic
rock, baroque pop, Spanish-tinged
pop, R&B, garage rock,
and even protopunk.
Lee has been regarded as "the first punk rocker" ....."
So it only took me nearly 40 years since the advent of punk
to realise the similarity. And that two of the apparently very different types
of music I like are not as different as many would think.
In the first of the two verses, Arthur sings: “When I was a boy I thought about the times
I’d be a man/ I’d sit inside a bottle and pretend that I was in a can/ In my
lonely room I’d sit my mind in an ice cream cone/ You can throw me if you wanna
‘cause I’m a ball and I go boo-bip-bip, boo-bip-bip yeah!”
Now I always thought this was some kind of meaningless acid
trip lyric. But apparently it describes Lee's frustration at teenage life - the
reference to "in my lonely room I'd sit, my mind in an ice cream
cone" being to wearing (in reality or metaphorically) a dunce's cap
(says Wikipedia).So here I sit, feeling fairly dunce like, as I ponder the significance of the latest economic statistics and whether they mean Brexit would be good or bad; or the fact that Leicester are top of the premier league with 46% possession; or Butch Harmon’s quote that Jordan Speith holed over 30% of his putts from 20-25ft last year when the “next guy is about 8%”, or that Chris Froome thinks half of tour cyclists use prescription drugs for performance improvement, so what does that imply for other sports; and what it all means.
Or I could listen to some music. Boo-bip-bip, boo-bip-bip
yeah!
Oh, you can listen to the song - which is only a bit over 2 minutes long, so
give it a go – accompanied by a rather mixed stills video, on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B89DjDk7IY
If you want to compare 1966 Love with 1977 Clash, listen to
almost anything off the first album; I’d go for Janie Jones, also just 2
minutes long, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyoW0tf6N-Q
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