Ooh La La – More Lyrical Dissection

Poor old granddad,
I laughed at all his words.
I thought he was a bitter man
He spoke of women’s ways.
They’ll trap you, then they use you
Before you even know.
For love is blind and you’re far too kind
Don’t ever let it show.

I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was younger.
I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was stronger.

The can cans such a pretty show,
They’ll steal your heart away.
But backstage, back on earth again
The dressing rooms are grey.

They come on strong and it ain’t too long
Before they make you feel a man,
But love is blind and you soon will find
You’re just a boy again.

When you want her lips, you get a cheek,
Makes you wonder where you are.
If you want some more and she’s fast asleep
Then she’s twinkling with the stars.
Poor young grandson, theres nothing I can say.
Youll have to learn, just like me;
And that’s the hardest way.
Ooh la la

I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was younger.
I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was stronger.

- By Ronnie Lane and Ron Wood, best known performed by the Faces. (When they stopped being Small)

As I mentioned recently, I love the film Rushmore and this song closes the film and inspires me muchly. It’s got a lovely positive tone and the chorus makes you feel wiser and happier, and that film (like everything by Wes Anderson) is a lovely tale about working out how to grow into the real you. The best you.

Anyway, that’s all lovely and positive, then you pay more attention (I need to pay more attention more often) and notice that actually it’s about how old age makes you bitter and miserable.

The Granddad has apparently had a lot of bad experiences and wound up a misogynist bastard.

Now, it is my view that once you’re old enough you’ve earned the right to be a complete arsehole. Grumpiness, true grumpiness, is the one thing I look forward to most about being old. Moaning and whinging are great sports, but the young just sound pathetic.

Old people sound pathetic sometimes to…but you respect them. After all, they are old.

This is still massive misogyny. (There’s one bitch in this world, one bitch with many faces). Painting that image of women as manipulative users of men. I expect this from NWA (who I enjoy listening to despite the barbarous views expressed more often than not…I like to pretend that it’s all ironic and they were being knowing, but I think that’s me being naive).

So how come the feeling that songs inspire often has nothing to do with the words.

It’s a right bugger.

I mean…I know I’m very susceptible to this, because words in songs are normally the last thing I focus on. A by product of listening to so much instrumental music, and also doing lots of other things whilst listening to music. I don’t have time to consciously interpret lyrics when I’m also reading or playing or writing or whatever.

This means that there’s plenty of songs that I don’t know the words to properly.

Strangely enough, I have a knack for remembering lyrics. I can sing along to songs fairly efficiently if I’ve heard them a couple of times. I think this is partly guess work and accessing the unconscious mind, if only because I often still won’t pay attention to the meaning of the words.

I think I’ve got a fairly musical memory. I can normally remember songs quite vividly, which makes listening to music more interesting, as I often get to pick up on when people are using motifs or chord progressions used in other songs. I’ve spent lots of time singing the lyrics and melody of one song over other songs that ‘match up’.  It’s jolly good fun.

It’s why I get frustrated that my DJing skills aren’t up to the point where I can mix anything I want.

A friend of mine told me after my most recent set that he liked one of my mixes because unlike most mixes, the two songs were in a real harmony, adding richness to each song because they actually shared certain musical characteristics.

It such a satisfying thing to hear(especially when most of the set had gone appallingly badly).

I just did the thing where I write here instead of hear because they sound the same.  Maybe I’ve got a particularly audiocentric mind in general, because I do that all the time. Most of my typos are phonetically correct.

Wait a second….this was supposed to be about unexpected misogyny.

Oops.