At 4:02 PM -0700 5/30/00, eric s gregory wrote:
hitchcock's a pretentious arch geek who churns out what he calls "surrealism", but what i call high school "poetry" that is far more bourgeois & obvious than the worst of dali's worst.
Sure, when he slaps it on with a trowel, as he often does. While I recommended _Eye_ yesterday, going back and looking at the LP reveals a lot of songs I can't recall, or if I did recall them, don't want to ("Agony of Pleasure" being a prime example). Oddly, the best song on it ("Satellite") _is_ one of the more, uh, "imagistic."
But don't write off _I Often Dream of Trains_, necessarily--he uses a (comparatively) lighter touch there, occasionally getting surprisingly down to earth: "Dying of starvation in the gutter/that is what the future holds for me..." from "Sleeping Knights of Jesus" for example. Even his more over-the-top stuff on this one works for me--maybe it's just paced better. Lyrically, _Eye_, by comparison, sounds like a man running out of steam and trying to cover it up.
In any event, the rocked-up Soft Boys configuration is well worth hearing, and if it does it for you, check out _Trains_; if it doesn't, don't. (Got my copy of _Moonlight_ used, so people who don't like it do indeed walk among us.)
-- Maurice Rickard http://mauricerickard.com/ -------------- To post: Mail tv@obbard.com To unsubscribe: Mail majordomo@obbard.com with message "unsubscribe tv"