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Re: (TV) Hitchcock



i'm with you here....i can't say as i really know what mark e smith is singing bout
most of the time & there are even quite a few fall tracks i've got no time for, but
the cat is posessed...he's a first class ranter & i mean that in the best sense of
that word's history...there's something that hints at the beyond when he's on a
roll....same goes for roky erickson (whose own songs & those written by the weird
philosophy major 13th floor elevators svengali...is it tommy miller, i think?) are a
bit more clear, but still way out there...fact is, erickson sounds like he believes
what he's singing & the desperation/awe factor is bubbling out all over the place.
syd as well, tho yr right...he spawned some bad imitators.....


Sam Inglis wrote:

> Very well put.
>
> I find that for me it works more like this: if the person singing the
> lyrics sounds as if they matter to them, or has an interesting and
> sincere-sounding delivery, they can get away with an awful lot. For
> instance, Beck's lyrics are deliberately and literally nonsensical, but
> I find that they draw me in because he makes them sound as if, in his
> world, they're saying something significant. Same with Mark E Smith and
> Syd Barrett. You get the feeling that Syd was really trying to convey
> some sort of truth in his life for which down-to-earth description just
> wouldn't have worked. Or take the 13th Floor Elevators. A lot of their
> lyrics are utterly barking, but they sound as if Roky Erikson is
> desperately trying to get some message across. None of these guys, to
> me, sound as if they're _trying_ to be surreal on purpose -- they're
> just trying to describe reality as they see it, but they see it
> differently to the rest of us.
>
> The trouble with Robyn Hitchcock, on the other hand, is that he just
> sounds like someone who's heard Barrett and thought 'Wow, that's really
> cool', then copied it because it's a style that he likes, rather than
> because it's true for him. Surrealism for the sake of it doesn't really
> do it for me (not a big fan of Zappa either) -- it is often lazy, and it
> doesn't go anywhere.
> Don't know enough Pavement to know which side they belong though...
> Sam
>

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