Simon Fairbairn – Aural Antidotes for a Prescribed Life

When I was younger lyrics used to have deep meaning for me. They were an important part of why I enjoyed music. The insights of many of the artists that I listened to were important to my development and what I understood about the world we live in.

In the last 7 or 8 years, however, this has slipped away a bit. Through a mixture of growing up, arrogance and criticism, I stopped paying as much attention to what songwriters were writing about. Nothing seemed to resonate like it once did – I had begun to think that the irrelevant musings of individuals with their own problems and prejudices didn’t have any more relevance to my life and I shouldn’t spend my time looking for hidden meanings when it’s quite possible that the words were no more than ramblings, single thoughts or ideas that were simply glued together by the music and had no underlining resonance or overarching narrative theme.

Bob Dylan

Then I started listening again. I have to confess that Bob Dylan was never one of my favourite artists when I was younger. It’s taken me a long time to begin to see his importance as a musician and, especially, as a lyricist. I have amended my ways and, since giving him a fair go, I am discovering that he is someone whose lyrics resonate with my soul in a way that I long thought wasn’t possible any more.

Some of his words are obscure and difficult to truly understand, but other songs are very clear about where their meaning is and what they are trying to say. One of my favourite examples of this is It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), from Bringing it All Back Home.

This song tries, in 7 1/2 minutes, to sum up what it’s like to live in the modern Capitalist society and is, if this is possible, even more relevant today than it was when it was first released in 1960. The scope of this song is magnificent in its daring and its attempts to take life apart from the cradle to the grave.

He manages to sum up a lot of life’s bitterness and frustration and deftly dissects people and their behaviour. In a lot of ways, many people do just only live life for 7 minutes. We’re shunted from one end of the system through to the other, told what to achieve, what to aim for. We’re given goals and sent out in to the world – get educated, get a job, get a family, get a house, get up the ladder, get a pension and finally when we reach 60/65 get out and enjoy the remaining 7 minutes.

But Dylan himself says that he means ‘no harm nor put fault / On anyone that lives in a vault’ – he doesn’t want to blame people for how they are. He looks at our existence and says this is what I see, make of it what you will.

The song

The song itself starts very obscurely. The first verse is quite oblique and open to interpretation. Whatever the interpretation, the last two lines are quite clear ‘To understand you know too soon / there is no sense in trying’.

‘Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn / Suicide remarks are torn’. These resonate through our world. We can’t truly be free and properly express ourselves because of the empty threats and the scorn thrown down from within and from all around us – politicians, religious leaders, etc.

Politics

Then we start moving into the polarisation of politics – the extremes and a summary of both. People’s motivations for fighting the wars – ‘private reasons great or small / Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
/ To make all that should be killed to crawl’ took on a new meaning for me recently after reading Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, which is this idea that very rich are getting much richer through the implementation of violent policy in the pursuit of pure free market economics.

It doesn’t matter that millions of people are suffering for the implementation: these rich men and women hold up their own increased wealth as proof that the ideas they are aiming for are working. The politicians of the rich Western countries allow them to continue for that very reason because, well, what’s good for the rich is good for the country.

Then, on the other extreme, you have ‘don’t hate nothing at all except hatred’. Choose your side – as if it were that simple.

Religion

If you start your verse with ‘Human Gods’, you’re not really about to launch into a pious and devoted sermon on the benefits of religion. This is one of a couple of scathing attacks on religion within this dense diatribe. They aim for their mark, these human Gods – other human beings.

The thing I like most about this verse is the sandwiching of the religious imagery with the imagery of guns and bullets. An interesting and pointed juxtaposition given how much violence actually stems from religion – both are as bad as each other.

The toy guns that spark is a simple yet brutal metaphor for how much casual violence is celebrated in our culture and encouraged from a young age. It’s everywhere – this idea that killing is fine so long as it’s the bad guys. But don’t worry, Hollywood and our governments will tell us who the bad guy is; who the right people to hate are.

It works wonderfully throughout our society – patriotism and nationalism mixed in with a rising bonfire of fear created by our media and stoked by our elected officials – and the ignorant among us buy into it quickly and easily. After all, fear and hatred is a lot easier than love and respect. It’s easier to destroy than to create.

Then he moves on to the flesh coloured Christs that glow in the dark, which is another incredible picture. ‘It’s easy to see without looking too far / That not much / Is really sacred.’ Our most sacred possession are our lives and yet we love the taking of it – we positively celebrate it and encourage our kids to enjoy it too.

And with Christ, if we take the Bible at face value (never a good idea, but let’s go with it for a second), then we pretend that we’re devoted to the idea of Christ and everything he stood for but yet, within Christianity and Catholicism, you often find the most hatred, anger and prejudice. Not even the ideals presented by Christ are sacred.

Obviously, there is also the fun tackiness of the glow in the dark Christ. We’ve all seen them, and they’re awesome (and speak volumes about the practitioners).

Education

There is a deft segue from religion, where ‘Preachers speak of evil fates’ which is, of course, their controlling mechanism to the ‘teachers [that] teach that knowledge waits / leading to $100 plates’, which is yet another carrot for us. Work hard enough, and you too can eat at a fancy restaurant. This, on the surface, seems fairly benign. Knowledge and learning is important, but motivation is also worth considering.

It’s essential that powerful people are brought back down to earth because there is a attractiveness to power and we are all looking for meaning and sometimes, at the right moment, charismatic leaders give us something to believe in temporarily. If we remember that even they have to stand naked – if we imagine them naked, even, then most of that gloss combs tumbling away and we remember that they are really not much better than us.

Then we have one of my favourite parts: ‘now the rules of the road have been lodged / it’s only people’s games you’ve got to dodge’. The idea that this brought to me is that there are rules out there. There are the fundamental rules of nature – the laws of momentum or the law of gravity – but that everything else is just people’s games. Everything. From education to politics to religion. People with their own self-interests making up rules that we can either blindly follow or we can attempt to dodge.

Part II coming Thursday, but you’re more than welcome to comment on this one.

Last night I was at the Manchester International Festival where I saw Amadou and Mariam and the Beating Wing Orchestra.  It was amazing.

My partner Erin runs the Exodus project, which is a long-term program working with refugees and asylum seekers in the UK.  The idea is to use the arts to highlight the talents of refugees and asylum seekers and to give them a chance to share their experiences with each other and with the wider community in general.

Basically, it’s a totally awesome thing to do at a time where the BNP is gaining ground and where ignorance about immigration and asylum is widespread, fuelled by media hysteria and misinformation.

Anyway, The Beating Wing Orchestra was set up by CAN under the Exodus banner and is a super group of ten musicians from all over the world – including the DRC, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, and Kurdistan – working together to create new, exciting music that captures elements from each of these countries.

The gig last night and the night before was the cumulation of 6 months work with Amadou and Mariam, specifically commissioned by the Manchester International Festival, and was a mixture of re-interpretations of Amadou and Mariam songs and their own original compositions. 

The show started with two songs performed just by Amadou and Mariam and were taking from their upcoming album, Welcome to Mali. Amadou’s guitar playing is extraordinary. At first, it seemed fun but fairly simple – just jamming on a two bar groove – but as I listened more carefully to his accenting and phrasing it became clear that he was playing some crazy-ass rhythms in some nutty time signatures. Real interesting stuff.

Then the orchestra came out and things really got going. It was like nothing else I’ve ever seen before. There was electricity running down my spine and I had the biggest grin on my face for the rest of the evening. Everyone was on top form, just totally into the grooves and loving every second of their experience.

There was a brazilian percussionist, a Congolese drummer and a British violinist jamming away while a gospel singer, a rapper and a Chinese opera singer(!) took turns singing over the top.  Then there were clarinets, keyboards, a bass and a guitar creating thick layers of harmony over the pounding and energetic African grooves and they had the whole place moving in a matter of minutes.

Working with two of the hottest stars in the music industry at the moment has brought a ton of press coverage to the Orchestra but it didn’t phase them in the slightest. As Amadou and Mariam leave them to go and support Coldplay in America, I can only hope that The Beating Wing Orchestra take the momentum they have from these sold out gigs and move their careers up to the next level.

They’ve earned it.

Comments?

The BBC is reporting that Man in the Mirror is the track everyone wants to hear and is asking why.  Their preoccupation is, of course, with the lyrics.  They even have the most insightful:

Given Jackson’s preoccupation with his appearance, there is an irony in the words:

I’m Starting With The Man In The Mirror

Check out the geniuses at the BBC – “Look, mummy, look!  I spotteded an irony.”

Leaving aside the fuckwits and their unending obsession with everything but his music, I wanted to look in more detail at the artistry and craftsmanship within the tunes themselves.  The hope is that I can help non-musicians that perhaps don’t have the specialised lexicon articulate more coherently what they are hearing – to know why this tune is so amazing from a more technical point of view.

The Intro

Obviously, there’s the lead vocal – I wish that I could have that kind of emotion in everything I sang – but there’s enough people discussing that at the moment, so let’s look at some of the other parts.

For example, at 0:18 you have a typical production effect used in Jackson track – multiple vocal layers, with backing vocals panned hard left and right to provide emphasis on the main voice and a temporary lift before the drums and bass enter at 0:28.

The interesting thing about this particular drum rhythm is the rim-shot (the click) is only played on beat four.  This provides the forward momentum needed at this point in the verse, whilst still given the drummer room to build.  And, boy, does this tune build.

The First Chorus

The violiny synth sound enters at 0:48 and gradually rises up through sustained notes to push us into the first chorus at 1:06.  Here we get the cowbell and the rim shot on beats two and four – the typical backbeat – and now we have a head-nodding piece on the go.  The bass drops into the low note at 1:21, Jackson does his little mini-rap over it, hits the word ‘change’  and the drums come in for real with a full snare sound at 1:26.  The synths drop down a few octaves and feature a more full attack and less of the air that they had in the first verse and this song is finally grounded.

You see, verse 1 was very airy-fairy – lots of high pitched synth bell sound, all the accompaniment sitting above the vocal until the drums – and it’s primary focus was on the external elements: the wind, the kids on the street and broken bottle tops.

Verse 2 has a thicker bass layer, a full drum beat and now Jackson analyses his own role in the world that he lives in – the selfish kind of love, the pretending that they’re not alone.

The best bit

Chorus 2 arrives and lifts the song again with those funky little ‘who?’ backing vocals by the choir.  Jackson does his cool little rap and then we go around the chorus again.  At the end of chorus 3 comes my favourite bit in the whole song:  at 2:52, he pauses at the end of his rap then hits the word ‘change’ on the exact moment the song modulates up a tone.

Basically, a modulation is a change of key and is one of the strongest developments you can use.  It wipes out repetition (he does four choruses in a row here but because of the modulation in the middle, it doesn’t get old), and provides a ton of energy.  To do a modulation after a pause in the vocal melody is clever. To change the key under the word ‘change’ is just pure god damned genius.

That, right there, is craftsmanship at its finest.  100% spine-tingling every time.  Forget everything else that happened, he produced music like this.  I mean…fuck.

And it powers on. The choir pushes it up another notch with some lush backing vocals – to use so many human voices in a song about basic humanity is also pretty damned smart – through another extended chorus with a double length rap and then we get one last chorus with all of the little vocal flourishes (the ahhs, the oohs, the oh yeahs) that we love this guy for.

The Clever Bit

It could have ended after these four chorus and it would have been a great song.  A real nice tune with a big uplifiting ending.

But that’s not what this song is about.

It’s not supposed to make you just feel good.  It’s supposed to make you think.  In all this neck-hair-raising excitement, the message of the song is getting lost.  So before we move on to the more trivial I Can’t Stop Loving You, Jackson and Quincy Jones bring us down again gently.  The drums make a brief exit 3:48 and bring the focus right back to Jackson’s voice to remind us what all this fancy noise is about.

It’s incredible.  Instead of losing the message in all of the excitement of big choruses and choirs and clever modulations, we get another two minutes to really reflect on the meaning within the words.  Jackson keeps us on this idea of change, repeating it and emphasising how great it could be and really ramming it home but in the most gentle, beautiful way possible – like getting hit over the head with candy floss. Amazing.

When someone like this dies, there’s a lot of shit that goes along with it that makes me embarrassed to be a human being.   I hope that, in my own tiny irrelevant way, I can help bring the focus back to what actually really matters – the great things he did. 

I believe in treating people the way I’d like to be treated, and I don’t want to be remembered for all the stupid things I did although there would be no shortage of material. If I’m ever blessed enough to make anything a tenth as good as this, it would be that I would want to be remembered for.

So, favourite Jackson song and why? Let’s focus on the music only and not drag the discussion into the gutter…

So I was on Facebook earlier today and one of my oldest friends was having some boy trouble.  It seems that an ex couldn’t take the hint and her sister suggested that I wrote a song that could be used to help this guy…understand.

Initially, I was just going to write a comic verse and just post the words in a message to her.  But, as I was writing, it I managed to tap into a forgotten reservoir of spite and malice within my soul and the words kept pouring out.  Before I knew it I had four verses and a pretty catchy chorus.

Of course, now it was impossible to not write some music.

Then I thought, well, as I’m writing the music, I may as well record it too. So I did, and here it is:

Without You

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It’s pretty simple (it was written and recorded in less than 90 minutes), but hopefully my friend’s little annoyance will get the message.

Comments?