Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Lyrical Revelations

Being that rock music's lyrics are hard to understand, only on occasion - maybe once a year - do some muddled lyrics in a familiar song suddenly become clear to me. It's usually when I merely hear the song but am not concentrating on the words.

Well, today I had a major revelation of lyrics. Four times in the space of an hour I had lyric revelations, three times in one song in the space of ten minutes, and one time in another song. The first song was "Rock and Roll Band" on the self-titled debut album from Boston. This is probably my favorite album of all time, or at least one of the top three, and I've heard it a million times over the last 30 years. My first revelation came while I was concentrating on my project at work and had some tunes on. The other two came while I was double checking the first; I was concentrating on only the words I thought I had revealed, so I was merely hearing the other words. Of course this is exactly when I hear words for the first time.

The revelations were in order in the following lyric string: 1) car radio, 2) man, 3) Rhode, in "Playin' for a week in Rhode Island - A man came to the stage one night - He smoked a big cigar - Drove a Cadillac car - And said, Boys, I think this bands outta-sight - Sign a record company contract - You know I've got great expectations - When I hear you on the car radio - You're goin' to be a sensation!" Thanks to this link from lyrics.duble.com. The words "car radio" and "man" I had no idea what they said, but for 30 freaking years I heard "playing for a week in LONG Island," wondering why Boston was in New York before they made it big. Now the fourth revelation I can't remember, but I'll be listening again.

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