:: archive

August 2006 - issue 1

Parishioner Richard Ellis: Surely the bone of contention here is not where the sky starts but the fact that dear old Lenny says 'I wish I could fly up in the sky, so very high, just like a dragonfly'. So Lenny clearly thinks the buzzy little things are involved in 'plane strikes and the like. He should get out more. But then perhaps so should I...

Parishioner George Laxman: The quibbling about what exactly constitutes flight passes over a bigger, more interesting question - to wit, why do songwriters always claim to want to fly (so high up in the sky etc)? Imagine for a moment that one of these toilers in the musical vineyard should suddenly find themselves hovering fifty feet above the North Circular.

Would they enjoy a new found sensation of freedom or would they be caught between wondering how they were going to get back down to earth without shattering their limbs and pondering how they were going to explain this whole flight business to their nearest and dearest. Flight didn't make Clark Kent any happier, did it? I wonder, are there any other capabilities that songwriters aspire to which are better in theory than practice? I feel there ought to be a top ten, with "Live Forever" in there somewhere. Parishioner Nick Reed: I can't believe that we've had a few weeks discussing the lies which pop songs tell us without anyone bringing up Squeeze's Great British Vacation number "Pulling Mussels From a Shell", which attempts to make a couple out of William Tell and Maid Marion. Now Mr Tell and Robin Hood might both have blinged it up with bows and arrows, but Marion's heart was surely in Sherwood and not Switzerland...

HE CAN'T PLAY OUT UNTIL HE'S HAD HIS DINNER Parishioner Ronnie Dungan: I read recently that Axl Rose caused a ‘near-riot’ (or given the tabloid propensity for exaggeration, possibly some loud tutting and eye rolling), by keeping the crowd waiting for ‘hours’ while he sat down to enjoy a lamb roast dinner backstage. Quite apart from how such a heavy lunch affected his on-stage movements that night, anyone else know of any other reasons why a crowd has been given little alternative but to break into a quick chorus of Why Are We Waiting?

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