Something's Bothering Me

Lately something has been bothering me. I think the 1960s and 1970s produced some of the finest music ever. I'm very fond of "World of Our Own" by the Seekers and Chad and Jeremy's "Summer Song", There are many others. There are a few from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s as well, and a couple or so from the 1980s, might even be one from the nineties. I have down loaded a number of songs from those decades and I enjoy listening to them. But lately I've noticed something. One song I used to really enjoy was John Denver's "Country Roads". But recently I noticed something in the lyrics that makes me never to want to hear this song again. "Life is old there, older than the trees, younger than the mountains, blowin' like a breeze..." "Blowin' like a breeze"? What the crap does that mean? Are the mountains blowin' like a breeze? That seems to suggest that the mountains are volcanoes. As far as I know volcanos don't blow anything like a breeze. Maybe life, trapped between the ages of mountains and trees is blowin like a breeze. I'm not even going to speculate on what that would mean.

The other song is Neal Diamond's "I Am I Said". Now in this song the part that says that L.A.'s rent's so low must have been a long long time ago. For a least a couple of decades rent in L.A. is some of the highest in the U.S. But then New York's rent might be high enough to make L.A. rent seem paltry in comparison. "L.A.'s fine, the sun shines most of the time and the feeling is laid back. The palm trees blow and the rent's so low...." But that's not the part that makes me want to never hear that song again. This is the part that makes the song just silly "I am I said, to no one there, and no one heard at all, not even the chair". Not even the chair?!?!? Sounds like Diamond was stretching to find a word that rhymes with there. Sloppy.

Mr. Gilliland of my freshman Humanities class would have torn that song to shreds, probably did at some point. He sure didn't like "Trees" by Joyce Kilmer. But I think that Gilliland was an athiest and any poem that mentioned God would offend him. It would make him feel threatened so he felt that he had to attack before the poem did him severe, maybe life threatening damage. But that's another topic for another blog entry.

Both Diamond and Denver must certainly have been reaching for something to rhyme with, in
Denver's case "trees" and in Diamond's case "there". Sloppy, sloppy poetry. And before anyone starts criticizing the poetry on this blog, please know that I am aware that it is nothing but doggerel.