At the end of a Members compilation I was listening to yesterday is a cover of this remarkable song, in which Mr Wallis sustains a first-person narration throughout the song from the point of view of a ‘police car’ – with a shotgun under his seat and a v8 heart. It’s the song KITT never sung.
Your first-person narration songs, as bonkers as possible. Teacups, drumkits, loft extensions, pandas and dodgy builders. Crazy narrator points of view please.
No metaphors or similes though. You are not ‘like a motherless child’. You are a motherless child. In this thread anyway.
The bullet’s p.o.v.
(Pharoahe Monch: Gun Draws)
Great idea for a thread.
But this is the only one I can think of. Yet!
Just to say, hats off for listening to The Members. Ever so underrated, in my book. Two excellent albums (Chelsea Nightclub and 1980 – The Choice Is Yours), plus that corking single, Working Girl. Not a good looking combo, not by a long old piece of chalk; maybe that worked against them…
Totally agree. Sound of the Suburbs and Offshore Banking Business are also top singles. Especially the 12″ of the latter. I played the ‘!980 – The Choice Is Yours’ album to death back in the day. I’d never heard that Larry Wallis version of Police Car before.
They Might Be Giants – Birdhouse in your Soul is a song from the perspective of a bird-shaped nightlight in a child’s bedroom. Here “he” is, looking at a picture of a lighthouse…
There’s a picture opposite me
Of my primitive ancestry
Which stood on rocky shores and kept the beaches shipwreck free
Though I respect that a lot
I’d be fired if that were my job
After killing Jason off and countless screaming Argonauts
I Am The Black Gold Of The Sun appears to be from the point of view of the Black Gold Of The Sun…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d7b1Qn1_jA
So Chaka Khan, fine woman though you are, every woman? Really?
I am The Fly
Chris Bell is the very cosmos
Swedish 80s band Ubangi playing cats and dogs in this rather entertaining song (I actually own the single…)
If you recognize the girl singer it’s Cia Berg (as she was known then) who later sang in Whale. One of the guys is Orup; strangely popular solo artist in Sweden…
Here’s “The Little Cat and the Dirty Dog”:
A fascinating oddity from the back pages of Swedish pop! Never heard that before.
Suzanne Vega – she was a Small Blue Thing (apparently)
Nice one! Well remembered! That first album of SV’s was magnificent.
OK, I’ll bite.
I am, I am, I am Superman:
The Russians are coming!!!!!!!!!!
Yes, it’s ‘I Am The Tall Tree’ – the most beautiful of all bonkers first-person songs. By The Flock (who, for Mahavishnu trivia buffs, included MO Mk1 violinist Jerry Goodman), 1969:
Wasn’t there something about a walrus?
I’m a roooaaad runner honey.
“We start to move, and we break the glass”
http://youtu.be/ZVtT8xsiXBQ
(“Showroom Dummies” – Kraftwerk)
Cerys is going to take your lunch money
Catatonia: I Am The Mob
Famous Blue Raincoat by Lenny boy has always fascinated me.
Being in the form of a letter to someone it’s completely in the first person to the extent the closing words are “Sincerely L Cohen”
You might be interested in this book, which I really liked (‘Dear Thief’, by Samantha Harvey):
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/11/dear-thief-samantha-harvey-review
Dear Thief is a novelisation of Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat”, a song about a love triangle, which is also presented as a letter to the third party who broke up a marriage. Both letters are started at four in the morning at the end of December. Harvey’s narrator sits at a desk in Goodge Street, London, not Clinton Street, New York. It’s cold and she is no longer in the family home, but she likes her apartment – there’s music all evening from the jazz bar down the road. Butterfly wears a shawl, which over the years becomes filthy and torn at the shoulder, like the blue raincoat of Cohen’s song. Both letter-writers wonder whether their old friend is better yet, for both the marriage-wreckers have demons. Both are now living in a house in the desert. And, of course, there is the lock of hair.
Impressive that one song can inspire a whole novel. Wonder if Len’s read it.
She was also Calypso….
http://youtu.be/BzMcRSoEuVE