Today’s song is a minor masterpiece by the British new wave
band XTC, contained on their 7th LP, The Big Express, from 1984. That was the first LP I bought by the band,
which is a way of saying that I was rather dilatory in picking up on “new”
bands. I knew of them since “Making Plans for Nigel” and “Senses Working
Overtime,” but hadn’t gotten around to them. Then, in 1984, I seemed to have a
little more spending money, so I went out and acquired a wealth of new releases
and The Big Express was among them. It’s still probably my favorite XTC LP,
though I might rate English Settlement (1982) higher, and probably Nonsuch
(1992) as well. Ok, so Express is in the top 3, at least.
Andy Partridge, who wrote this song, is one of those minds
with no end (it seemed) of musical ideas. XTC—which eventually became only him
and collaborator Colin Moulding—stopped playing live, then, because of
contractual woes, stopped releasing new music (throughout the Nineties). In 1999 and 2000, they came back with two
great records, Apple Venus and Wasp Star. Then, gone again. (Those interested
can certainly track down internet info on the ongoing relations and lack
thereof of Partridge/Moulding and the fortunes of XTC).
This song, to me, said something about all that—the “career”
side of rock/pop music—with great aplomb. Partridge, like most people around my
age (he was born in 1953), have a perhaps exalted idea of what “success” in
that genre of music means. Something
comparable to The Beatles, or at least The Kinks. I mention the latter to show
something of the disparity in that mindset. For, while The Kinks were highly successful
in terms of the songs they wrote and recorded, it’s a joke to put them beside
The Beatles, in terms of sales, name-recognition, etc., to the general public.
And that’s what this song is about.
Andy Partridge, Colin Moulding, Dave Gregory |
What I love about this song, among other things, is how it
plays out its structure—verse, verse, refrain, chorus / verse, verse, refrain,
chorus / coda—with significant variations in the lyrics. It begins with buying
a liarbird in the summer, and ends with giving away the liarbird in the winter.
In between is the “struggle” (if you like) of playing host to the liarbird with
its constant refrain (stated twice, identically): “all he would say is ‘I can
make you famous . . . just like a household name is.’” This is the key lie of the liarbird. An idea
of fame that, for most workers in song, is just not going to happen. And yet…
The verses do tell a tale of success, up to a point: the
liarbird becomes “a cuckoo”—a bird known, in some varieties, for laying its
eggs in the nests of other birds, and generally associated with the epithet “cuckold”—someone
whose chosen romantic partner does it with others. In the song, the bird “expanded,
filling up with all I gave”; the parasitic aspect of the cuckoo seems to be
stressed. It “grew too greedy” and, when the bough breaks, the telling line “we
will find that liarbirds are really flightless on their own” arrives as, in
some ways, the culmination of the song (it takes a village . . . ). What Partridge has just described is
the process of ego-inflation that any kind of success in the arts seems to bring
with it (a phenomenon that Tim Parks addresses here in regard to novelists).
Then, after the refrain and chorus, the song comes to its
ending, with the liarbird given away and the truth shining out. The chorus,
which is not only eminently hummable, and almost sotto voce (seeming the “flip”
of the very demonstrative refrain), makes some interesting lyrical changes: “methinks
world is for you / made of what you believe”—this is Partridge’s philosophical
position, we might say, that the world is “what you make it” and that that’s more
likely to be true if the world is “made for you.” The ones who rise to the top,
it seems, can make both claims, whether false or true—and then the brilliant
pairing of finding the truth in one’s bible, “or on the back of this record sleeve.”
That simple equation speaks volumes about an entire generation that sought more
truth in the latter than the former: The Beatles and their ilk weren’t just
highly successful purveyors of pop/rock. They were seers!
The second time the chorus sounds, after the
disillusionment with the liarbird, we get: “Methinks world is for you / There’s
no handing it back.” A sense of fatedness comes into play, as with Stephen
Dedalus, perhaps, asking himself “are you condemned to do this?” when teasing
out the meaning of Shakespeare, say. Yes, in a sense, one is. Now the rhyme of “believe
/ sleeve” is replaced by “back / pack” where the latter is a lowly cornflakes
pack: underscoring how those record sleeves are simply commodities which may or
may not be “good for you.”
And all this to a lively little tune with the quirky
syncopations one comes to expect from Partridge (and yes maybe that was what
made me take a while to warm to him) and that lovely little sequence, right after the coda, that does indeed sound like sun breaking out “on an
average English winter’s afternoon” for average Englishmen everywhere.
6 comments:
Nice connection to the Tim Parks article! But maybe Tim is more of a Richard Thompson figure than an Andy Partridge figure.
I don't think of Parks as either kind of figure; in fact, I wish Parks would go away. But the paragraph about how inflated writers get once they finally get published or win awards struck me as in tune with that expanded cuckoo.
What don't you like about Parks? I enjoy his attempts to think about literature from angles nobody else seems to be considering. Plus he's written some very good novels. ("Destiny", for example.)
What can I say? He shows up too often in the review rags I read, and his posts show-up in my fb feed and "his attempts" seem to me, at times, boring, belabored, and, as with that one I link to, a fault-finding with Rushdie and other writers of that showboat type that includes a comment about how writers, once they become successful, feel they must have opinions (because they are invited to) on "the future of the novel and even of civilization," which sounds to me remarkably like what Parks himself does. In other words, the whole piece becomes a different kind of "writing to win," which is what, ostensibly, Parks has a problem with.
Well, you asked...
Have you read any of Parks's novels? As I implied, "Destiny" might be the best. Like a comic version of Thomas Bernhard.
That sounds odd, because Bernhard is not without his comic side, too, but Parks is not as completely dark and bitter as Bernhard.
No, I'm not commenting on him as a novelist, but on his appearances in review journals and NYRB blog, etc.
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