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Comments
where can I find this article?
there's a couple actually that mention this. I'll find them tonight and post them.
fabulous!
I've never understood The Fix Is In, personally, but I probably enjoy it more not knowing.
I do have to say that Do What You Want brings the most sexual, dominatrix ideas to my mind...it's the duranie in me I guess;)
I have no idea what Damian's intent is, if he has one, maybe he's like Simon and just makes stuff up everytime he's asked!
Interesting. I've never thought of it as the drug usage of the word; I always think of it as an expression of finality. People don't use it so much that way now, but I wouldn't put it past Damian to know kind of archaic usages. So I always thought of it as, we're here now- this is it. And so "the passing seasons" -the passing of time- will dull away any sense of regret. The rest of the world is in some kind of frenzy, mechanistically working away at making an inchless waistband- there's no meaning in that sort of endeavor; it's just a desperate kind of way we hold on to numbers and motions in order to survive. The speaker is breaking from that, making the rigid structure of atlases and gas-station attendants none of his concern...It's possible that I am imposing Heart of Darkness onto this song.
Anyway, here's the article:
one:
http://www.spacecityrock.com/features/okgo1.shtml
You've said that "A Good Idea At The Time" is essentially a response to "Sympathy For The Devil."
Oh, yeah.
What made you think of doing that, and what made you think that it was a good idea? [laughs]
[laughs] When Tim and I first started writing songs together years ago, at some point we had taken a week off of work and borrowed a friend's van and drove to New Hampshire, where we we wrote for a few days. And I remember at some point during this trip you know, it's like an 18-hour drive or something from Chicago and I remember asking him at some point if he would know if he were the devil. Or rather if he thought I would know if I were the devil. And for some reason, this song, when it was time to start writing words for it, brought out the same kind of feeling. It was just thinking about, what it would actually be like, whether the devil actually knows that he is the devil, you know? And I guess I started listening to that Stones song a lot. And it's obviously one of the best songs ever written, but I do think that it is a sort of simplistic take on the devil, that he would be causing all the evil in the universe. It seems to me that humans do a lot more than their deities ever could, you know?
The other song that seems to have more of the macro view is "The House Wins." I've been listening to that, and there seems to be a strong Ray Davies influence in that, especially songs like "20th Century Man" and "Apeman." Was there any of that that you were thinking of at the time?
Not specifically. You're not far off, I just wasn't. I actually was thinking of "Heroes"-era David Bowie. And there's... do you know the band Space Needle? I think they're also called Reservoir sometimes. The week that I recorded that demo, which actually just wound up being pretty much the recording on the record, I was listening to a lot of Space Needle. Who I know very little about. I think they're from Portland, and I think they're from like ten years ago. And their record covers were all done by the guy who did the album covers for Yes.
Is that Roger Dean?
I don't know his name. It's like that sort of like spacey psychedelic stuff. "The House Wins" is also a pretty specific song. I guess actually those two songs do share a pretty general and similar and dour worldview.
two:
http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Conte...id=oid%3A234421
“A Good Idea at the Time,” a line-by-line response to the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil,” suggests that we humans don’t need the devil’s assistance to fuck up the world--we’ve got that one covered all on our own.
three:
http://www.the-raft.com/okgo//2
"A Good Idea at the Time” delivers a swaggering, line-for-line response to the Stones classic, “Sympathy for the Devil,” transforming those famous “ooh-oohs” into tortured little taunts.
four:
http://pauseandplay.com/okgo.htm
The Rolling Stones will get a bigger bang out of "A Good Idea at the Time," OK Go's answer song to "Sympathy for the Devil."
five:
mtv.com
And though it appears the band might have been angling for an opening slot on the A Bigger Bang tour, Kulash swears their "Sympathy for the Devil" answer song "A Good Idea at the Time" was not a cheap bid to get an audience with the Rolling Stones.
"It's not like a challenge to the Stones, but more of a revision," Kulash explained. "Tim was playing this riff and he needed it to feel sleazy and dark, and I was trying to figure out what it was about. I remembered the time Tim and I first made a concerted effort to write songs together five or six years ago when we took a week off and drove to New Hampshire. I remember on this 18-hour car ride, being way over-caffeinated and buzzing, I realized that I was trying to figure out if you would know if you were the devil. I got Tim to quit his job for a week and go to this cabin, which seemed like the sort of thing the devil would do."
~ MTV.com
Last year, I had nothing to do during christmas break so I cleaned up by bookmarks by sorting OK Go articles I favorited over the year, so that's how I have these. I wish I had time to do that now. Ugh, I went out tonight instead of prepping for next week's exam.
I think if the intent of this song was a gambling story, the backdrop would have been all the way on the other side of the United States: Vegas. When you invoke the name of Boston, you don't introduce associations of gambling. It just doesn't exist here. What you invoke is instead a sense of history and social chaos. Boston is an intellectual city. I don't mean that in a braggy way, but as the city's main characteristic. Someone once told me that he knew Boston was special when he saw an advertisement for our newspaper using a Latin phrase- you would never find that in a southern place. Boston is a place of ideas and debate, ever since the American Revolution. It's the same as when you think of Orlando, Florida, you get the connotation of happy children, young people tanning and old people retiring. When you think of Boston, MA, you get the connotation of politics and theories. Not gambling. So as the backdrop, Boston gives the lyrics a very different meaning.
That's why I think that rather than a literal reading about blackjack and directions, the song is allegorical.
In the same way, "The House Wins" is about something more than gambling, to me. Just my opinion though. I could be totally wrong.
Anything that is purely literal is inherently self-contained: "The boy woke up. The boy went to bed. The end." It has no meaning and no worth; it is not art.
Above all things, art is not easy. For example, Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 uses the language of post offices and courier services- but that is not what the novel is about. The novel, rather, is about the role of the self in renchanting a godless universe. Most people would not see that readily; I didn't.
The artist does not "tell plot," for that is the job of the journalist: an artist expresses something deeper.
People study literature all their lives; they write theses on single poems, earn PhD's and die for art.
I also think that doing a google search on "Boston" and "gambling" is a very deliberate act of trying to stretch the information to fit a theory, but instead of stretching, we should just stick to the text. I might add that your first query found Whitey Bulger, who has nothing to do with gambling. Whitey is a kind of mythic figure here; he's our legend. He was the head of the mob, the mafia. Every city has their hero and anti-hero, and he's ours. This song really is not an ode to Whitey Bulger and using him to connect Boston to gambling in The Fix is In is like using Elmer's Glue Company to describe how a high school works.
So, yes, I have to say that I completely disagree with you and I think it was a little unecessary to call allegory an attempt to be "artsy-fartsy."
Most people in science are baffled by art and there tends to be an attitude that allegory isn't there, just because it's so deep that it can be overwhelming. But good art wasn't meant to be simple. Anybody can write a Harlequinn- but one in 10 billion people can write like James Joyce. I'm not saying that you necessarily hold that attitude, but I see it on the faces of scientists almost everyday.
Granted, I am not a musician and this isn't literature, so maybe I have no right to talk. Litterateurs, in fact, write whole treatises on why lyrics are not poety and they effectively dismiss lyrics. So it's possible that this isn't meant to be art. It's possible that this took zero thought and has no deep meaning. It's possible that there are no literary techniques employed, that the brush was not swept and stroked short and long, hit and dabbed in a million different complex motions- it's possible that this is a most literal, pointless little story. But I don't believe that. I'd like to think that while painting and poetry each use one canvas, music uses two, that the words and the music must interconnect to create a higher meaning.
Sheri, I know that you have a degree in English, so if you see this, I'd love to hear what you have to say.
edit: Maybe I just admire Damian Kulash so much that I see literary brilliance where there isn't any...but I doubt it. I am convinced that he writes with deeper meaning and not just to say blahblahblah in a sing-song voice.
this is all fantastic reading...
And I don't see why I have to be insulted so very much by you, just for disagreeing.
This song is not about a couple who don't want to work at the mall, to me. I think there are deeper meanings at play.
I am not sure how to respond to this. I never made a remark on your ability; I was just debating your argument that the song is literally and without deeper meaning about a criminal couple bribing people in a gambling ring but making small profit while they refuse to work at a mall.
And to be honest, I felt like you were talking to me as if I were a child and you an adult- "oh, what an imagination you have, Tabetha!" I am not a child, btw. And I felt a lot like you thought I was a child when you wrote that my suggestion of allegory was "artsy-fartsy" and that sort of thing follows how "Sometimes people seem to like these styles because of the way they make them feel smart ." Anything with the word "fartsy" I can't take well, especially when it's a description of what I do and study all day. And implying that my line of thought is an attempt at appearing smart- well, that kind of irked me.
I was a kind of crass and blunt in response to you, so I'm sorry. I didn't want to make you feel badly but that's what happened so I regret it. I apologize and hope you can forgive me. I suppose I got carried away in my admiration of this song, which is no excuse, so again, I'm sorry.