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capuchin's Replies
I think Treasure has SOME... 'Peep-oh, Peach blow, Pandora, Pompadour'... Whether they mean anything or are just being used as sounds is a different matter. But she definitely experimented somewhere in the middle of the 80s with being unintelligble. And I think largely because, as you say, she was insecure about being analysed.
There's one in a kind of cod-Latin too, where the rumour is she's just listing the scientific names of butterfly species. Or something along those lines.
Blue Bell Knoll? Can't make out anything at all on that one, as I recall. Haven't listened in a long while though.
And you probably don't remember it well because it's sort of a dry-run for the far superior Heaven or Las Vegas. Cocteaus Go Pop (Sort Of). Has some good stuff on it - Carolyn's Fingers is a standout - but is largely overshadowed by Heaven or Las Vegas, which as we all know is a completely perfect album in every detail. I will stand for no debate on this matter!
But, yeah, I love all three of the bands you mentioned in your first post. Happily, I've never looked up the MBV lyrics on the internet - because, with the Cocteaus the words feel cryptic, but with My Bloody Valentine they just sound... unimportant.
Transona 5! Of course.
My own suspicion is Fraser may have given up singing real words for a while in the middle of the Cocteau Twins career. I can definitely hear words on Garlands and Head Over Heels (Snippets of lyrics were even printed on the sleeves on the vinyl, as memory serves) and possibly on Treasure. And then I definitely hear them on Heaven or Las Vegas onwards.
Not sure I can make out a single one on Victorialand and Blue Bell Knoll though.
But the rest is a combination of studio trickery to disguise them and her accent. I mean, Song to the Siren definitely has lyrics - but I'd challenge any one to get them all right from a single listen to the This Mortal Coil version.
But, yeah, I think you're mostly right: it's something she would say out of insecurity, because she didn't enjoy being scrutinised... Michael Stipe said something similar about early R.E.M. recordings - and that's demonstrably untrue. He was just a bit embarrassed about them.
Ah, you're talking my language here (as it were.) I find nothing more enjoyable than attempting to decipher the lyrics of Elizabeth Fraser. 'Why are you singing about a "walnut stick", Lizzie? Oh, you probably aren't. Why am I thinking of a walnut stick, Lizzie, in your aural Rorschach test?'
Of course, some of those Cocteau Twins songs have discernible lyrics ('At times I've seen you from the oriel / At times I've seen you from the flagstone' &c.) But my understanding is that throughout most of their career she was being deliberately opaque and often not singing real English words. At least that's what she repeatedly claimed.
I note in Martin Aston's book about 4AD, 'Facing the Other Way', Robin Guthrie belatedly denied this, saying 'Of course there are words. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to double-track her, would I?' But whether they are English words, words in another language or her own words, he doesn't elaborate.
The mystery goes on.
And with Laetitia Sadier, it's the joy of having English as a second language, isn't it? It allows her to mangle the syllables and the emphasis to fit her ends. On one song - I forget the title right now - she makes 'Two inevitables' sound like 'two eager little bulls'.
I probably agree.
There's a little confusion over the categories. Because we have 15 and 18 here. Some movies rated R by the MPAA are rated 15 by the BBFC. (Probably most of them nowadays, actually. We've become significantly less uptight about these things in the UK over the last twenty years.). Some R rated movies are 18. Pretty much all NC-17 rated films would be 18 here. Our classification systems aren't in perfect alignment.
But, yes, I probably agree. More likely to be bored by adult themes than traumatised by them.
Always thought I'd prefer to go forwards rather than backwards. The past in a known quantity. The future is an adventure. Of course, you could get there and find it's a Mad Max wasteland, but that's the risk factor.
Also, for all its self-evident faults, right about now is probably the best time in human history for the most amount of people. Who wants to go back to medieval Europe and be burned as a heretic? Not me, that's for damn sure.
I mean, if you're twisting my arm then the 1960s. But you said 'stay there forever' rather than visit, so I suspect I'm better off where I am right now.
I'm in the UK. Our equivalent to R is 18*. And I grew up in the 80s and early 90s near a video store where they were very, very lax about the rules. So I watched bunches of 18 certificate films from quite an early age. Mostly your standard 80s horror franchises: A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, all of that good, hokey stuff.
The Exorcist too. Another example of the laxness of that video store, because the movie wasn't legally available in the UK at the time.
Bunches of stuff. And it never did me any harm. The people currently locked in my basement may disagree with that last part.
* - Well, technically our 18 is your NC-17. But most films rated 18 here would be R in the USA, so in practice...
I don't think any of those listed do much for me really, but - discounting Fast & Furious, because I've never seen any - I've enjoyed individual movies to one degree or another from all those franchises. Except Bond. I've never remotely enjoyed a James Bond film, so that has to be my answer: Bond.
Eh. You told the guy the policy. Any sensible customer knows the person behind the counter is rarely responsible for the company's policy, whether they agree with the policy personally or not.
Doesn't sound like you were being a jerk from your description of the incident. And it also sounds like the issue was resolved in a reasonable manner by both parties.
I hope not.
There are so many factors that go into unemployment: economic ones, psychological ones, physical ones, &c. It's complicated.
And I've never been of the opinion that people should be forced into subsistence level employment they don't want to do. I don't personally believe a system that forces employment on to individuals is good either for those individuals or the companies they work for. So, in the rare instances where someone really is simply and provably 'too lazy' to get a job, I may raise an eyebrow but I don't think I look down on them.
Although it is not imminent by any stretch of the imagination, a time is coming when automation may throw millions out of work. And we'll need to rethink our society and the attitudes towards work it inculcates. All our socioeconomic theories across the range from laissez-faire capitalism through to Leninist-Marxist communism are centred around labour. It will be interesting to see what kind of society and what kind of values will emerge in an economic reality where work is significantly rarer...
... although it may be so distant than none of us here will be alive to see it.
But, no, no I don't think I look down on jobless people. I consider that kind of condescension to be a vice.
I don't know about 'inviting trouble' or wishing bad luck on yourself. I don't know what the mechanism would be for that.
But if you're watching a motorway and concentrating on counting the red vehicles you'll only see the red vehicles. If you're concentrating on blue, you'll only see blue. The rest passes by in a blur. Neither red nor blue provides a realistic overview of the traffic.
A constantly negative mindset is, to me, a bit like permanently counting red cars. You miss the bigger picture and - certainly - no good can come from it.