"Mary's boy child, Jesus Christ, was born on Christmas Day and man will live for evermore because of Christmas Day"
Boney M: "Mary's Boy Child"
There are three things wrong with the above lyric. First and most glaringly of all, it demonstrates that you can't use the same damn word in place of a rhyming word in a song and make it work. Second, if we want to get into Christian theology (I do), the gospel actually points towards Jesus' death as being the reason everyone will be saved, not the fact he was born -his self-sacrifice is supposedly on behalf of the entire human race. Third and last of all, Jesus was not born on the 25th of December, Christmas Day, as implied here. I remember once at school, when we were in a special Christmas assembly, a boy asked our headteacher whether Christmas would have been in September if Jesus had been born then. He said it would.
He was either lying, ignorant of the origins of Christmas, or just unwilling to confuse us all. One extremely boring web-page suggests September 11th as his birthday, as it happens, and claims to derive this information from astronomical data. Outside of extremely shaky gospel assertions, I'd say it's impossible to tell when he was born, who he was or why he was executed in the 1st century AD. So why do we hold Christ's Mass when we do?
Like saints, sacred places and other customs, the first Christians stole important calendar events (the other big one being Easter, a pre-existing pagan tradition). December was not only the most important month of the year for Romans, who celebrated Saturnalia in a week around the 17th, but also the Celtic/Germanic tribes who observed the midwinter soltice. Where better to slap the feast-day of your most important religious figure? And it's not a big a leap as you'd think -after all, from the very early 4th century most emperors were Christian, not pagan, and had enough authority to make such a transition happen.
So, happy Saturnalia/Yule to you.
As for this week's Sunday Song, my thoughts consisted of a consideration of traditionally Christmas music: religious, uplifting, family oriented, happy, wintery. Tunes of the same calibre as Slade's 'Merry Xmas Everybody', Wizzard's 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday', or Wham's 'Last Christmas'. Yeah.
So naturally I chose something irreligious, anarchic, mad and summer-y, Led Zeppelin's 'Rock N' Roll'.
I really don't have anything to say about this song except that it's three and a half minutes of burning guitars and blazing drums, and about as much fun as riding the bomb in Dr Strangelove. The perfect Christmas antidote, I think.
Two days ago a copy of the Borland song 'Summer Wheels' was posted on YouTube, likely as a result of my 5/12/2010 post about his best songs. I also considered uploading it for the article as a special treat to readers and fans, but decided in the end not to, due to copyright infringement. Nontheless, one perceptive and good-natured user called 'fnasksangen' has done so, and the version has been edited into my previous post. Since this is the only chance you or anyone else will ever have of hearing this song, and bearing in mind it could be deleted at any given time, I urge you to check it out (the full lyrics are now available here). It is a song that I believe was made for everyone to listen to and enjoy, and moreover to celebrate life and keep hope alive.
In addition, I would like to thank Robert Borland's (Adrian's father) kind words on the Brittle Heaven forum, and his own words on this deeply beautiful music. It is greatly appreciated.
Many thanks again to 'fnasksangen', who I should mention has also uploaded the exceptionally gripping Brittle Heaven song 'All The Words in the World:
Like the title suggests, this is just a brief reprieve from the lengthy posts SoT has been publishing these past few weeks. In any case I have 3 essays to do this week (or, from another point of view, 8000 words), so something big isn't on the cards this week.
This is a shame, because longer, more ambitious posts apparently do well when it comes to SoT; the three biggest posts on here are also the most viewed (as you can see from the new post-link section on the right). Last week's Sunday Song Special was not only the most viewed of all time, it also boasts the title of the Most Cosmopolitan, attracting as it did people from Benelux, Central and Eastern Europe, North America, Scandinavia and Australia, as well as my own native Britain. No one commented, however, so I can only speculate as to how much you all enjoyed it (hint). At any rate, I consider this an excellent start to the final month of the year, and hope SoT continues to grow in all kinds of ways.
On the other hand, you may have noticed that the 'pages' section has vanished. This is because one of my new essays is covering similar territory to the old one, and I don't want to be accused of plagiarism from the web, even though it's still my own material. In any case the article that was up there was a fairly lengthy piece of hot air that I doubt many people would really want to read, so perhaps an abstract is necessary. I'm envisaging a page that outlines my opinions on all kinds of archaeological matters, with my essay abstracts as a kind of guide. Again, let me know if this is something that will either interest you or bore you. I can't imagine it'll win many awards, but it's worth a try.
My essays this week are on: - The role of the private sector in archaeology - The usefulness of the term 'Viking' - An artefact description
This week's Sunday Song is Nick Drake's 'Place To Be', from his final album Pink Moon:
What I like most about this song is the pace -it seems to drift down along a river, without a chorus or tension or climax. The lyrics fit this exactly -Drake doesn't want to be kept in the same place, but always on the move, looking to be useful somewhere else all the time (just as he was constantly on the move in his own life). Looked at from another perspective there's a lot of sadness in this song, particularly as it suggests that he had no place to be in the first place. The use of similies draw together personal experience and natural symbology in a way that makes this one of the best, most relaxing, and most profoundly moving folk song in existence.
Tomorrow, the 6th of December, would have been Adrian Borland's 53rd birthday. One of my all-time favourite singer/songwriters, he was the lead singer the 70s punk band The Outsiders, the 'seminal' 80s post-punk band The Sound, and, for a whole decade until 1999, an utterly forgotten solo artist. He was also a part-time record producer, and collaborated with many other artists in groups such as the Honolulu Mountain Daffodils and White Rose Transmission. After his suicide in April 1999, a vast backlog of his material was re-released, along with various demos recorded throughout his three-decade long career.
The vast quantity of his work, however, ignores the value of it. While his musical style ranged from the bleak and minimalist in the 70s, to the more augmented classic 80s sound in the following decade, to an almost U2-like quality in the 90s (or were U2 copying The Sound...?), it was his lyrics and personal character that defined his music, talented guitarist though he was. Never as self-absorbed as Ian Curtis, never as confident as Bono, never the one-hit wonder like so many 80s artists, Borland was sensitive, serious (but good-humoured), and always honest about himself. This week, SoT takes 5 of the best songs of his career in a special Sunday Song post.
Words Fail Me (Jeopardy, 1980)
Though recorded years earlier, Words Fail Me appeared on The Sound's debut album, Jeopardy. It was part of a New Wave watershed in 1980 that saw the beginnings of Echo & The Bunnymen (Crocodiles), U2 (Boy), and the Comsat Angels (Waiting For A Miracle)-and the demise of Joy Division, whose swansong (Closer) also appeared that year. Running through through the concept of communication failure, the track featured a brilliant-yet-unconventional chorus of a monotone, distressed-sounding guitar (akin the the last third of The Chain). Clearly, the bands influences were from the start grounded in traditional American rock rather than the punk movement as it was in Britain. A powerful, energetic song.
Crystalline (Alexandria, 1989)
After the collapse of The Sound in 1988 -concluding years of poor album sales and internecine tension- Borland struck out on his own career, kicking it off in the year I was born with the Alexandria album. The inclusion of a wide variety of different instruments and a much more open songbook and vocals to accompany them had finally thrown light on his work, marking a radical departure to what went before. Crystalline is the most representative piece to reflect this, and is probably the best track on the album with its easy rhythm and amiable -but preoccupied- lyrics.
Redemption's Knees (5:00AM, 1997)
Fast-forward to 1997, and Borland's fifth album, 5:00AM, and compare the difference again. By this point he had reached a little critical acclaim with Brittle Heaven (1992) and two quasi-demo albums, Beautiful Ammunition (1994) and Cinematic (1995). But from 1997 onwards Borland's work would feature markedly better production investment, and, as a result of that, more ambitious songs. 5:00AM was thus a bigger beast than its forebears, featuring punchy, harder songs like this, 'Redemptions Knees' -which for all its swagger, is still about personal weakness. Although I would rate the epic 'Over The Under' over this in terms of music and emotional depth, the latter was not available. This track surges with enough vitality, however, for this not to matter in the slightest.
Darkest Heart (The Amsterdam Tapes, 2006)
The Amsterdam Tapes, a session recorded in 1992, was eventually remastered in 2006 by Borland's friends, introducing 10 new songs and 2 alternate versions of songs to his published discography. Among them was this song, 'Darkest Heart', played live in this video by -among others- Kevin Hewick, as part of a 2006 dedicatory concert in The Netherlands marking the album's release (the album version is just as good, and can be listened to online here). Reaffirming Borland's obsession with weakness, frustration and the rogue aspects of life, this is among his most forceful, potent and immediately-listenable songs. The world is much better with it barging triumphantly into existence, all thanks to his friends.
Summer Wheels (Harmony & Destruction, 2002)
Unfortunately, my favourite Borland track is not available online [EDIT - see missive posted on 21/12/2010]. It is not on YouTube or Myspace, and a Google search result will drag up very little. The album it appears on, Harmony & Destruction: the unfinished journey, was recorded in the last two weeks before his suicide in April 1999. As such it is not light listening, and much of it is painful to listen to. It is not the music, or the quality of its recording. It is the presence in the lyrics of a struggle between two sides of a mind -one determined to stay, the other determined to destroy itself. There are frequent allusions to trains -he committed suicide by jumping in front of one- and previous attempts, as well as the source of his bitterness: the lack of recognition, personal decline and the antagonisms of others in his life. It was this dichotomy that gives the album it's name, and it would be the darkest heart that would eventually win.
'Summer Wheels' hails from the 'light side' of the album. A tentative, almost too-nervous-to-exist track, Summer Wheels is best described as a placid but vague stream of consciousness pushing towards escapism, to a hot, foreign beach away from the pressure of his presently cold, pressured reality; 'Stuck in a room with no view/Watching the wallpaper peel' perhaps refers to his time in the Springfield mental hospital. While the song could be finding optimism in his impending release from life, it seems more likely to me that he was actively looking forward to the summer, and all the plans that his March 1999 missive outlined. Whatever the intention, the song provides a uniquely ringing, polished sound without a clear precedent in his previous work, and positively shines with tragic optimism right at the end. The soaring, twisting and heart-wrenching solo dominating the last third (to the shouts of 'here come your summer wheels!' and 'don't go too long without light') is recognisable as a signature of Borland's musical style, but is performed here more perfectly and confidently than ever before. It is the greatest moment in musical history, and will never, ever be heard.
