I am absolutely haunted by those "Christmas every day" people. (As you say, I think there are several of them.) It gets at something really fundamental about the nature of existence. What happens if you take a transient experience, a moment of peak joy, and try to make it permanent? Is that heaven, or hell?
It is kind of chilling and does speak to something profound about human desire and how it can be misdirected - the folly of trying to stay at some perfect point in your life, or in pop history (as with Teddy Boys, or Deadheads).
But possibly shamefully I tend to use this clip as an easy source of amusement - I forgot about it for years at a time and then stumble on it again and immediately double up with laughter. There's something about the fact that he has Christmas pudding for breakfast - and tragicomic that each night he wraps up presents for himself (3 presents no less!) The same ones, over and over? Or new ones? That would be expensive - and my idea of hell (having to think of gifts, even for oneself, is torture).
Presumably he has crackers and has to pull them himself, one hand on either end of the cracker.
It's a bit like an elective Groundhog Day.
One has to wonder what traumas or disappointments in life would lead someone to this repetition-complex.
The basic meaning of that lyric is pretty obvious: it’s always Christmas in the cupboard at the top of the stairs, because that’s where you keep the tinsel and lights. But is that meant to be a consolation, a little light still burning in the bleak world of the song? (It’s from Battered Old Bird, on Blood and Chocolate.) Or is it a trite delusion that the character in the song uses to avoid facing up to reality? Your guess is as good as mine.
wow that would never have occurred as a possible meaning of the lyric, but it makes sense
I remember Allan Jones, editor of MM and a stalwart Costello-ite, picking up on David's comment and insisting the lyric was perfectly legible - about an eccentric bedsit character who keeps the Christmas decorations up all year long. So "cupboard" meaning not literally a cupboard but a small poky bedsit on the top floor.
I just looked up the original song - "Battered Old Bird" - and there's a reference to a landlady and various tenants (a pair of old maids, the Macintosh man, who is always typing through the night). A house full of human wreckage. In which case, Jonesy's interpretation fits, I think - although the lines in question are in quotations and said by the Macintosh Man so maybe it's just some strange image from his broken brain.
The Shock of the Newcastle
-
Snapped off the TV from a YouTube British doc about Newcastle in 1966.
Mostly about the vibrant youth culture there but it does show th...
Creelin' in the years
-
It's the 20th anniversary of one of the heroic music reclamation projects
of our time - Creel Pone.Keith Fullerton Whitman gives the low down about
the lab...
In Full Bloom (LCD / DFA)
-
*LCD Soundsystem, live, a week ago, Bowery Ballroom…*
… was more exciting than I’d thought. Came with minimal expectations really
(a guy and a synth and ...
Radio Utopia
-
People remember the Sixties pirate radio heyday, when the pirates were
literally boats at sea.... and they remember the Eighties terrestial
tower-block r...
Brutalist / Botanist
-
This whole Brutalism thing has gotten a bit of out of hand now.... they are
scraping the barrel bottom, I think.
Mind, you, these photographs are co...
fave raves
-
I'm not sure what the logic was exactly but as tie-in to Shock and Awe, *iD*
asked me to list my seven favorite / life-changing clubs /
nights-out-danci...
RIP David Lynch
-
"Six Men Getting Sick" was Lynch's first exploration into film, made during
his second year of study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, in
Phi...
angel delights
-
https://rada-ve.bandcamp.com/track/saturn-rings-songs
*Go on* - listen to that gorgeous bubble bath of synthtronica!
Another vintage release, with a vi...
I am absolutely haunted by those "Christmas every day" people. (As you say, I think there are several of them.) It gets at something really fundamental about the nature of existence. What happens if you take a transient experience, a moment of peak joy, and try to make it permanent? Is that heaven, or hell?
ReplyDeleteIt is kind of chilling and does speak to something profound about human desire and how it can be misdirected - the folly of trying to stay at some perfect point in your life, or in pop history (as with Teddy Boys, or Deadheads).
ReplyDeleteBut possibly shamefully I tend to use this clip as an easy source of amusement - I forgot about it for years at a time and then stumble on it again and immediately double up with laughter. There's something about the fact that he has Christmas pudding for breakfast - and tragicomic that each night he wraps up presents for himself (3 presents no less!) The same ones, over and over? Or new ones? That would be expensive - and my idea of hell (having to think of gifts, even for oneself, is torture).
Presumably he has crackers and has to pull them himself, one hand on either end of the cracker.
It's a bit like an elective Groundhog Day.
One has to wonder what traumas or disappointments in life would lead someone to this repetition-complex.
The basic meaning of that lyric is pretty obvious: it’s always Christmas in the cupboard at the top of the stairs, because that’s where you keep the tinsel and lights. But is that meant to be a consolation, a little light still burning in the bleak world of the song? (It’s from Battered Old Bird, on Blood and Chocolate.) Or is it a trite delusion that the character in the song uses to avoid facing up to reality? Your guess is as good as mine.
ReplyDeletewow that would never have occurred as a possible meaning of the lyric, but it makes sense
DeleteI remember Allan Jones, editor of MM and a stalwart Costello-ite, picking up on David's comment and insisting the lyric was perfectly legible - about an eccentric bedsit character who keeps the Christmas decorations up all year long. So "cupboard" meaning not literally a cupboard but a small poky bedsit on the top floor.
I just looked up the original song - "Battered Old Bird" - and there's a reference to a landlady and various tenants (a pair of old maids, the Macintosh man, who is always typing through the night). A house full of human wreckage. In which case, Jonesy's interpretation fits, I think - although the lines in question are in quotations and said by the Macintosh Man so maybe it's just some strange image from his broken brain.