(6) Peter Gabriel, "Don't Give Up"
It's hard not to fascinate on the videos, since they're embedded here below, but we'd suggest that you pay attention to the song, not the screen. We know that's hard. For instance we couldn't get the idea out of our head, watching this, how weird it must have been to film this, just one long embrace, maybe you do a couple takes of it, and how long is it comfortable to embrace someone, especially someone who's not (presently) a lover, on camera no less, and apparently rotating, with the green screen in the background? It's not exactly sad, this consideration of staging and discomfort, and anyhow, who wouldn't want to embrace both Peter and Kate, maybe sneaking in there to join the snuggle? It's true that this is essentially a song of consolation or support, and maybe that makes it less sad, but the committee admires the way it turns away from the major chords at the end, and how pitiful it seems when it's just Peter's verses. We doubt Peter Gabriel is going to be a serious threat going deep into the tournament, but you never know. Odds are even whether he gets by Ride here to play the winner of Sinead O'Connor & Orchestral Manouevres in the Dark.
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(11) Ride, "Vapour Trail"
Not much video here to distract you, as is the case for a lot of the shoegazey bands. This one falls under the melancholic beauty fork of the sadness bracket, and is beautifully washed-out. Robert Burton, in The Anatomy of Melancholy, writes: "How doth the fire rage, that merciless element, consuming in an instant whole cities? What town of any antiquity or note hath not been once, again and again, by the fury of this merciless element, defaced, ruinated, and left desolate?" What can last against everything's tendency toward disorder and erasure?
Which song's sadder? Vote by 3/7 at 9am
Peter Gabriel's "Mercy Street" is a stronger sad. Maybe in next year's tournament...
ReplyDelete"Don't Give Up" gets significant help from Kate Bush, I say. And it's been so long since I've heard this song all the way through that I thought Elton John was coming in at around 3:20.
ReplyDeleteGabriel's a tough call. Thought about "Biko," "Mercy Street," and several others. The committee chose this because it's a weirder song; the outro bolsters it in this committee member's view. Though I'm leaning toward Ride, I'm finding it hard to advocate forcefully for the shoegazey bands. Having more interesting lyrics helps. And the shoegazey videos usually don't.
ReplyDeleteIs it wrong that quoting The Anatomy of Melancholy swayed my vote? It did.
ReplyDeleteThere's something charming in the way that every shoegazing video looks like someone's senior project from the West Woolverton Arts College.
ReplyDeleteEntirely. Some of these songs that don't have official videos have the amateur video posts embedded, and I'm getting real fond of this mini-genre: they're often on par with or better than the shoegaze videos, I find
ReplyDeleteTrespassers William helped illuminate the value proposition of “Vapor Trail”: https://youtu.be/j-lvVBoFUP8
ReplyDeleteGreat for graveyard bicycling.
I wish music videos weren't part of this competition. They detract/distract from the pure audio. Slowdive's “Alison” is another example of a shoegaze video that doesn't hold much water, aside from the sheer joy of catching glimpses of the young Rachael Goswell. I should add that if “Alison” doesn't advance past Nirvana, I will figure out how to DDoS this entire blogging platform. Is that a risk worth taking?