Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
rip it up and start again.
well, thanks. =) to be honest, it was something i picked up on thanks to various sources around the interwebs. i recognised the similarity across ‘last nite’, ‘the sporting life’ and ’selfish jean’ at first, later ‘town called malice’, and then some digging around brought up the rest. can you think of any others? in fairness, ‘last nite’ and ’selfish jean’ have different tempos, so it’s less apparent. even in ‘town called malice’ you have to really try to pick out the beat - i think it’s most apparent at the beginning, where they play the ‘beat’ on the bass and snapping fingers! i’m surprised you hadn’t heard ‘you can’t hurry love’ before. might i suggest a refresher course in motown classics?
emma goldman was an lithuanian-american anarchist. the wikipedia article on her is decent. so, the thing is, emma goldman is mistakenly attributed the quote:
If I can’t dance, I don’t want your revolution.
or variations of that. sophie ellis-bextor’s song ‘if i can’t dance’ is based on this.
apparently, the closest thing to this that she said/wrote is:
At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.
I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.” Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.
i haven’t read as much of her as i’d like. wikiquote tells us this is from living my life.
as for amy winehouse, she of course just won a grammy for record of the year. i’d say she’s fairly well-known around these parts. and her troubles have gotten quite a bit of publicity on tv, etc. definitely more than pete doherty, i’d say. i’d also guess his music - with either the libertines or babyshambles - has less of a following than winehouse’s music.
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