Podcast: Eminem Domain Mix

Bulldozers! Wrecking Balls! Gentrification! Evil Developers! Government Housing!

It's all here in my second podcast (please right click the link to download download). If you like any of the individual songs, please purchase them. To make it easy, I've linked to sites where you can order CDs. Most of these songs are also available as mp3 files at the iTunes store. As far as I know, iTunes is the only place on line to get the Swingle Sisters track.

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1. Fuga in Bulldozer 2. Don't Fence Me In (fragments) 3. My Favourite Buildings 4. Gentrification Song 5. Wrecking Ball 6. Brick by Brick 7. All Torn Down 8. Preservation 9. I Live on a Battlefield 10. Don't Worry About the Govt.

...The Swingle Sisters ...Bing Crosby w/ The Andrews Sisters ...Robyn Hitchcock ...Robert Newman ...Nellie Bly ...Iggy Pop ...The Living End ...The Kinks ...Nick Lowe ...Talking Heads

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Samples of lyrics and uninformed commentary can be found in the liner notes in the extended post. Also, check out the new podcast Boogie Down Brooklyn by DJ Duckcomb at ABL Radio.

Enjoy!

We start the wrecking ball swinging with "Fuga in Bulldozer" by the incomparable Swingle Sisters. It's  a surprisingly light ditty given the title. My favorite lyric:

Bop bop baaaa daa be doo bi doo da doo di dum di doo di doo

Next comes a hacked up snippet of "Don't Fence Me In" that Bruce Ratner and his peers might find quite hummable.

This is followed by Robyn Hitchcock's "My Favorite Buildings," one of my all-time favorite tunes. The first lyric suggests that the song may address the concerns of preservationists everywhere:

My favourite buildings are all falling down.
Seems like I dwell in a different town.
But why should I bother with painting them brown
When they'll all be pulled down in the end?

But then it ends on a cryptic note:

My favourite buildings are all laid to waste
One might as well sculpt a statue from toothpaste
And someday I could have a fifty-inch waist
It's all free
For my favourite buildings
And me

Hmmm. Perhaps Robyn is suggesting that the hipsters that often kick off the gentrification cycle eventually evolve into SUV driving fatasses, and the rest of us should just sit back and enjoy the free show (FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a fatass, but I don't drive an SUV. In fact, I don't own a car). It's more likely that Robyn is just stringing together interesting phrases. I suppose I should leave lyric interpretation to the experts - the toothpaste sculpting hipsters.

Speaking of gentrification, in "The Gentrification Song"  Robert Newman tells the sad story of the last Rastafarian in Notting Hill, a London neighborhood which, like much of Brownstone Brooklyn,  has been undergoing gentrification for the past thirty years or so.

I don't know what else to say about Nellie Bly's "Wrecking Ball," except that it's my favorite tune in this mix. Dark and earthy. Highly recommended. Maybe one of the regular  bands at Freddy's will start covering it.

"Brick by Brick" is one of Iggy Pop's sweetest songs.  Iggy paints a loving picture of the kind of home and community we'd all like to have and then pledges to work toward that vision. But, he never let's us forget that beneath the sweetness there is an anti-authoritarian hellraiser that is willing to tell the powers that be to go to hell, or in Iggy's case, to "get off his d*ck!" You tell 'em Iggy.

The Living End's end "All Torn Down" is a concise and fairly accurate summary of the debate concerning development in large cities:

I see the city and it isn't what it used to be
A million houses goin' up and down in front of me
No time to let the concrete set before it's broken up again
Don't care if it's historic - don't really care at all

A hidden landscape on the brink of a development
A protest rally never satisfied with development
Both striving for a perfect world
Each having their own opinion
And so the city grows - it grows on and on
All Torn Down...

I see the city and it's grown into a big machine
The streets are freeways and the parks are just a memory...

The song never reaches any conclusion about how things should be, it simply chugs along with a chunky Ska influenced beat and culminates in some hellaciously good guitar playing,  the latter being a hallmark of most of the band's tunes.

Hellacious guitar also features prominently in "Preservation" by the Kinks, with Dave Davies really ripping it up. This song was from "Preservation Act 1," one of two concept albums organize around concepts from the Kink's earlier "Village Green Preservation Society."  Operas aren't subtle, and as a result, the lyrics from this rock opera may be cringe inducing when taken out of context. The opera and the song tell the tale of an Evil Developer® who is plotting to pave over a tranquil community for his own fun and profit:

Once upon a time
In a faraway land
Lived a villain called Flash
He was such a wicked man
...
He ruled with a fist and he purchased all the land
Then he plowed up the fields and cut down the trees
For property speculation
...
The people were scared
They didn't know where to turn
They couldn't see any salvation
From the hoods and the spivs
And the crooked politicians
Who were cheating and lying to the nation

Spiv? Anyway, it's hard something so hokey very seriously. Unfortunately, that fact that it's hokey doesn't mean there isn't any truth to the mythology underlying the story. Besides, I doubt that replacing "cut down the trees" with "received tax increment financing and substantial infrastructure subsidies" would really make the story more engaging.

Nick Lowe's "I Live on a Battlefield" isn't really about buildings, but I really like the song and the battlefield metaphor is one that the residents of imperiled communities often use to organize their defense against the megadevelopers and city landgrabbers. So if you pretend the song isn't about a shatttered relationship, but instead about a destroyed neighborhood, it kind of works. No? Who cares? I like this song.

The set ends with the Talking Head's "Don't Be Afraid of the Government," which, if you ignored the irony,  could be construed as the Utopian view of what life would be like if all of the government enabled mega-developer landgrabs worked as advertised - providing jobs, affordable housing and improved quality of life for everyone:

I see the states, across this big nation
I see the laws made in washington, d.c.
I think of the ones I consider my favorites
I think of the people that are working for me

Some civil servants are just like my loved ones
They work so hard and they try to be strong
I’m a lucky guy to live in my building
They own the buildings to help them along

Just relax. Eminent Domain is good for you.

Comments

[cheap domain names]

this music is so good.

[Royalty Free Beats For One Dollar]

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[Steve-o]

Just relistened to this podcast (and thus reread this post). You say that that subtlety is not the strong suit of opera (particularly rock opera) and that as such, lyrics taken out of context could be a little cringe-inducing.

You should also mention that the Kinks were never known for their subtle and sly lyric-writing. Have you heard "Mr. Reporter"? Not a bad song, but boy, talk about sledgehammer "wit". An example:

"Hey, Mr. Reporter,
How 'bout talking about yourself?
Do you like what you're doing,
Or is it that you can do nothing else?
...
The reason I am stupid,
Is because I read you every day.
You misquote all of the true things
Because they rub you the wrong way."