thielges@uiuccsb.UUCP (04/17/84)
#N:uiuccsb:10200025:000:984 uiuccsb!thielges Apr 16 20:49:00 1984 A note a while back commented on the meaning of a Pete Gabriel tune "shock the monkey" I was wondering if anyone out there in netland had any more insight on the interpretation of Gabriel's lyrics. Perhaps some of you heard comments at a concert. Here are some of my probably misguided interp- rtations of a few songs from Security : San Jacinto : At a recent concert, he said something about te contrast between the elite resort of Palm Springs and the nearby town of San Jacinto. Was this song a Native American lamanting over the white man's exploitation of this continent ? The Family and the Fishing Net : Also heard at concert. This is about a family that uses its daughters to trap influential men into marriage. Wallflower : I can't decide if the subject is a prisoner or a mental patient. Since "..the builders of the cages sleep with bullets bars and stone" I would think that he/she is a prisoner. Bart Thielges ..iuicdcs!thielges
gtaylor@cornell.UUCP (04/17/84)
Wallflower is about Lech Walesa(Heard in concert), though by extension is concerns Gabriel's general concern with confinement and sanity as an expression of power (cf. M. Foucault and his PostStructural pals). San Jacinto follows "Der Rhythmus" on the record, and moves the same conerns into a native American setting. The speaker is Indian (see the coda at the end). The german version uses a lovely idiom for the refrain "I hold the line"-Weitegehen. It means literally "I go on" and implies resignation and movement in one fell swoop. The family and the Fishing Net. Seems based strongly on the imagery and comment on ritual found in Jung's discussion of the marriage ritual in (I think) "Man and His Symbols". Gabriel has taken the images and made a song of them. The emphasis is on the family unit, rather than economic matters (though the image of the acquisitive/receptive fits well with the ambitious bride image). g(still working on the synthpop libretto for "The Four Quartets")taylor "If I could talk about it, I wouldn't make the music."