HW: More thoughts on Distant Horizons

Carl E. Anderson cea20 at CUS.CAM.AC.UK
Tue Nov 18 07:23:42 EST 1997


On tis 18 nov 1997 11.23 +0000 "Dave Berry" <daveb at HARLEQUIN.CO.UK> wrote:
> I guess Bob managed to do it, with Hassan I Sahba, and maybe High Rise,
> but even those had characterisations of a sort.  Hassan I Sahba is
> more or less the thoughts of one of the Hashihim, and High Rise is
> basically about someone growing up in a high rise block.

    Hassan I Sabha works IMO because (it has a great riff and) the lyrics
are a not terribly coherent rant :)
    High Rise, on the other hand, tells a story to a certain degree

> Dave's lyrics used to do this.  Even songs like "Born To Go" or
> "Down Through The Night" say "we're doing this ...".

    But, similar to Hassan I Sabha, they concentrated on "lyric bites".
They conveyed the ideas in short, punchy statements.  Dave's more recent
songs try to string things into long coherent phrases which are too close
to normal speech (and are therefore a bit boring).

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
Dept. of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, & Celtic
St. John's College, University of Cambridge
mailto:cea20 at cus.cam.ac.uk
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~carl/



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