Dead Finks Don't Talk:Brian Eno

Artist: Brian Eno

Album: Here Come The Warm Jets

Appears On (Mixes): Revme.Vox.Com

Song Notes: Here's a cut from Brian Eno's first solo record, Here Come The Warm Jets, which is a song I almost hesitate to post, just because you should all really, really have this record. If you don't, the Amazon link's right there -- edjumacate yerself posthaste. Because, OH MY GOD, this record is SO GOOD. This isn't even the best track. I'd say it's "The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch", but apparently Eno hisself doesn't think much of that one. I'm not sure why, though, it's mindblowingly cool. But this one really is as well.

The cool thing with this is the way Eno wrote the lyrics -- his lyrics, particularly from this era, were more-or-less nonsensical and made up to go with the sounds. Basically where most people will go "da da da dum dum" to do a melody, he'd do that and replace the "da da dum"s with words that SOUNDED like the "da da dum"s and whether or not they made sense was cool. After all, the lyrics weren't important to what he was doing. (Of course, he got some real corkers in, though, like "By this time I got to looking for a kind of substitute/I cant tell you who I found, except that it rhymes with dissolute" from the aforementioned "Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch".) So, it was basically all just stream-of-consciousness. The funny thing with this one is when he was playing the demo for people, people kept saying "My god, this is about Bryan Ferry, isn't it? It's rather nasty, don't you think?" and Eno went "What? No, it's just nonsense!" and then he went back and listened to it again, and realised that Yes, it WAS about Bryan Ferry, and yes it WAS rather nasty. So, he changed some of the lyrics between that version and this one. It's pretty much still about Bryan Ferry, but at least a little bit less so.

Also, as promised, episode 2 of the Untitled TODCRA Productions Project is up at TODCRA@VOX, so go check that out! - Rev. Syung Myung Me