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Friday, November 16, 2007
LA LA LA LIES
The Who
The Who Sings My Generation
MCA : 1965
[Buy It]
IT'S NOT TRUE
The Who
The Who Sings My Generation
MCA : 1965
[Buy It]
DON'T YOU LIE TO ME
Chuck Berry
New Juke Box Hits
Chess : 1961
[Buy It]
LOVE IS THE LIE THAT YOU BELIEVE
Boyce Day
Love Is the Lie That You Believe
Black Fly : 2003
[Buy It]
WHITE LIES
Grin
1+1
Sony : 1972
[Buy It]
LITTLE GIRL LIES
Blondie
Blondie
Private Stock : 1976
[Buy It]
EVERYBODY IS A FUCKING LIAR (DEMO)
The Posies
1995
Available on : At Least, At Last
Not Lame : 2000
[Buy It]
THE LIAR
Rev. Isaiah Shelton
1927
Available on : Goodbye, Babylon
Dust-To-Digital : 2003
[Buy It]
This week someone lied to me. The lie was not huge, but it was not tiny, either. It made me angry. No, angry is an understatement. It made me livid. I won't shame the person further by revealing the details of the lie. Let's just say that it was a shortsighted, cowardly, selfish, blockheaded, foolish, and destructive thing to do. The air eventually cleared, but for a little while, the stink of the lie was on everything. I don't really like lies. I really don't like them. You could even say that I overreact to them. Once, years ago, a guy I worked with brought a plate of cookies to the office. Another woman came by, picked one up, and took a bite out of it. They were raisin, not chocolate-chip, and she was done with them. She put the bitten cookie back. The guy returned. "Hey," he said. "Who took a bite of this cookie?"
"Ben did," the woman said. "I saw him."
"You did!" I said.
"Don't get so angry," she said. "It's nothing to worry about. It's just a cookie. He doesn't care if you took a bite out of it."
"I don't," the man said.
"Fine," I said. "But I didn't. She did." I pointed at her. I raised my voice above appropriate office volume. I was not in my right mind. But I was right.
My inability to handle other people's lies may seem paradoxical, or maybe even hypocritical, because I'm a fiction writer. But like most fiction writers, I will insist that every event in every story in every book I have published is true. Or rather, just because they're not technically true doesn't mean that they are lies. If I write a story about a man who sleeps with a woman and is then banished to the moon, I may not be writing nonfiction, as such, but I am not lying. People come to fiction with an understanding that the stories have truth in them. Sometimes the truth is even greater than in nonfiction, because fiction frees us up to talk about things we couldn't address directly. We can confess our feelings for others, our fears about moving through the world, our insecurities and superstitions.
Rock music has less tolerance for lying. At some level, of course, rock music is built on lies: white British kids pretending to be black American bluesmen and R&B shouters. But that's imposture rather than deception. Truth--or at the very least, the appearance of truth--is at the center of rock music. Partly, this is because many (most?) rock songs are about love and about ego, and those are the two substances most likely to combust when a lie is introduced. Take the Who's "La La La Lies." Like most early Who, there's a tension in the song between the boyish, almost tame vocals (not to mention Nicky Hopkins' jaunty piano) and the epochal drums and guitar--the Moon/Townshend's eruption after the second chorus pushes the song rudely past pop into rock. The lies under consideration here are pretty vague, which probably means that they're pretty specific:I don't insist that you feel bad
I just want to see you smile
Don't ever think you made me mad
I didn't listen to your lies A few songs later, "It's Not True" sharpens the focus: here there are specific rumors that need to be debunked:I haven't got eleven kids
I weren't born in Baghdad
I'm not half-Chinese either
And I didn't kill my dad The Who wasn't the only foundational rock act to demonstrate a preoccupation with dishonesty. Chuck Berry, four years earlier, had reworked Tampa Red's 1940 blues "Don't Lie to Me," speeding up the tempo and using a tricky shuffle beat (I think it's Fred Below drumming) but keeping many of the lyrics:There's two kinds of people that I just can't stand
Well that's a lying woman and a cheating man
Don't lie to me
'Cause that makes me mad and I get shook up as a man can be Getting shook up in this fashion is unpleasant, and not just for the person who's being lied to: a verse later, Berry explains that the lies make him "evil as a man can be." The Rolling Stones took a crack at the song in 1964, and they reordered the choruses, getting evil before they got all shook up. It's all a question of where the lie's effect eventually lands.
If you start collecting songs about lying and liars, you'll find that there are a million, and that all of them are good. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but it's not a lie. Big Star's "Don't Lie to Me," which isn't the same song as the Tampa Red/Berry composition, is the hardest-rocking three minutes the band ever put on record. Jackie Wilson's "Stop Lying" preaches cold, hard emotional truth underneath a cotton-candy arrangement of horns, chimes, and backup vocals. There are songs about the romantic benefits of untruth, like Fleetwood Mac's aerodynamic "Little Lies." There are songs about its drawbacks, like Asha Puthli's erotically vengeful "Lies." There are songs with deception woven into the plot, like Pedro the Lion's "Bad Diary Days." There are broader political settings, like John Lennon's "Gimme Some Truth." There are manifestos, like the Castaways' Liar Liar" and the Sex Pistols' "Liar." If anyone ever lies to you, you're not going to have to look far for a mix tape.
Some of the best songs are the subtler ones. Boyce Day's "Love is the Lie that You Believe" catalogs various types of deception, and concludes that self-deception is sometimes the only thing that can start the engine of the heart:You can tell me that the world is flat
I don't think I'm going to fall for that
At the end of the rainbow a pot of gold
Well that's a story that leave me cold
You can tell me all about Santa Claus
The Fountain of Youth and the Wizard of Oz
I don't believe God took the form of a dove
So how come I believe in love? Self-deception of a different sort is the prime mover in "White Lies." Grin was the band led by Nils Lofgren, who was a teenage veteran of Neil Young's band and went on to play guitar for the E Street Band. "White Lies" is a massive hit that was only a cult hit, complete with angelic harmonies, a punch-it-out chorus, and a thrilling false ending, but the message is tricky. Lofgren seems to be warning a woman not to spread the rumor that he loves her, but he seems to be lying mostly to himself:They'll see where but I fear I traveled here alone 'cause of you
Think I may be daydreamin' baby but I know I know what I still don't mean to you
While I try, while I try, while I try, don't start tellin
White lies, you better talk it over
White lies, everywhere I go I'm hearin'
White lies
Tellin' everybody that I love you And Blondie's "Little Girl Lies" is a girl-group update that puts straightforward carnality where euphemism used to be:She loves you right now, so don't close your eyes
She'll be talking and laughing with six other guys
Flirtatious and cute, she'll take you the route
Telling little girl lies
He loves her so much, he don't wanna lose her
And there's no other girl he likes to ball better
But he's busy tonight, "We'll make it tomorrow"
He's telling his little girl lies Most of these songs are about lying in love. That may be at the root of the Posies' "Everybody is a Fucking Liar," but the band widens the scope considerably:Just as God in his his infinite infancy thinks he's in control
That's when God in his infinite infamy decides to damn our souls
Let's throw it all in
And think of places to back up and begin
To build something higher
'Cause everybody is a fucking liar The Rev. Isaiah Shelton believes in a somewhat different relationship between truth and God. The song is a driving R&B number beneath the gospel -- it provided the melody for Ray Charles's "Leave My Woman Alone" -- but when you're talking about something as serious as lying, it's better to end on a comic note. I once dated a woman who insisted that the funniest lyric in pop music came in Nine Inch Nails' "Terrible Lie," when Trent Reznor, after lamenting the meaninglessness of existence, raged to the Lord above, "Hey God, I think you owe me a great big apology." She had a mental picture of Reznor standing beneath a stormy sky, shaking his fist furiously, as if God had wrongfully accused him of taking a bite out of a cookie. "A great big apology!" she said. "Can you even believe it?" She started laughing every time she thought about it. I don't exactly remember why we broke up, but I know it wasn't because of a lie, and that's why I remember her fondly.Labels: ben, rock
posted by Ben
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