The stronger lyrics on “Help!” (1964), the fifth album by The Beatles

There are still some flat lyrics by John Lennon and Paul McCartney on "Help!" (1964), The Beatles' fifth album, but more songs have clear strengths. Lennon's title song has strong thematic development, while his "Ticket to Ride" has another striking title, and both "I've Just Seen a Face" and "Yesterday", by McCartney, explore the effects of the passage of time. The album's strongest original lyric is Lennon's "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away", with its vividly developed image ("gather around all you clowns"), but again a cover song has the best lyric: the comic story of Johnny Russell's "Act Naturally", originally released in 1963 by Buck Owens and the Buckaroos. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 26 June 2024)

“Beatles for Sale” (1964): A step forward in Lennon and McCartney’s lyrics

With "Beatles for Sale" (1964), John Lennon and Paul McCartney take a step forward with their lyrics. Lennon's "No Reply" has a setting and objects ("your door", "your window", a telephone). Although they mostly just repeat it, other songs have some imagery, such as Lennon's "I'm a Loser" (a clown with a mask; tears like rain) and McCartney's "I'll Follow the Sun" ("tomorrow may rain, / but I'll follow the sun"). And although it is also repetitive, "Eight Days A Week" has its striking and memorable title. But as on "With the Beatles", the best lyric here is by Chuck Berry, with the vivid extended figures in "Rock and Roll Music". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 25 June 2024) 

The somewhat better lyrics of the Lennon-McCartney songs on The Beatles’ third album, “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964)

The lyrics John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote for The Beatles' third album, "A Hard Day's Night" (1964), show some improvement compared to the consistently flat and clichéd lyrics on their first two albums. The title song has its paradoxical title, and "Can't Buy Me Love" has some clear thematic development. On "I'll Cry Instead" and "You Can't Do That", Lennon livens up his songs with some anger. And McCartney's "Things We Said Today" (with its lovely and surprising B-flat chord at the end of the bridge), whose lyrics are still mostly vague and generic, at least has the nice variation of "Someday when I'm lonely" to "Someday when I'm dreaming". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 24 June 2024)

The weak lyrics of the Lennon-McCartney songs on “Please Please Me” and “With the Beatles” in 1963

The songs by John Lennon and Paul McCartney on The Beatles' first two albums ("Please Please Me" and "With the Beatles", 1963) explode with musical energy (as with "I Saw Her Standing There"), but their texts are cliché-ridden and devoid of imagery, story, characters, or even humor. Some of the cover songs have better texts: "Till There Was You", by Meredith Wilson (from the 1957 musical "The Music Man"), is full of well-developed images, and the epistolary conceits of both Chuck Berry's 1956 "Roll Over Beethoven" and the multi-authored 1961 hit "Please Mr. Postman", by The Marvelettes, are rigorously and wittily extended. Only later did Lennon and McCartney become good lyricists. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 23 June 2024)

Why does a teen idol like Taylor Swift interest even oldies like me?

I'm still getting interview requests about my Taylor Swift seminar. This week, I was asked how a teen idol like Swift could interest even oldies like me. I gave three answers. First, with eleven albums in eighteen years, and four since her thirtieth birthday, she has long been writing music for adults. Secondly, I don't listen to music according to its "target audience". I listen, and when I like something, I keep listening. Thirdly, as a teacher and parent, I have enough experience with young people to take them seriously, rather than "assuming they know nothing", as Swift says, or in this case, that they are mere suckers for marketing campaigns. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 22 June 2024)

The Basel-based vocal group OWK and their wide-ranging arrangements from Coltrane and Sinatra to Mitchell and The Bee Gees

Yesterday in the foyer of the Theater Basel, I heard the Basel-based vocal group OWK for the second time: the four singers Maria von Rütte, Alice Auclair, Martina Henriques Dias, and Sneha Lama, accompanied by guitarist Eren Şimşek and bassist Paddy Fitzgerald. Once again, they impressed me with their wonderful arrangements, which ranged from John Coltrane's 1960 "Naima" (from "Giant Steps") and David Mann and Bob Hilliard's 1955 "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning" (which Frank Sinatra was the first to record) to Joni Mitchell's 1971 "A Case of You" (from "Blue") and The Bee Gees' 1977 "How Deep Is Your Love?" (from the soundtrack to "Saturday Night Fever"). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 21 June 2024)

Excellent commentary on BBC1 for the UEFA European Men's Football Championship

I have several options for watching the UEFA European Men's Football Championship in languages I know: stations from Germany, France, Austria, and Britain, or Swiss broadcasts in German and French. For last Sunday's match between England and Serbia, I enjoyed the BBC1 commentary so much that I just watched Germany play Hungary on that channel. Wasting little time with background, the commentators focus on details like German midfielder İlkay Gündoğan's superb movement or moments of poor positioning by defenders, as when Hungary's center-back Willi Orbán moved his feet poorly and was unable to clear a ball without surrendering a corner. In one hour, I'll stay on BBC1 for Switzerland against Scotland. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 19 June 2024)

Jamming from The Velvet Underground’s 1967 song “I’m Waiting for the Man” into Traffic’s 1967 song “Dear Mr. Fantasy"

At the end of "I'm Waiting for the Man", which Lou Reed wrote and recorded with The Velvet Underground for their 1967 debut "The Velvet Underground & Nico", I like to go into a jam that feels like drifting along high on something (heroin in the song; jamming for me), "until tomorrow but that's just some other time." Today, I suddenly found myself going into "Dear Mr. Fantasy", which Traffic recorded on their 1967 debut "Mr. Fantasy" (with words by Jim Capaldi and music by Steve Winwood and Chris Wood. Afterwards, it seemed fitting: in Capaldi's words, Reed may "break out in tears", but he still "can make us all laugh". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 18 June 2024)

A giant red rose painted on my face and a Stevie Ray Vaughan concert, forty years ago today, 17 June 1984

Forty years ago today, there was some sort of summer fair on the Stanford University campus, and I came across a woman who was doing face-painting. I asked her if she could do a giant red rose around my right eye. She said she'd give it a try, we agreed on a price (I don't remember how much, but more than for her standard things), and she spent quite a long time patiently painting that rose. That evening, I went to the Kabuki Theater in San Francisco to see Stevie Ray Vaughan (for the second time), and all through the concert, I wondered why people kept staring so intently at me. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 17 June 2024) 

UC Berkeley law professor John C. Yoo should be persona non grata, but if you quote him, you should always identify him as the author of the torture memos

In a Substack post today on "The Right's Politics of Revenge", historian Thomas Zimmer summarized what Donald Trump supporters said after his felony conviction on 30 May. I liked how he identified one supporter: "John C. Yoo, a law professor at Berkeley and also the guy who authored the torture memos under George W. Bush [...]." Although I'd seen Yoo's remarks on Trump before, I was sure he'd only been referred to as a professor, but at least The New York Times on 5 June called him "the author of once-secret Bush administration legal memos declaring that the president can lawfully violate legal limits on torturing detainees and wiretapping without warrants". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 16 June 2024)

 

"Luckily we can predict what our machine guns will do”: A line from Katy Evans-Bush’s “Joe Hill Makes His Way into the Castle” and its echo in a SCOTUS decision

"Luckily we can predict what our machine guns will do," writes Katy Evans-Bush in "From lines by Kenneth Patchen #14" in her book "Joe Hill Makes His Way into the Castle" (CB Editions, 2024). These poems make songs of what this decade offers us ("what it takes to make songs with" in #9), but that machine-gun line makes a song of something that happened yesterday, long after the poem was written: the United States Supreme Court ruled that "bump stocks", which allow semi-automatic weapons to fire nearly as fast as machine guns, cannot be regulated in the United States. Unluckily, we can almost always predict what SCOTUS will do these days. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 15 June 2024)

Remembering reading Philip Levine’s poem “28” in “The New Yorker” in September 1986

Yesterday, British poet Raymond Antrobus asked me if I had a favorite poem I had first read in The New Yorker. I remembered reading "28" by Philip Levine back in the 1980s. I dug the poem up in the magazine's archives: it was published in the issue of 1 September 1986. I was 22 at the time, and the poem floored me with the 56-year-old poet recalling (and perhaps fictionalizing) his experiences half his life ago: "At 28 I was still faithless." The poem appeared in Levine’s “A Walk with Tom Jefferson” in 1988. I bought the book in Boulder, Colorado, on 17 August 1988, which I noted in the book. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 14 June 2024) 

Two Swiss People’s Party politicians in a scuffle with the police

Yesterday, in the run-up to the peace summit at the Bürgenstock resort in Switzerland this weekend, Ruslan Stefanchuk, the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukranian Parliament, visited the Federal Palace in Bern, the seat of the Swiss government and parliament. With the main stairway blocked because of heightened security for Stefanchuk's visit, Thomas Aeschi of the far-right Swiss People's Party (SVP) refused to take an elevator upstairs and got into a scuffle with the police. Aeschi's SVP colleague Michael Graber later said on Swiss television that he completely disagreed with the police's actions. As usual, members of a far-right party insist on law and order until it applies to them. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 13 June 2024)

 

The alleged “weaponization” of the legal system in the United States and the conviction of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden on felony gun charges

For former United States President Donald Trump and his supporters, the trials he has faced, and especially his recent conviction on 34 felony charges in New York City, are politically motivated: "Can a President order his Department of Justice to indict an opponent just prior to an election?" (all-caps removed). But now President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden has been convicted on three felony charges for federal gun violations. As one joke I saw put it, President Biden is apparently not very good at "weaponizing" the legal system. It's also a nice irony that Trump and his "Second Amendment" supporters got the Hunter Biden conviction they wanted – but on gun charges. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 12 June 2024) 

United States Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and the “polarization” of United States politics

In the United States, "polarization" has allegedly paralyzed the country's politics, with Democrats moving left and Republicans moving  right. Supposedly, if "both sides" were willing to compromise, the country's political business could get done again. But when asked by undercover activist Lauren Windsor what could be done about polarization, United States Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said that "it’s difficult [...], because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised." And Alito will not compromise on "return[ing] our country to a place of godliness." Polarization comes not from "both sides" but from a far right who want to impose their "Christian nationalism" on the rest of the country. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 11 June 2024)

 

Note: See Jay Kuo’s article about Alito’s remarks. 

Art, “its own special reality”, and the unreliability of Charles Kinbote in Vladimir Nabokov’s “Pale Fire” (1962)

In Vladimir Nabokov's "Pale Fire" (1962), Charles Kinbote refers in one of his annotations to the late poet John Shade's poem "Pale Fire" to "the basic fact that reality is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with the average 'reality' perceived by the communal eye." This sounds like the character might well be serving as a mouthpiece for the author's own aesthetic views, but Kinbote's unreliability as a commentator and as a narrator at least complicates and perhaps even completely undermines any quotation of this particular passage as a clear, straightforward presentation of Nabokov's own understanding of art. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 10 June 2024)

A bike ride on a rainy summer evening

Yesterday I went out in the evening on my bike again, but this time it was raining. I took a different route to the river, so instead of going downhill most of the way I had to go up on a bridge over train tracks. And this time I was going across the river, where the wind picks up when it's raining and makes it feel like it's raining harder. Needless to say, there weren't many people out enjoying the weather, but in the park on the other side of the river a few young men were working out despite the rain. On my way back later, it was still raining. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 9 June 2024)

A bike ride on a summer evening

I coasted down the hill I’d have to ride back up again later. The summer evening sun shone off second-story windows and the mirrored sunglasses of several people walking up the hill. I got to the street with the tram and turned right to head to the park. A Friday crowd sitting in little clusters enjoyed the sun on the grass while little children scattered around them laughing past their bedtime. The river, its water high with all the recent rain, shimmered on the other side of the lawn. Time kept passing. Saying goodbye to the sun, the park, and the river, I went inside to hear a band or three. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 7 June 2024)

38 Republicans in the United States Senate vote against the right to use contraception

On 7 June 1965, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut that married couples could use contraception without restrictions. On 22 March 1972, Eisenstadt v. Baird extended that to unmarried people, and on 9 June 1977, Carey v. Population Services International extended it to minors. Yesterday, on 5 June 2024, a 51-39 vote in the United States Senate "to protect an individual’s ability to access contraceptives and to engage in contraception" failed because of the 60-vote filibuster. U. S. citizens should consider this in the 2024 election: 38 Republican Senators voted against the right to contraception. (New York Senator Chuck Schumer voted against the bill for procedural reasons.) (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 6 June 2024)

 

A deep dive into The National

After binging on Wilco, I've turned to The National, a band I've known about for years now but never listened to. I've now gotten through the beginning of 2013's "Trouble With Me", the sixth of their ten studio albums. So far, I really like the sound of the band, which flows nicely out of my burst of listening to Wilco, and the baritone of lead singer Matt Berninger, which I already know from "coney island", the band's collaboration with Taylor Swift on her album "evermore" (2020). If none of the band's songs have stood out to me yet, that's in part because I have mostly had them on in the background. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 5 June 2024)

A deep dive into Wilco, especially “Cruel Country” (2022) and “Cousin” (2023)

Since I had fallen behind in collecting albums by Wilco and hadn't listened to them much recently, I picked up their two most recent ones, "Cruel Country" (2022) and "Cousin" (2023), and listened to their whole studio catalogue in order. From about 2005 to 2015, I listened to their first eight albums a lot, so those were all familiar old friends, with "Hummingbird" from "A Ghost Is Born" (2004) still being my favorite Wilco song. On the two newest albums, I particilarly like "Many Worlds" from "Cruel Country" as it stretches a small fragment of text out into seven minutes and fifty-three seconds of a lovely, textured instrumental crescendo and dimuendo. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 4 June 2024)

Read “Das nächste Dorf”, by Franz Kafka, in honor of the one-hundredth anniversary of his death (in German, English, French, Spanish, and Italian)

Exactly one month before his forty-first birthday, Franz Kafka died of tuberculosis one hundred years ago today at a sanatorium in Klosterneuburg, Austria. To honor the anniversary of his death, spend one minute reading his story "Das nächste Dorf", which he published in "Ein Landarzt" in 1920. If you can't read German, I've collected four translations of the story: "The Next Village" (tr. Willa and Edwin Muir, 1961); "Le prochain village" (tr. Laurent Margantin, 2012); "La aldea más cercana" (tr. Juan José del Solar, 2003); "Il prossimo villaggio" (tr. Ervino Pocar, 1979). If you know translations in other languages, please add them in the comments (with the translator's name, if possible). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 3 June 2024)

 

Das nächste Dorf

Franz Kafka, "Ein Landarzt", 1920

 

Mein Großvater pflegte zu sagen: "Das Leben ist erstaunlich kurz. Jetzt in Erinnerung drängt es sich mir so zusammen, daß ich zum Beispiel kaum begreife, wie ein junger Mensch sich entschließen kann, ins nächste Dorf zu reiten, ohne zu fürchten, daß – von unglücklichen Zufällen ganz abgesehen – schon die Zeit des gewöhnlichen, glücklich ablaufenden Lebens für einen solchen Ritt bei weitem nicht hinreicht."

 

*

 

The Next Village, tr. Willa and Edwin Muir (1961)

 

My grandfather used to say: "Life is astoundingly short. To me, looking back over it, life seems so foreshortened that I scarcely understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that – not to mention accidents – even the span of a normal happy life may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey."

 

*

 

Le prochain village, tr. Laurent Margantin (2012)

 

Mon grand-père avait coutume de dire : "La vie est étonnamment courte. Maintenant tout se rassemble en moi dans le souvenir, si bien que, par exemple, je comprends à peine qu'un jeune homme puisse se décider d'aller à cheval jusqu'au prochain village sans craindre que – si l'on écarte la possibilité d'un accident – le temps d'une vie ordinaire à l'heureux déroulement ne soit que très insuffisant pour une telle course."

 

*

 

La aldea más cercana, tr. Juan José del Solar (2003)

 

Mi abuelo solía decir: "La vida es asombrosamente breve. Ahora, en el recuerdo, se me condensa tanto que apenas logro comprender, por ejemplo, cómo un joven puede decidirse a cabalgar hasta la aldea más cercana sin temer que – dejando aparte cualquier calamidad – ni aun en el transcurso de una feliz y corriente alcance ni de lejos semejante cabalgata."

 

*

 

Il prossimo villaggio, tr. Ervino Pocar (1979)

 

Mio nonno soleva dire: "La vita è straordinariamente corta. Ora, nel ricordo, mi si contrae a tal punto che, per esempio, non riesco quasi a comprendere come un giovane possa decidersi ad andare a cavallo sino al prossimo villaggio senza temere (prescindendo da una disgrazia) che perfino lo spazio di tempo, in cui si svolge felicemente e comunemente una vita, possa bastar anche lontanamente a una simile cavalcata.” 

First edition of Ein Landarzt, 1920