XREF alt.fan.kinks: Dylan, Davies, the Beatles, Impressionist Poetry

[Jim Brown]

Subject: Last of the Steam Powered Trains
From: odsbo...@aol.com (ODSbodskin)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.kinks

Rock lyrics have changed quite a bit since the early sixties...
Before Dylan and The Beatles went psychedelic on us, rock lyrics were a
pretty straight-forward affair. You could pick up a lyric sheet, read it,
and having read it, know what the song was about. The "story" was linear
and obvious.

Then Bob Dylan started having dreams...
The Beatles started wondering how many holes it takes to fill The Albert
Hall...
Lyrics became abstract. They become impressionist poetry.

Now there's nothing wrong with impressionist poetry when it's done by a
Dylan...The problem arose when every Tom, Dick, and Mary decided that it
was easy to write songs now that they didn't have to rhyme or make sense.

[...]

Ray was never much affected by this songwriting change.
His lyrics are a throwback to an earlier time.
They still progress from beginning to end. They still have elegance and
symmetry. They still have the power to touch our emotions in a way that
abstractions never will.

"You can keep all your smart modern writers.
Give me William Shakespeare" and Ray Davies.
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[Except for the paragraph that sounds like a voice-over from a Time-Life
Records advertisement, I think this makes some sense. --Jimmy Brown the
Newsboy (who, in the interest of cultural exchange, is pronouncing
"advertisement" with the stress on the second syllable all this week]