“She is benediction
She is addicted to thee
She is the root connection
She is connecting with he
Here I go and I don’t know why
I flow so ceaselessly
Could it be he’s taking over me
I’m dancing barefoot
Headin’ for a spin
Some strange music draws me in
It makes me come up like some heroine
She is sublimation
She is the essence of thee
She is concentrating on
He who is chosen by she
Here I go when I don’t know why
I spin so ceaselessly
Could it be he’s taking over me
I’m dancing barefoot
Headin’ for a spin
Some strange music drags me in
Makes me come up like some heroine
She is recreation
She intoxicated by thee
She has the slow sensation that
He is levitating with she
Here I go when I don’t know why
I spin so ceaselessly
‘Til I lose my sense of gravity
I’m dancing barefoot
Heading for a spin
Some strange music draws me in
Makes me come up like some heroine
Oh God I fell for you
Oh God I fell for you
Oh God I fell for you
Oh God I fell for you
Oh God I fell for you
Oh God I fell for you
Oh God I fell for you
Oh God I fell for you
Oh God I fell for you
Oh God I fell for you
Oh God I fell for you”
Dancing Barefoot is a rock song written by Patti Smith and Ivan Kral, and released as a second single from Patti Smith Group’s 1979 album Wave. According to the album sleeve, the song was dedicated to women such as Amedeo Modigliani‘s mistress Jeanne Hébuterne.
In 2004, this song was ranked number 323 on Rolling Stone ’s list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”. It has been recorded by many including U2, Simple Minds and Pearl Jam.
The version covered by Johnette Napolitano was included on the score of The Basketball Diaries (Scott Kalvert, 1995).
The band that would become Travis was formed by brothers Chris and Geoff Martyn. Andy Dunlop, a school friend at Lenzie Academy, was drafted in on guitar, along with Andy Dunlop on drums, although the latter was replaced soon after by Neil Primrose. The line-up was completed by a female vocalist, Catherine Maxwell, and the band’s name became Glass Onion, after The Beatles song of the same name. Parting company with their singer in the spring of 1991, they auditioned for a new vocalist. Having met each other through Primrose pouring him a pint, an untrained art student, Fran Healy, then joined after being invited to audition by Primrose. Healy joined the band on the day he enrolled at The Glasgow School of Art, in the autumn of 1991. Two years later, with the option of music holding more appeal, Healy dropped out of art school, and inspired by song writers such as Joni Mitchell, assumed songwriting responsibilities. With brothers Chris and Geoff Martyn on bass and keyboards, in 1993, the fivesome released a privately made CD, The Glass Onion EP, featuring the tracks Dream On, The Day Before, Free Soul and Whenever She Comes Round. 500 copies of the EP were made and were recently valued at £1000 each. Other songs they recorded but were left off are She’s So Strange and Not About to Change.
The band named themselves after the Harry Dean Stanton character Travis Henderson from the film Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984).
Travis have twice been awarded best band at the BRIT Awards, and are often credited for having paved the way for bands such as Coldplay and Keane (Coldplay’s Chris Martin has called himself “a poor man’s Fran Healy”, while saying that Travis “invented” Coldplay “and lots of others”).
The band won a talent contest organised by the Music in Scotland Trust, who promised £2,000 so that Travis could deal-hunt at a new music seminar in New York. Two weeks before they were due to leave, however, the prize was instead given to the Music in Scotland Trust Directory. When sent a copy of the directory, the band noticed that it seemed to feature every single band in Scotland—except for them.
The band showed promise but had yet to evolve into a decent line-up capable of fulfilling it and spent several years treading water. According to their publisher Charlie Pinder: “They were a band that everyone in the A&R community knew about and would go and see every now and then. But they weren’t very good. They had quite good songs; Fran always did write good songs.” While on a visit to Scotland, American engineer and producer Niko Bolas, a long-time Neil Young and Rolling Stones associate, tuned into a Travis session on Radio Scotland, and heard something in the band’s music which instantly made him travel to Perth to see them. Healy: “He told us we were shit, took us in the studio for four days, and taught us how to play properly, like a band. He was ballsy, rude, and New York pushy. He didn’t believe my lyrics and told me to write what I believed in and not tell lies. He was Mary Poppins, he sorted us out.” The band recorded a five-song demo, which included the song All I Want to Do Is Rock.
With the sudden death of his grandfather, a grief-stricken Healy shut himself away, refusing to talk to anyone. Emerging a week later, and with a clear vision of where he now wanted Travis and their music to go, Healy dispensed with the band’s management and publicity agent. Having been repeatedly knocked back by the British record industry, the band couldn’t afford to stay around the country for another few years and so decided to move to New York, feeling that the U.S. might be more suited to their style of music. However, before leaving Healy told the band that they should send the demo to Charlie Pinder of Sony Music Publishing, who they had known for a few years and regularly sent songs to, saying: “If he’s not into it, then we’ll go.” Pinder was immediately impressed by the song All I Want to Do is Rock, which he felt was a dramatic change for the band: “It was harder, more exciting, sexy; all things that they never really were. They turned a corner.” After performing a secret gig for Pinder and his boss at Sony, Blair McDonald, they were signed to Sony Music Publishing. The immediate impact of what was a very secret deal was that the line-up was changed – keyboard player Geoff Martyn was removed, and the bassist, Geoff’s brother Chris, was replaced with Healy’s best friend Dougie Payne – and the band was moved to London, where they were given a rehearsal room and a house
Produced by Steve Lillywhite of U2 fame, Travis’ first studio album, 1997’s Good Feeling, is a rockier, more upbeat record than the band’s others to date. Recorded at the legendary Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, New York, the place where Travis favourite The Band recorded, the album contained singles such as All I Want to Do Is Rock, U16 Girls, the Beatle’esque Tied to the 90s, Happy and More Than Us.
Collaborative work by Warhol and Basquiat, featuring a Basquiat’s painted depiction of Billie Holiday
Angel of Harlem is a song by Irish rock group U2. It was released in December 1988 as the second single from their album, Rattle and Hum. Written as a homage to Billie Holiday, it was released with two different B-sides; one was an original U2 song called A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel, while the other was a live version of Rattle and Hum‘s Love Rescue Me.
The lyrical content of the song refers to various New York City-area landmarks, including JFK airport, WBLS radio and Harlem. It also refers to jazz-related history including John Coltrane and A Love Supreme, Birdland club, Miles Davis and Holiday herself (“Lady Day”).
Angel of Harlem was written during 1987’s Joshua Tree Tour and the in-studio performance on the Rattle and Hum movie dates from a recording session at Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee during the later stages of the tour’s third leg. The song was a regular on 1989’s Lovetown Tour and was played with B.B. King‘s band.
The song has also been performed on 2009’s 360° Tour with dedications to Michael Jackson, and included snippets of Man in the Mirror and Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough. In the Berlin concert of the 360° Tour three young fans from Prague, Czech Republic, held signs asking to play Angel of Harlem together with U2, Bono invited them to the stage, the band lent them the instruments and they played the song together.
“Though Torn In Two We Can Be One
I Will Begin Again, I Will Begin Again
Oh And Maybe The Time Is Right
Oh Maybe Tonight
I Will Be With You Again
I Will Be With You Again”…
It was released as War‘s lead single in January 1983. Written about the Polish Solidarity movement, “New Year’s Day” is driven by Adam Clayton‘s distinctive bassline and The Edge‘s piano and guitar playing.
The lyric had its origins in a love song from Bono to his wife, but, as stated before, was subsequently reshaped and inspired by the Polish Solidarity movement. The bass part stemmed from bassist Adam Clayton trying to figure out what the chords to the Visage song Fade to Grey were.
The video was one of their first to see heavy rotation on MTV. It was filmed in Sälen, Sweden in December 1982 and directed by Meiert Avis. The band only appeared in the performance scenes of the video as it was filmed in the dead of the Swedish winter. U2 guitarist Edge revealed in the official U2 biography that the four people riding on horseback in the video that appeared to be the four U2 members were in fact four Swedish teenage girls disguised as the members of U2 riding on horseback with masks over their faces. This was done as the band were frozen from shooting the video in sub-freezing temperatures the day before. Their biography states that Bono refused to wear any headgear despite the cold weather and had a lot of trouble mouthing the lyrics.The video also features footage of Soviet troops advancing in winter during World War II.
Based on a German drinking song, Must Be Santa is structured as a call and response, with the lead singer posing the question of who has a certain feature, with a chorus responding that Santa Claus has said feature. After every other verse, the list of features mentioned up to that point is reiterated, followed by the chorus of “must be Santa” repeated three times and ending with “Santa Claus.”
In November 2009, Bob Dylan covered Brave Combo‘s version of the song in a polka style for his Christmas album, Christmas in the Heart. The New York Daily News described Dylan’s version as such: “It’s sort of unclear if Dylan (…) was aiming to celebrate the holiday, or gently poke fun at the music’s Norman Rockwell-esque simplicity.”
“…And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong
And so happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let’s stop all the fight
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let’s hope it’s a good one
Without any fear…”
John Lennon
Jake Gyllenhaal in Jarhead (Sam Mendes, 2005)
Third studio album by Irish rock band U2, released on 28 February 1983. The album has come to be regarded as U2’s first overtly political album, in part because of songs like “Sunday Bloody Sunday“, “New Year’s Day“, as well as the title, which stems from the band’s perception of the world at the time; Bono stated that “war seemed to be the motif for 1982.”
John Lennon in How I Won the War (Richard Lester, 1967)
Iain MacMillan designed the cover for the couple’s single Happy Xmas (War Is Over), where he skillfully morphed photographs of John and Yoko together.
Originally a protest song about the Vietnam War, “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” has since become a Christmas standard, frequently covered by other artists and appearing on compilation albums of seasonal music, and named in polls as a holiday favorite “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” was the culmination of more than two years of peace activism undertaken by John Lennon and Yoko Ono that began with the bed-ins they convened in March and May 1969, the first of which took place during their honeymoon. The song’s direct antecedent was an international multimedia campaign launched by the couple in December 1969—at the height of the counterculture movement and its protests against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War—that primarily consisted of renting billboard space in 12 major cities around the world for the display of black-and-white posters that declared “WAR IS OVER! If You Want It – Happy Christmas from John & Yoko”. Although this particular slogan had previously appeared in the 1968 anti-war songs “The War Is Over” by Phil Ochs and “The Unknown Soldier” by The Doors (which features the refrain, “The war is over.”), its subsequent use by Lennon and Ono may just be coincidental; there is no evidence to confirm whether or not they were acquainted with these prior works.
“This must be the wood,’ she said thoughtfully to herself, ‘where
things have no names. I wonder what’ll become of MY name when I go in?
I shouldn’t like to lose it at all–because they’d have to give me
another, and it would be almost certain to be an ugly one. But then
the fun would be trying to find the creature that had got my old
name! That’s just like the advertisements, you know, when people lose
dogs…”
Lewis Carroll. Through the Looking-Glass
CHAPTER III Looking-Glass Insects
Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972)
“-I don’t know what to call you.
-I don’t have a name.
– Do you want to know mine?
– No, no! I don’t. I don’t want to know your name. You don’t have a name and I don’t have a name either. No one name.
-You’re crazy!
-Maybe I am, but I don’t want to know anything about you. I don’t wanna know where you live or where you come from. I wanna know nothing.
– You scare me.
– Nothing. You and I are gonna meet here without knowing anything that goes on outside here. OK?
-But why?
-Because… Because we don’t need names here. Don’t you see? We’re gonna forget… everything that we knew. Every… All the people,… all that we do,… wherever we live.
-We’re going to forget that, everything, everything.”
Dialogue between Paul (Marlon Brando) and Jeanne (Maria Schneider)
One Hundred Years of Solitude book cover by Ben Rothery- Penguin Design Awards 2011
“When Jose Arcadio Buendia realized that the plague had invaded the town, he gathered together the heads of families to explain to them what he knew about the sickness of insomnia, and they agreed on methods to prevent the scourge from spreading to other towns in the swamp. That was why they took the bells off the goats, bells that the Arabs had swapped them for macaws, and put them at the entrance to town at the disposal of those who would not listen to the advice and entreaties of the sentinels and insisted on visiting the town. All strangers who passed, through the streets of Macondo at that time had to ring their bells so that the sick people would know that they were healthy. They were not allowed to eat or drink anything during their stay, for there was no doubt but that the illness was transmitted by mouth, and all food and drink had been contaminated by insomnia. In that way they kept the plague restricted to the perimeter of the town. So effective was the quarantine that the day came when the emergency situation was accepted as a natural thing and life was organized in such a way that work picked up its rhythm again and no one worried any more about the useless habit of sleeping.
Illustration by Rodrigo Avilés
It was Aureliano who conceived the formula that was to protect them against loss of memory for several months. He discovered it by chance. An expert insomniac, having been one of the first, he had learned the art of silver work to perfection. One day he was looking for the small anvil that he used for laminating metals and he could not remember its name. His father told him: “Stake.” Aureliano wrote the name on a piece of paper that he pasted to the base of the small anvil: stake. In that way he was sure of not forgetting it in the future. It did not occur to him that this was the first manifestation of a loss of memory, because the object had a difficult name to remember. But a few days later he discovered that he had trouble remembering almost every object in the laboratory. Then he marked them with their respective names so that all he had to do was read the inscription in order to identify them. When his father told him about his alarm at having forgotten even the most impressive happenings of his childhood, Aureliano explained his method to him, and Jose Arcadio Buendia put it into practice all through the house and later on imposed it on the whole village. With an inked brush he marked everything with its name: table, chair; clock, door; wall, bed, pan. He went to the corral and marked the animals and plants: cow, goat, pig, hen, cassava, caladium, banana. Little by little, studying the infinite possibilities of a loss of memory, he realized that the day might come when things would be recognized by their inscriptions but that no one would remember their use. Then he was more explicit. The sign that he hung on the neck of the cow was an exemplary proof of the way in which the inhabitants of Macondo were prepared to fight against loss of memory: This is the cow. She must be milked every morning so that she will produce milk, and the milk must be boiled in order to be mixed with coffee to make coffee and milk. Thus they went on living in a reality that was slipping away, momentarily captured by words, but which would escape irremediably when they forgot the values of the written letters.”
Fragment taken from One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez
•Don’t look back (Fine Young Canibals, 1989)
•Can’t stop this thing we started, All I want is you, Thought I’d died and gone to heaven (Bryan Adams, 1991)
•Even better than the real thing (U2, 1991)
•I’ve got you under my skin (Frank Sinatra and Bono, 1993)
•Numb (U2, 1993)
•Fields of Gold (Sting, 1993)
•Hold me, thrill me, kiss me… (U2, 1995)
•My father’s eyes (Eric Clapton, 1998)
•The sweetest thing (U2, 1998)
•Run back into your arms (Rod Stewart, 2000)
•Is it any wonder (Keane, 2006)
Photographs by Steven Sebring
The Genealogy of Style 