Trapeze Swinger

A quick post to add some regularity.

Mal sent me this via pm on facebook:



It is definitely worth listening all the way through, and possibly even reading the lyrics. They're not super-deep, and if the song ever became popular, the catchy of the words and melody are vulnerable enough to easily be parodied for purposes of mocking its fans. Still, it's a beautiful song on many fronts. Curtis while listening to it, started looking at covers and different versions, and stumbled upon this:



We didn't get through it. We stopped when he substituted the word "forget" for "fuck". Curtis' response was emphatic, with comments like "Dick," and "He get's the lamo card," and a slew of others insults.

A basic piece of advice, if you won't say the word fuck, then don't cover a song which does. Especially when the word is being used to make a point. It's not substitutable. The cover musician didn't merely change a song taking artistic, creative license, he bastardized it. "Fuck the man" is the slogan, or "stick it" to them. It was making a point in the song, and the texture of the phrase was intentionally supposed to be contrasted with "eloquent graffiti". Altering it by "Evangelicalizing" it transformed the part into an Evangelical wussified expression which the original phrasing was supposed to be speaking to at one level.

I'm not a fan of copying a song by replicating it both musically and lyrically. That's lazy in my opinion, and if a song is worth covering, it deserves creative contributions which should in some way allow the song to reinvent itself and grow. This isn't relative though, and anything does not simply go. There was a lack of faithfulness to this song, which is characteristic of many Christians' "contributions" to our culture. It reflects poorly not only on what they set their hand to, but also upon themselves. If one can't do something right (not perfect mind you), don't try to do it at all.

P.S. Curtis just said, "I'm just not a fan of substituting lyrics for an euphamisim that isn't more clever or wittier than the original." He says he ripped that off of me, but I don't remember saying anything of the sorts, but it captured what is trying to be said.