Story songs My appreciation of, and taste in, music is wide and varied, and my personal collection eclectic - current fav’s are J.S.Bach and the Chili Pepper’s Californication - although I do confess to being very much a child of the eighties. Despite all of this I have always had a particular fondness for ballads or what I like to call "story songs." The words of the postmodern poets are not only written on the subway walls but can be found in the lyrics of popular music - and there is nowhere better to hear the culture speak than in the context of songs that tell stories. Here I present a short list of my personal favorites with some comment as to why they make the list (in no particular order). Bruce Springsteen: The River All great art is of course at least partly autobiographical and Springsteen admits of The River "I was in the details." I am there also to varying degrees. The thing I really admire about, and identify with, Springsteen is his integrity and honesty to his working class roots. A quote, from the inside of his "Best Of" CD (referring to Badlands) says it all - "this was the record... where I figured out what I wanted to write about, the people that mattered to me, and who I wanted to be. I saw friends and friendly struggling to lead decent, productive lives and I feel an everyday kind of heroism in this. Still Do." Steve Earle: Copperhead Road Country & Western meets Grunge in this fabulous song about a third-generation moonshiner who signs up for two tours of duty in Vietnam coz "they draft the white trash first round here anyway" and returns "with a brand new plan" that involves vegetation of an illegal kind. Good story - but it’s the music and clash of styles that I really enjoy. Would love to hear it played live! Bon Jovi: Livin’ on a Prayer Every time I hear this one I can’t help feeling it was written for me at various stages of my life. I know what it’s like to "used to" work somewhere, to be "on strike," to "do things tough." And how much I wanted to be Tommy playing his "six string harp" for next to nothing. How many times I’ve dreamed with Gina of "getting away" only to have reality whisper "... someday." I still wonder sometimes if "someday" will ever come.    The Rolling Stones: Sympathy for the Devil A social history of Satan - the fall guy par excellence. The Stones copped a lot of flack for this one from members of my own profession but as a Stones fan from way back (I once paid $100 for an original of Beggar’s Banquet with all the toilet block graffiti on the front cover) I prefer to find the positives. The lyrics make interesting reading - Lucifer is responsible for just about everything from the death of Jesus ("I made damn sure that Pilate washed his hands") to the rise of the Nazi’s ("I rode a tank held a general’s rank, when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank"), to serial killers and others. Not much I would disagree with there. Elton John: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road Although I’ve never been really sure what this song is all about, I guess it tells the story of a guy who leaves his life on the farm (and haven’t we all said with him "I should have listened to my old man"?) and ends up becoming the toy-boy of some wealthy society person of undefined gender. The Yellow Brick road turns out to be a lot less glamorous than it looked - and so let us all affirm with Savage Garden "I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side." Back to Kansas it is then ! John Mellencamp: Jack and Diane Jack and Diane could be two kids anywhere "growing up in the heartland." It’s a sad but true fact that for so many the thrill of living disappears so quickly - "life goes on, long after the thrill of living has gone." I can sing with conviction alongside John, Jack, and Diane - "hold onto sixteen as long as you can." I loved and hated those days in equal measure with equal passion. I can also sing with equal conviction "let the bible belt come and save my soul" - and for me the thrill of living has never gone. The Human League: Don’t You Want Me? It’s not strictly a ballad (that’s why I use the term "story songs") but I just couldn’t resist including this one. Who could forget that immortal, dripping with romance and emotion first line "You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar when I met you." Strong vocals. Catchy chorus. Easy to sing harmony. Synthetic rhythms. Phil Oakey with lip stick and eye shadow. So perfectly Eighties!     Pearl Jam: Jeremy Again not really a ballad but tells an awesome story. Eddie Vedder apparently based it on a real life incident in which a teenager who had been mercilessly bullied and picked on for years shot himself in front of his classmates - "Jeremy spoke in class today"! As the song goes "you can’t erase this from your blackboard." Played this at a youth service once at which the power of the spoken word was the theme - there was no need to preach - Pearl Jam had the pulpit that night. The Beatles: Eleanor Rigby "All the lonely people, where do they all come from"? A good question! An old lady I visited just this day in an aged care facility springs immediately to mind. She had been a parishioner for many years but "no one comes to see me now". The power of the story is that all we know who Eleanor Rigby is. Rod Stewart" The Ballad of Georgie Boy. Social attitudes were in transition as Rod sang this one. It’s not a long journey from "Georgie boy was gay I guess, nothing more or nothing less" to Seinfeld’s "not that there’s anything wrong with that." The ultimate symbol of where we are now was, for me, provided by a group of old friends from my home suburb who went with some bravado, lots of Foster’s Lager, and a couple of baseball bats into a dark toilet block to "punch some poofs heads in" only to emerge running for their lives with the poofs winning the fight and in hot pursuit. Cold Chisel: Flame Trees So Australian you won’t get it all if yer not from down under. Yet the motif is universal enough. Guy returns to home town filled with the memories of a girl who doesn’t live there anymore - "number one is to find some friends to say you’re doing well... number two is to have a yarn at one of the two hotels... and number three is never say her name." She may not live there anymore, but they tend to live a lot longer in the memory. The power of relationships - especially sexual ones. There’s a whole town in Victoria I can’t go to! Alanis Morrisette: You Oughta Know Speaking of relationships... The song drips with bitterness that only comes from experience... From the cuckold husband in Othello to Lady Chatterley’s lover, the theme is familiar but made mainstream by Alanis’ artistic revenge - "every time I scratch my nails down someone else’s back I hope you feel it, well can you feel it"? As Fatal Attraction did through the medium of film, Alanis convinces us in song that sex is more than physical. Wrapped up in the magic and beauty of sex is the reality that we take something sacred that belongs to another and join it to ourselves. And when we take it back it hurts. Guns’n’Roses: November Rain It’s not a really great song lyrically and I’m convinced Axle can’t sing for his life, but I put November Rain in because it’s a very long song that hangs together well - a bit like Stairway to Heaven and Bohemian Rhapsody in some aspects. For pure listening enjoyment at high volume.