On My Radio
"Blinded By The Light" is one of those great 70s pre-punk singles that sounded brilliant coming out of a transistor radio during the summer holidays, getting you all revved up like a Chopper bike. For some reason I always think of Dave Lee Travis playing this, it's a very Smashey & Nicey sort of record — big, overproduced, glittery, and made by men with hairy chests wearing Foster Grants.
As you probably know it was written by Bruce Springsteen and I'm not saying it's a bad song but the lyrics are stupendously ridiculous, the convoluted ramblings of a young man who thinks that if the words are obscure enough they'll sound like poetry — doctors call this condition "Dylan-itis" — so it's full of nonsense like "Dethrone the dictaphone, hit it in its funnybone" and "little Early Burly came by in his curly wurly" that you need a code-breaking machine to decipher. The genius of the cover by Manfred Mann's Earth Band is it sounds so fabulous you don't notice that what they're singing is daft bollocks. They set their Moog controls for the sun and flew right past the lyrics to create an epic that's overblown and trippy in an Old Grey Whistle Test sort of way. To me back in 1976 it sounded like a space ship taking off.
This is the mega 7-minute version where they throw in everything but the kitchen sink from a big cosmic guitar solo to a bizarre bit when the piano player breaks into "Chopsticks."
Download: Blinded By The Light - Manfred Mann's Earth Band (mp3)
Buy: "The Roaring Silence" (album)
(I don't have anything particularly insightful to add to the pile of tributes to Tony Wilson, as usual Marcello Carlin said it all better than most.)
8 Comments:
Funny thing, art--it's so, how you say, subjective? One man's trash is another man's gold. Given, it's not Yeats, but then again it was never meant to be, was it? It's a whole different form of writing, something more along the lines of the Beats. I'm sure springsteen wasn't trying to write his own War and Peace. I myself always found the lyrics rather entertaining for what they were in themselves, their effect, their play with language. To each his own, I suppose.
Oh I don't mind a bit of punning wordplay but he really overdoes it, almost every line. It's like a swallowed a rhyming dictionary.
One of my favourite tracks of all time. Just like you, Lee, I'm happy to forget that 'Go-Kart Mozart was checking out the weather chart' means nothing at all to me, and just revel in the icy thrill down my spine when I hear the opening organ chords backed by the tiniest hint of hi-hat. Unfathomable pleasure.
PS I saw Paul Jones' Blues Band in 1982 (yes, I forgot that in my enthusiasm to tell you all about Shakin' Stevens) and the first thing he did was unveil a T-shirt that boldly proclaimed 'There is life after Manfred Mann'.
Ooo, I love-love-love this song as a total summer song, driving with the top down.
The nonsensical lyrics are half the fun, in my estimation, much like, say, The New Pornographers "Letter from an Occupant". Sure, the latter is perhaps more refined nonsense, but the same utter, silly joy and "showers of yeah's and whatever's" define for me the experience of both songs--best when sung along with at top volume when you don't care who might be listening.
Thanks for posting and reminding me to put this one back in the playlist--at least until the first hint of autumn.
To me, this tune brings to mind late nights and early mornings during university days, struggling to get the school's newspaper completed so we could get it to the printer on time. I always thought that Springsteen's words made more sense at 3 a.m. than we did.
This is one of the very few records that still implores me to turn the radio off! But thankyou for finally putting me out of my misery. The problem for me has always been what the hell do they sing in the chorus after "blinded by the light"? It sounded to me like: "repped up like a dousher in the roaner in the night" (whatever that means!) Quite!
Now I know it's: "Cut loose like a deuce another runner in the night".
So what? I know I will still turn it off!
Of course with the beauty of the internet I could have looked up these lyrics years ago, but I never felt the need, I just hate this record so much!
I noticed you had posted 'Blinded By The Light', I was wondering if you've seen this: http://healthryder.blogspot.com/2008/10/which-one-are-you.html
I got the biggest LOL from it!
=w=
Bang you hit the ball out of the field again - I have only recently come across the Long Version as mentioned here, i always loved the track but this was just amazing on top of awesome, this and Davy's On the Road are two great tracks, that now in 2010, I still enjoy listening to.
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