Thanks Don. I looked all over the threads here but I guess I missed that one. D'oh!
Cole
Bells of Rhymney Lyric
Although I like the song, particularly the Rick licks, I think it's one of the dumbest songs ever written. I mean, what's the point, really, when you have to do an internet search to find out what the heck it's about, not to mention all the misheard lyrics. 'All would be well if if if if if..." Come on!
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Don Miller
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Havent you heard anyone make excuses?..."if, if if if,,,,"Thats how I hear that line...the guys who own the mines making a bunch of excuses..."all will be well...excuse excuse excuse..."
I think that some of the context or inflection of the original poem may have gotten changed when it was put to music, but its still there....
I think that some of the context or inflection of the original poem may have gotten changed when it was put to music, but its still there....
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Don Miller
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- Joined: Tue Dec 05, 2000 9:43 am
The song is different than Dylans style ...its not a story in the scene of Dylans narratives..."Lily, Rosemarie and the Jack of Hearts" is an example of a song where Dylan tells part of the story and allows the listener fill in the rest..the imagery is very visual...like half of a movie outline and theres a whole lot of room for interpretation.
I hear "Bells" in this context...something bad has happened at the mines and the church bells are ringing all over...the bells in each town have a different tone and rhythm and the narrator is telling you what he hears the different bells saying..again with alot of room for interpretation...like whats meant by "if if if.." or "what will you give me.." Its not as "cinemagraphic" as Dylan frequently is...a different style of writing.
And of course this is my interpretation of what Im hearing....someone else might have an equally valid take on the song thats 180 degrees from my read...
I hear "Bells" in this context...something bad has happened at the mines and the church bells are ringing all over...the bells in each town have a different tone and rhythm and the narrator is telling you what he hears the different bells saying..again with alot of room for interpretation...like whats meant by "if if if.." or "what will you give me.." Its not as "cinemagraphic" as Dylan frequently is...a different style of writing.
And of course this is my interpretation of what Im hearing....someone else might have an equally valid take on the song thats 180 degrees from my read...
"Dumb"? "Weird"?? Come on, guys.
Its actually from a very beautiful poem by Welsh writer Idris Davies. He set it in the pattern of a well-known children's nursery rhyme called "Oranges and Lemons," later of course set to music by Pete Seeger. What he's saying, in effect, is that while all the church bells are ringing in solidarity & honor of the fallen miners, behind the public show of grief each town has its own political agenda and/or characteristic way of dealing with it...to wit:
Rhondda questions the wealthy mine owners for lack of safety regulations, Merthyr wonders whether production will ever reach the same quotas again, Blyna supports the miners' interests ("who robbed them?"), Swansea imperiously tut-tuts & evokes God, Wye doesn't understand why everyone is so worried, Newport wants to prosecute the vandals who protested the disaster, Cardiff presents a laundry list of solutions...& so on.
This is social commentary, British style...poetic, but wickedly ironic. Obviously it loses some of its impact if you aren't Welsh & don't have a working knowledge of the character of the region.
On the other hand if you dig a little bit you can find amazingly similar parallels to our own Sago mining disaster of 2006, with all the high-volume publicity & around-the-clock news coverage, & resulting editorializing, reflecting the political agenda of each media outlet and/or region...some made broader criticisms of how mine safety is handled by the federal government ("who made the mine owners"), while supporters of the Bush administration strongly questioned this criticism ("throw the vandals in court"). And every opinion in between ("all will be well if, if, if..." "why so worried?" "even God is uneasy" "is there hope for the future?")!
And of course "what will you give me?" says the town of Sago...meaning rescue & relief, aid, safety regulations, insurance payments, etc.
The more things change, the more they stay the same...
bw
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Buddy Woodward [email protected]
THE DIXIE BEE-LINERS "bluegrass with a buzz"
http://www.dixiebeeliners.com
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Check out our new blog for Gibson:
http://www.gibson.com/allaccessblogs.aspx
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Its actually from a very beautiful poem by Welsh writer Idris Davies. He set it in the pattern of a well-known children's nursery rhyme called "Oranges and Lemons," later of course set to music by Pete Seeger. What he's saying, in effect, is that while all the church bells are ringing in solidarity & honor of the fallen miners, behind the public show of grief each town has its own political agenda and/or characteristic way of dealing with it...to wit:
Rhondda questions the wealthy mine owners for lack of safety regulations, Merthyr wonders whether production will ever reach the same quotas again, Blyna supports the miners' interests ("who robbed them?"), Swansea imperiously tut-tuts & evokes God, Wye doesn't understand why everyone is so worried, Newport wants to prosecute the vandals who protested the disaster, Cardiff presents a laundry list of solutions...& so on.
This is social commentary, British style...poetic, but wickedly ironic. Obviously it loses some of its impact if you aren't Welsh & don't have a working knowledge of the character of the region.
On the other hand if you dig a little bit you can find amazingly similar parallels to our own Sago mining disaster of 2006, with all the high-volume publicity & around-the-clock news coverage, & resulting editorializing, reflecting the political agenda of each media outlet and/or region...some made broader criticisms of how mine safety is handled by the federal government ("who made the mine owners"), while supporters of the Bush administration strongly questioned this criticism ("throw the vandals in court"). And every opinion in between ("all will be well if, if, if..." "why so worried?" "even God is uneasy" "is there hope for the future?")!
And of course "what will you give me?" says the town of Sago...meaning rescue & relief, aid, safety regulations, insurance payments, etc.
The more things change, the more they stay the same...
bw
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Buddy Woodward [email protected]
THE DIXIE BEE-LINERS "bluegrass with a buzz"
http://www.dixiebeeliners.com
http://www.myspace.com/thedixiebeeliners
http://www.sonicbids.com/thedixiebeeliners
Check out our new blog for Gibson:
http://www.gibson.com/allaccessblogs.aspx
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face."
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mark_telfer
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I've always thought it far-sighted, magnanimous and even risky of The Byrds to sing about South Wales, when they could have sung a crowd-pleaser about teenage angst instead. In a way, it was a back-handed compliment to the contemporaneous British groups for championing Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson.
Just for the record, the spelling is Blaenau.
Just for the record, the spelling is Blaenau.
"But the man has a 47-string guitar." (Grace Slick on Paul Kantner's attempt to tune his 366/12 during a Winterland show of October 31 1969).
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loverickbass
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Don Miller
- Veteran RRF member
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- Joined: Tue Dec 05, 2000 9:43 am
> The song might as well have been in japanese
> for all the meaning one gets from just
> listening to the lyrics.
With all due respect, you mean for all the meaning YOU get...its obviously not the case with everybody. Even at a very young age I understood the word "mine owner," & was able to surmise the rest from there, having heard plenty of folk, bluegrass & country music growing up.
I'd be willing to bet most folkies (& their teenage sisters) at that time had at least heard of the song, or were thoughtful enough to want to discover the meaning behind the it, assuming they didn't already know it from the popular songbook, "The Bells of Rhymney & Other Songs & Stories from the Singing of Pete Seeger." My parents owned it!
If you were still confused all you had to do was turn the MTM Lp over & read Billy James' liner notes, where it says "...dedicated to Pete Seeger...you get a great shock hearing this song about a Welsh mine disaster being sung this way..."
Some of them -- or their older brothers -- might have even owned the contemporanious Columbia album, "Pete Seeger In Concert: I Can See A New Day" where he does the song, & it says in the liner notes, "in this haunting song the bells in the churches of Rhymney, Cardiff & Newport intone their discontent; only the prosperous town of Wye finds no reason to complain..."
Not like anyone was going out of their way to keep it some kind of great mystery! Teenyboppers aside, generally speaking fans of the Byrds, Dylan, & folk music/folk-rock tended to be a pretty thoughtful bunch who were interested in the meanings of songs.
> Using word pictures to evoke an emotion or
> message (a la Dylan) is fine, but I
> personally dont enjoy a song if the lyrics
> are just riddles.
...er, & you're saying Dylan's lyrics are NOT riddles? Like, Rhymney was less easy to understand than, say, Chimes of Freedom?
Now you're pulling my leg.
bw
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Buddy Woodward [email protected]
THE DIXIE BEE-LINERS "bluegrass with a buzz"
http://www.dixiebeeliners.com
http://www.myspace.com/thedixiebeeliners
http://www.sonicbids.com/thedixiebeeliners
Check out our new blog for Gibson:
http://www.gibson.com/allaccessblogs.aspx
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
bw
> for all the meaning one gets from just
> listening to the lyrics.
With all due respect, you mean for all the meaning YOU get...its obviously not the case with everybody. Even at a very young age I understood the word "mine owner," & was able to surmise the rest from there, having heard plenty of folk, bluegrass & country music growing up.
I'd be willing to bet most folkies (& their teenage sisters) at that time had at least heard of the song, or were thoughtful enough to want to discover the meaning behind the it, assuming they didn't already know it from the popular songbook, "The Bells of Rhymney & Other Songs & Stories from the Singing of Pete Seeger." My parents owned it!
If you were still confused all you had to do was turn the MTM Lp over & read Billy James' liner notes, where it says "...dedicated to Pete Seeger...you get a great shock hearing this song about a Welsh mine disaster being sung this way..."
Some of them -- or their older brothers -- might have even owned the contemporanious Columbia album, "Pete Seeger In Concert: I Can See A New Day" where he does the song, & it says in the liner notes, "in this haunting song the bells in the churches of Rhymney, Cardiff & Newport intone their discontent; only the prosperous town of Wye finds no reason to complain..."
Not like anyone was going out of their way to keep it some kind of great mystery! Teenyboppers aside, generally speaking fans of the Byrds, Dylan, & folk music/folk-rock tended to be a pretty thoughtful bunch who were interested in the meanings of songs.
> Using word pictures to evoke an emotion or
> message (a la Dylan) is fine, but I
> personally dont enjoy a song if the lyrics
> are just riddles.
...er, & you're saying Dylan's lyrics are NOT riddles? Like, Rhymney was less easy to understand than, say, Chimes of Freedom?
Now you're pulling my leg.
bw
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Buddy Woodward [email protected]
THE DIXIE BEE-LINERS "bluegrass with a buzz"
http://www.dixiebeeliners.com
http://www.myspace.com/thedixiebeeliners
http://www.sonicbids.com/thedixiebeeliners
Check out our new blog for Gibson:
http://www.gibson.com/allaccessblogs.aspx
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
bw
"The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face."