Saturday, April 09, 2005
The Metaphysics of "Taxman"
There is a sinister counting, low, guttural, unfeeling, disinterested. It sounds like the devil, maybe. Or perhaps its your mono-toned company president testing a microphone's volume before launching into a bored account of his fortunes, none of which you’ll see, of course. One two three four one two -
A cough, a clearing of the throat. Accidental, perhaps, but no matter what its source it does the job: your attention has been gotten.
Then the baseline, thundering, forceful, driven by immediate unstoppable force, momentum. Though powerful, it is distant, somehow hateful.
But most of all that guitar -- piercing, short notes. Like a machete racing from a spinning disc through a wire right into your ear, stopping just short of drawing blood and slinking around the rhythm sections' steady pulse, through the snare drum and the insistent cow-bell, like a great anaconda coiling itself from the bottom of a flagpole to the very top, far into the atmosphere.
"Let me tell you how it will be!" George, as greed personified, vomits onto the record. There must be a moment in the listeners' life where he would protest. This sound is too sinister. The words are too finite.
(read more of Matt Broad's exegesis here. With belated thanks to Bob Sarle, who sent this on last January!) ¶ 4/09/2005 10:21:00 AM
There is a sinister counting, low, guttural, unfeeling, disinterested. It sounds like the devil, maybe. Or perhaps its your mono-toned company president testing a microphone's volume before launching into a bored account of his fortunes, none of which you’ll see, of course. One two three four one two -
A cough, a clearing of the throat. Accidental, perhaps, but no matter what its source it does the job: your attention has been gotten.
Then the baseline, thundering, forceful, driven by immediate unstoppable force, momentum. Though powerful, it is distant, somehow hateful.
But most of all that guitar -- piercing, short notes. Like a machete racing from a spinning disc through a wire right into your ear, stopping just short of drawing blood and slinking around the rhythm sections' steady pulse, through the snare drum and the insistent cow-bell, like a great anaconda coiling itself from the bottom of a flagpole to the very top, far into the atmosphere.
"Let me tell you how it will be!" George, as greed personified, vomits onto the record. There must be a moment in the listeners' life where he would protest. This sound is too sinister. The words are too finite.
(read more of Matt Broad's exegesis here. With belated thanks to Bob Sarle, who sent this on last January!) ¶ 4/09/2005 10:21:00 AM
