Intertextuality, pretension, or shameless theft?

Make that "pretentious." Typing "pretension" above threw me off.

Usually the reserve of the clever-clever, but it can work quite well. The Divine Comedy's excellent 'Middle-Class Heroes' culminates in a steal from King Claudius in 'Hamlet'. There's an interesting one on Luke Haines' new 'Oliver Twist' record where he quotes a rather demeaning Black Box Recorder article from the Daily Telegraph last year.

We have discussed stuff like this before (that's not a claim that we shouldn't do it again). And I think that what I thought before, and presumably still think, was or is: if a pop writer is interested in something, and it fits, then they'll bung it in. It needn't be a strain or an effort. It's like (maybe?): you're writing a novel - and you meet some character who makes an impression of you - and you go and stick a cameo by a version of that character in the background of the novel. (This is pure speculation. I do not have the capacity to write a novel. Novelists are free to tell me off if I have got it terribly wrong.)

What I'm saying is: you write about what interests you, and what fits. And if some kind of allusion - preferably rather veiled and oblique - does the trick, then go ahead. It is wrong to imagine that allusions are always irritating name-dropping. (But they sometimes are, sure.)

Anyway, what I want to know is - what Salinger reference?

Bring on the literary references! I'm all for them, but it is nice if the artists refer you to the source of any non-obvious allusions (the way one might credit a music sample). Anything to get people to read; musicians have often led me to books I might never have read otherwise--and I'm speaking as one who wound up teaching literature and writing for years (not that anyone could tell).

XYZ: what you say is noble in spirit - but I'm still not quite sure that I want pop stars releasing leaflets saying 'the second verse of the third track contains an allusion to Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did', or whatever.

But then again, maybe I do, maybe I do.

Just a li'l note in the liner notes - saying, "Inspired By...", noting the quote & where it came from, maybe just referencing the author / artist by name. The Ex & Ken Vandermark (actually, a lot of jazz musicians, yes?) do this on albums I have of theirs.

Jawbox sample William Carlos Williams (I think) right before _Your Own Special Sweetheart_ kicks in the jams - never really listened to the sample to discern its purpose. I always get too distracted when the distortion kicks in.

Monsieur Pinefox:

"She knew she was able to fly / cause when she came down / she had dust on her hands from the sky . . . the light bulbs burn."

There's a segment of Franny and Zooey (one of the more tolerable Salinger volumes) in which Franny, as a kid on the "It's a Wise Child" radio show, says she's able to fly, and frequently flies around the apartment when no one is home. The host says she must mean she *imagines* being able to fly. No, she says---she's sure she's actually flying because when she lands, she has dust on her fingers from touching the light bulbs. I tend to like the way Ride used this---expanding a passing anecdote from a book into the scenery of a pretty smashing song---slightly better than direct quotation. But as a person probably more enamored of fiction than music---and a believer in much aesthetic commonality of the two---I'm happy for any confluence of the two.

To clarify the other references, the Stereolab paraphrases Aureliano Buendia's pronouncement from the first chapter of Marquez's Hundred Years of Solitude: "Across the river are all kinds of magic instruments, while we keep on living like donkeys." (Worthy of inclusion in every song, ever.) And the Denis Johnson line about wanting "to know the exact dimensions of hell" is from The Stars at Noon.

I considered responding to this, and then I realised that it would be easier to refer everyone to "Cemetary Gates".

I'm generally pro-literary references, which act like a web guiding you to other artists, *with the qualification that it has to fit in well with the song* and be fairly subtle. Actually, I even prefer that they don't explicitly cite what the reference is; that makes it more fun when you discover it down the road. Rush's "Xanadu" quoting Samuel Taylor Coleridge worked that way for me; I didn't find out about the actual poem until years after hearing the song. Genesis quoting a simple Christina Rosetti poem as the second verse of "Your Own a Special Way" (one of their more syrupy numbers) also works very effectively to these ears.

Where literary references suck is when it stands out like a sore thumb and the artist comes off as a Sillius Soddus trying to show off. As mentioned previously, Sting can be a noteworthy offender, with his unnecessary "Nabakov" reference in "Don't Stand So Close to Me", or his blech liner notes where he twaddles on about getting accosted by a drunk and soothing him with Shakespeare: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun."

And then there are other references that just sound goofy, no way around it, unfortunately. Like Genesis doing the "Old King Cole" thing in the middle of "Musical Box"; even though it fits with the story of the song, it still sounds kind of cringe-worthy to me.

1. Tim F: please don't take it the wrong way if I note how funny it is that the word is spelled 'Cemetery', and you spell it 'Cemetary' - this not or noteworthy funny in itself so far (is that how they spell it down your way, maybe?) - but also that Morrissey himself couldn't spell it, and the records forever bear the non-existent word 'Cemetry'.

2. Nitsuh: the funny thing is, I know that Ride LP terribly well, and I read F&Z only 3 months ago... and I never noticed any link. If I did, I don't remember it now. Is this something that Ride themselves talked about?

Joe - "Xanadu" is great! But it created a genre unparalleled in its awfulness, metal epics lifted directly from the 'classics' - see "To Tame A Land(Dune)[Okay, metal people have a different definition of 'classic']""Rime of the Ancient Mariner","Loneliness of the Long DIstance Runner","Stranger in a Strange Land", all by the ludicrous Iron Maiden, "The Iliad"(Manowar), "Lord of the Rings"(Styx), etc. Neil Peart was only about a third as smart as he thought he was, but at least he thought about the source a bit, unlike these bands, whose lyrics seem like they were read off the back of a video box.
Could Slayer's "Dittohead" count as being based on the philosophical exegeses of Rush Limbaugh?

Slayer! Good!

UG!

Preten...too long! Big word!

LATVIARRRRRR (in blood)

And if you get THAT reference, you are either myself, or the arsemonkey.

Constant Spray mentioned the Anthropos-Spectre-Beast. This made me extremely happy.

I know that this is a non-answer, but to me it all depends on the "naturalness" of the quote or lift. If the rest of the lyrics are of a certain intellectual level, that you would get the impression that it's only natural for said songwriter to throw in quotes and allusions, then it doesn't really bother me. If it's something that seems forced, or a *pretense* (the actual root behind that pretentious word that none of us can spell), or done with the specific purpose of seeming clever or literary, then it bothers me.

And I know that that is fairly indefensible, as that is all down to interpretation, rather than actual intent. But I guess that is one of the marks of what I consider good songwriting- if they can give the illusion of such things being natural, even if it is a pretense.

Unless, of course, the whole point is to *point out* the pretense. Cemetry Gates is a song that intensely amuses me on that level- the intentional literary name-dropping is what paints such an exact picture of the characters within that song, you can almost see the black-robed types who would go to cemetaries and quote poetry, as you can almost smell the clove cigarettes in the air.

I always liked the name-dropping of Cemetery Gates in that it's somewhat anti-pretentious: the "Keats and Yeats are on your side, while Wilde is on mine" somehow seems like kids lining up action figures for a fight. It's like imagining a cage-match between political figures---reducing supposedly weighty figures to little comcepts you can mentally pit against one another.

i thought the ride reference was from 'raise high the roof beans, carpenter'? it used to be a big discussion on the old shoegazing boards on prodigy.

literary thefts are better than referencing other pop songs.

uh, that would be beams.

I think that referring to othr pop songs in a pop song can be a great thing to do. It all depends who's doing it, I suppose.

yes, referring to pop songs in other pop songs - depends on who's doing it and how it is done. It must be reasonably obscure to work, but not too obscure. My favourite example? "He said the world is as soft as lace" in I don't Love Anyone B&S.