The melody simmers along with Marty Balin's lead vocal entwining effortlessly with Grace Slick's backing vocal, with Slick usually echoing Balin's lines a few steps behind, then catching up. The sexy words are what grab the listener's attention ("You ripple like a river when I touch you / When I pluck your body like a string / When I start dancin inside ya...") and the music builds nicely to a thumping climax with a noisy sax solo. But though the song is senusous and occasionally joyous, it's easy to overlook the darkness: the repeated chorus goes, "If only you'd believe like I believe, baby, we'd get by / If only you believed in miracles, baby / So would I." Clearly the two, though happy in bed, are not on the same wavelength out of it. The song climaxes, then ends with a sad "So would I" drawn out, in a minor key. A great song, which, thanks to being overplayed on "love song" radio, is easy to take for granted.I also liked hearing Cowboy Junkies' "Misguided Angel," another sexy-sounding song which has a disturbing subtext, ... hell, text. Like most of their songs, it's very soft and slow, with a rustic back-porch-in-darkness sound. The vocalist is singing to her family about the man she's in love with, the "angel" of the title, who is obviously bad for her ("He's crazy and he scares me / But I want him by my side") but who wants to marry her. The pretty but creepy chorus goes:
"Misguided angel, hangin' over me
Heart like a Gabriel, pure and white as ivory
Soul like a Lucifer, black and cold like a piece of lead
Misguided angel, love you til I'm dead."
It's a crazy little thing we call love, isn't it?
2 comments:
Good post. My usual stance is that everything post-Airplane sucks (no, sorry ... *you* didn't build this city on rock and roll or anything else. People with JOBS built this city). I have to admit that I never really listened to the lyrics to this song. Which is weird because it gets played about every 7 minutes on the "classic hits" station that I can pick up in my woodshop.
I generally agree with you on the Starship vs. Airplane stance, though Red Octopus does have the classic "frontman" grouping of Kantner, Slick, and Palin, which most of the rest of the Starship albums did not. It's the Jefferson Flying Vehicle's most melodic LP, a strong "pop" album, in a good way.
And though I also hate "We Built This City," I must admit I sing along loudly when it comes on the car radio. If it's on my iPod, you'll never find out.
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