Saturday, April 8, 2017

I'm just thinking about Roy Harper.



I finally got round to putting some Roy Harper onto a thumb drive so I could listen to him in my (CD playerless) car. It was my own "best of" compilation which I made in an attempt to lure someone or other over to the Harper Side.

I started with "1948-ish," from the 1985 collaboration with Jimmy Page entitled (for reasons unknown, but time will tell) Whatever Happened to Jugula? And it hit me (again, for this has hit me many times before) just how good Roy Harper's lyrics are. Just stunning. I love Bob Dylan, and I certainly do value his songs, and especially his lyrics; in fact, I count several of his songs amongst my all-time favorites. But Roy Harper is a better lyricist. Hands down. And Roy's voice is so much better than Bob's that it's not even worth talking about.

The whole song is stunning, but the verse that really hit me this time around was this one:

And shadows fight with men of straw
In pockets of derision
While mother checks up on the stars
Denies her intuition
And sends young Julia to school
To learn an empty vision
That's full of paper tiger rats
To pass to her own children

I mean . . . holy fuck, dude. This Harper fellow is not playing around. He just takes the scalpel in hand and starts cutting. 







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