Beginning To Feel The Pain was a song that I remembered fondly from the 70s though I never heard it for years afterwards. The opening lines and the refrain were what particularly stuck with me.

I couldn’t find the song on You Tube when I first delved into that Pandora’s Box. Someone’s put it up there now though.

In hindsight it tips over a bit into schmaltz with the strings towards the end.

Silly, silly man.

It does both.

I think this lyric is fantastic, precisely because of the rhymes and scansion.

The rhyme scheme for the first verse is AABB*CC*DEFF* (where the * is for a part rhyme – which is more than common in popular music.) Moreover the D and E lines have an internal rhyme of lunch with bunch. Indeed, if you consider the line break is at “lunch” – which verses 2 and 3 suggest is more correct – the rhyme scheme becomes a near perfect AABB*CCDDEE.
The second and third verses both have an absolute AABBCCDDEE rhyming.

As to the scanning; it’s brilliant. In fact the line, “Undoubtedly I must have read the evening paper then,” is a wonderful iambic heptameter.

“There’s not, I think, a single episode of Dallas that I didn’t see,” is superb; the best line in any Abba song bar none. If you allow the “see-ee” at the end as an iamb it’s also a near perfect iambic nonameter.

The only thing I dislike about the lyric is it’s written in USian. Gotten is now archaic in British English – except for the phrase “ill-gotten gains” – and we don’t say “to go” but “to take away.” But then “to go” provides the rhyme.

Plus there’s an element of SF to it all, with the looking back to something that has changed, the implication of a life transformed.

I’ve always had a soft spot for the Blancmange version.

There is also an eight minute version on You Tube.

The following programme was a retrospective of Kinks performances from the BBC archive which included this gem.

Not a hit at the time – nor was the LP from which it came despite it being a critical success and now much revered – The Village Green Preservation Society prefigures Ray’s movement into the chronicling of Englishness. It hits perfectly that note of wistful nostalgia encompassed by John Major quoting Orwell’s remark about old maids bicycling to Holy Communion. But Ray’s lyrics are a bit more amusing.

It wasn’t till I finally bought the album Everyone Is Everybody Else that I realised that the jingle which Henry used to play on his Saturday morning Radio 1 show,
“So goodbye, pleased to know you,
We had some laughs along the way,
But I have to be leaving,
And there’s nothing you can do to make me stay,”
came from the track Poor Boys’ Blues.

I’m Over You is from 1972, around the time when their record deal with EMI’s Harvest label (which was said to be named after them – though that may be an urban myth) was running down.

It gained some airplay (Johnnie Walker’s record of the week I think) but sank almost without trace.

It’s one of those songs where the lyric seems to be saying the oppposite of its apparent meaning.

I haven’t been able to find a video for this but I did find a site where you can play the track. The link leads to it.

Barclay James Harvest – I’m Over You

According to Wikipedia Pete Townshend called it a “clumsy piece of writing.” Whether that comment relates to the music or lyric is not entirely clear.

I tend to the lyric as the intro (in a style much imitated later by U2) is a classic bit of rock guitar; and the booming out of that first loud note made the song instantly unforgettable.

I particularly like the line, “He conducted the Hallé Orchestra at the age of twenty two.”

It’s another from that school of song with jaunty tune and much less jaunty lyric.

I see from the label this was produced by Mike Batt! I have previously mentioned Mike Batt in connection with this post.

98.6 on its release was considered by some to be the archetypical song of its time.

It’s also said (and mentioned in Keith’s Wiki entry) that its title refers to the human body temperature in degrees Fahrenheit. To my mind that allusion in the lyric is more than a little strained.

And seven seconds later?

Mark it: seven seconds.

That’s all the time it took for the commentator (Clive Tyldesley?) to mention a certain event in 1966. I think that makes some sort of record.

Not as satisfying a record as the original 7 seconds, as by Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry, which I append below for your pleasure.

7 seconds is, I believe, the only song to feature a lyric in Wolof to trouble the British charts.

Did the Tories have permission to do this?

One of the songs was Bowie’s Changes, which contains the line “Don’t want to be a richer man.”

I don’t suppose Dave does: he comes from money and took good care to marry even more.

The song also has, “You’ve left us up to our necks in it.” Was this a prediction, Dave?

Look out you rock ‘n’ rollers.

A (restricted access) blog which I frequent aired complaints that this is a rip off of Riot In Cell Block Nine which, according to Wiki, the Beach Boys used to play in their concerts around that time. Some might, instead, call it a homage.

The lyric does contain what I think is rather a good pair of lines in:-
“The pen is mightier than the sword
But no match for a gun (when there’s a riot going on.)” The parentheses are mine.

The blurb on this You Tube item says it’s a different version from the one on Surf’s Up.

This is the more familiar (to me) track from the album.