No Sleep Till Valhalla

It should be mega obvs that you’re NOT going to drop off to sleep easily when Helter Skelter pops into your head just as it touches the pillow. That right there is a harbinger of wakey-wakeyness.

Helter-skelter
     adverb
     in undue haste, confusion, or disorder

     noun
1 : a disorderly confusion : turmoil
2 British : a spiral slide around a tower at an amusement park      

     adjective
     confusedly hurried : precipitate

…Paul remembered: “We got the engineers and [the producer] to hike up the drum sound and really get it as loud and horrible as it could and we played it and said, ‘No, it still sounds too safe, it’s got to get louder and dirtier.’ We tried everything we could to dirty it up and in the end you can hear Ringo say, ‘I’ve got blisters on my fingers!’ That wasn’t a joke put-on: his hands were actually bleeding at the end of the take, he’d been drumming so ferociously. We did work very hard on that track.” (source) 

When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide,
Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride,
Till I get to the bottom, and I see you again,
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!

Paul ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ McCartney wrote this absolute ripper, this screamer? That will always blow my mind. I could totally see John Lennon, who always seemed more emotionally raw but Mr. Fluffy? Clearly I was wrong about Paul.

NOT a screamer but Richard Thompson’s Wall of Death is another favorite song with a carnival ride metaphor. If I haven’t mentioned it already (and I probably have) I absolutely hate carnival rides – always have. Life is scary and unpredictable enough without them. The symbolism is perfect.

Another tune lodged in my bean yesterday, (though it didn’t keep me from entering the Land of Nod) was Bruce Springsteen’s Atlantic City.

Well they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night
now they blew up his house too
Down on the boardwalk they’re gettin’ ready for a fight
gonna see what them racket boys can do

When Springsteen first came out, Daddy proclaimed him the second coming of Bob Dylan. My old man was stoked! I didn’t really see it but I was more into Elton John, Paul Simon, and Bowie at the time.

By the time Springsteen's Nebraska came out in ‘82, I was totally sold. That album was perfect! My musical tastes had expanded. At that point I was mostly listening to bands like Human Sexual Response, Mission of Burma, Talking Heads, John Cale, and the list goes on and on and on. There was room for Bruce.

Well now everything dies baby that’s a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back
Put your makeup on fix your hair up pretty
And meet me tonight in Atlantic City

What’s gonna play on the internal turntable today?

Beastie Boys – No Sleep Till Brooklyn