#31Songs (2): A Political Song

Hard Objects, by Art Objects

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KteB7M4GE7s

The origins of The Blue Aeroplanes lie in a band called Art Objects, and in the light of the many changes of personnel in the Aeroplanes, and the minimal difference between Art Objects and their successor, it makes sense to start here. Art Objects played their first gig at Aston Court festival in the summer of 1978, at which point they consisted of Gerard Langley on vocals, Wojtek Dmochowski as a dancer, and J. J. Key on guitar and other noises. (My account comes from a piece by Bill Stair, who joined the following year as a bassist.)  It’s clear that from the outset the band had no intention of being a standard rock unit, and though the following year they added a drummer, another guitarist, and the aforementioned bassist, their approach was experimental. That said, as is clear from one listen to ‘Hard Objects’, they were perfectly capable of writing catchy tunes.  ‘Hard Objects’ was recorded early in 1980 and released on newly formed Bristol label Fried Egg Records.

Many elements of the Aeroplanes’ sound are in place: Gerard doesn’t sing, and so the usual melodic focal point of popular song is denied us; but the backing vocals compensate by twisting a vocal melody around his declaimed lyrics; there are melodic elements in the guitars and in the bass, but there are also more experimental, guitar-derived shriekings and groanings.  The style of the ending anticipates the end of ‘And Stones’ from the Swagger album, with the climax of the music coinciding with the end of the lyrics; and the delay-pedal guitars also anticipate that song.

Lyrically, though, it’s much more direct and message-oriented than Gerard Langley’s other material: it’s a protest song, and one can imagine it working well in a scene of CND and other leftish gigs.  The opening line is pure blues, of course, but I like to think of it as being derived indirectly, via W. H. Auden’s blues-poems from the 1930s, of which ‘Funeral Blues’ is now by far the best known.  The delivery is punchy and direct. Something that I can’t quite put my finger on goes wrong in the conclusion (‘The nuclear bomb …’ onwards): I don’t think it’s so much that the lyrics spell things out too obviously and are a little overwrought, but rather that the sneering tone in the delivery is over-emphatic: the sneer is intended for those in power, for sure, but the implication is that we as listeners won’t get the point of the lyrics without it; and given that the lyrics are very direct at this point, that seems to be a failure of nerve or lack of faith in the audience.

LYRICS (my transcription)

I woke up this morning I walked to the wall (HARD OBJECTS)
The size of their guns did not worry me at all (HARD OBJECTS)
The beauty of the morning was a wound still ahead (HARD OBJECTS)
The gaunt stab of weapons and things better left unsaid.

Living in the shadow of — HARD OBJECTS
Carving at a road with — HARD OBJECTS
Another cut or two with — HARD OBJECTS

I was living at the heart of one room space
With a badly twisted body and infected face
The hole in the ribs had exposed a [? giant lung]
Oh what it is to me, young

I’m threatened day and night by — HARD OBJECTS
Suffering death by — HARD OBJECTS
Hung about and weighted with — HARD OBJECTS

Well the front page is full till the flags have been raised
A captive beast staggering bloody and crazed
It’s a myth, an old myth of cruelty that we shared
That you can die as you live or bring pressure to bear.

Without listening for the sound of — HARD OBJECTS
Looking for the prying of — HARD OBJECTS
The ticking and the clicking of — HARD OBJECTS
The whirring and the grinding of — HARD OBJECTS
The spokes and wheels and ratchets of — HARD OBJECTS
I hate the uses made of — HARD OBJECTS
The authority invested in — HARD OBJECTS
Beaten in the face by . . .

HARD OBJECTS

The nuclear bomb is a blunt instrument in the hands of disturbed children playing […] marbles.
The law is a blunt instrument for the use, as they so wish, of those in a position of authority.
The mass media is a blunt instrument in the hands of men whose sole desire it is to rob a bank.
The economy is a blunt instrument with which the politically wealthy can have the poor or subservient systematically beaten to ensure the minimum resistance.
Desire and affection are blunt instruments effectively employed by professional […] whose hands are permanently stained with hypocrisy and printer’s ink.
Education is a two-edged weapon which after a certain point those in power would like to keep for their exclusive use.
And the voice of protest and dissent is the only weapon possessed by the majority of victims and it’s lying unused at the feet of people too busy living and dying to bother to pick it up.