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Post by Nonfatman on Oct 30, 2009 21:42:28 GMT -5
Did Ian predict the collapse of the financial system, and the resulting chaos? Certainly seems that way. The slick tycoons, rich buffoons and mealy mouthed politicians do seem to have ushered in a new dark age, don't you think, and we're not that far off from screaming families lining the streets and putting through the windows of corner shops.
Jeff
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Post by TM on Oct 31, 2009 8:29:14 GMT -5
That is pretty amazing. While I loved the song as a teenager, I remember thinking how far removed it was from any sort of reality. Yeah right. His lyrics do seem to include the occasional premonition here and there. Let's just hope Heavy Horses isn't another of them.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 5, 2009 23:49:09 GMT -5
Dark Ages, is really one of my most favorite songs when it comes to the lyrics. Completely dramatic and amazing. In terms of predicting financial collapse, it's actually a lot more common that one would think Austrian economists in particular are quite good at forseeing economic change pretty far in advance. I think the reason Ian wrote this song, was not because some technicality showed a financial collapse was coming, but instead that the system as a whole was run in a completely ridiculous way, that collapse of the system is bound to happen. And I have strong faith that it will.
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Post by peterjamesbond on Nov 7, 2010 23:06:00 GMT -5
Lol, all you younger folk. That song was a prelude to the coming ice age, all predicted widely by the scientists concerned about global cooling in the mid 1970's. Here's the link to the 1974 Time Magazine lead on the coming Ice Age: www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html I was in college at the time, remember it all well. I've had a chuckle or two during the current debates about global warning as I remembered these dire predictions, but that's another tale all together......
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2010 23:18:51 GMT -5
peterjamesbond, you should not laugh off other persons views so lightly, especially if it's based just on an assumed age.
While it may have been about the oncoming "ice age" there was an obvious presence of the concern of oil rigs and big companies, vast seas of consumers, and the "dark ages" that would come from such a ridiculous system of doing things--both for the people and society as a whole as well as for, like you point out, the environment.
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Post by peterjamesbond on Nov 7, 2010 23:21:11 GMT -5
Ah, not to offend, and not laughing off others. I agree all those themes are present. Wonderful song, I listened to it endlessly when it first came out.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 11, 2010 0:58:21 GMT -5
It certainly is a wonderful song, one of my favorite in Tull's whole repertoire, one of the many amazing songs that make of Stormwatch--one of the best rock albums I've ever heard I particularly love Martin's solo bit in the middle of Dark Ages and the way the whole band plays along with him (Ian is particularly great with the bass on this song) it sends chills down my spine every time! To me, Dark Ages seems like the biggest powerhouse and most epic song on the Stormwatch album, so in a way it was the "classic" Tull line-up's swan song, eh? Certainly a stormy one indeed.
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Post by earsoftin on Mar 27, 2011 13:28:27 GMT -5
While this song might have contemporary resonance, I think it’s better seen in the context of the time of Stormwatch. The winter of 1978 was known as the ‘Winter of Discontent’ in the UK, with many union disputes (‘Jagged fires mark the picket lines’). It led to the victory in the General Election of the Conservative Margaret Thatcher, who made much of her background as the daughter of a hard working shop-keeper in small town England ( ‘in corner shops where keepers kept the country's life-blood blue’.) She also drew on religious rhetoric at times and I think ‘try the trick with loaves and fishes shared’ may be an oblique reference to this. On top of this is IA’s well worn anti-consumerist theme, with this song needing to be seen as a pair with ‘Flying Dutchman’. This adds up to a weary critique of a world in which chaos ruled but most people, anaesthetised by consumerism, could be bothered to do anything about it (‘where slick tycoons and rich buffoons have opened up the seam of golden nights and champagne flights ad-man overkill and in the haze consumer crazed we take the sugar pill’.) If the song is prescient it is in predicting both the riots of the early 1980s and, more importantly, the consumerism that really let rip in that decade. It is a great song and there’s much more that could be said about it. It does represent the last of that period of Tull, as IA turned towards taking his part in the enterprise culture that Thatcher extolled. Does the cover of Walk into Light mark the end of this process? It’s not just musically the end of a particular period, but I think lyrically too it heralds a shift towards more US themes and away from UK politics. That’s something we could say a good deal about, but ‘Farm on the Freeway’ is perhaps a good marker for this.
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Post by Nonfatman on Mar 27, 2011 21:44:44 GMT -5
While this song might have contemporary resonance, I think it’s better seen in the context of the time of Stormwatch. The winter of 1978 was known as the ‘Winter of Discontent’ in the UK, with many union disputes (‘Jagged fires mark the picket lines’). It led to the victory in the General Election of the Conservative Margaret Thatcher, who made much of her background as the daughter of a hard working shop-keeper in small town England ( ‘in corner shops where keepers kept the country's life-blood blue’.) She also drew on religious rhetoric at times and I think ‘try the trick with loaves and fishes shared’ may be an oblique reference to this. On top of this is IA’s well worn anti-consumerist theme, with this song needing to be seen as a pair with ‘Flying Dutchman’. This adds up to a weary critique of a world in which chaos ruled but most people, anaesthetised by consumerism, could be bothered to do anything about it (‘where slick tycoons and rich buffoons have opened up the seam of golden nights and champagne flights ad-man overkill and in the haze consumer crazed we take the sugar pill’.) If the song is prescient it is in predicting both the riots of the early 1980s and, more importantly, the consumerism that really let rip in that decade. It is a great song and there’s much more that could be said about it. It does represent the last of that period of Tull, as IA turned towards taking his part in the enterprise culture that Thatcher extolled. Does the cover of Walk into Light mark the end of this process? It’s not just musically the end of a particular period, but I think lyrically too it heralds a shift towards more US themes and away from UK politics. That’s something we could say a good deal about, but ‘Farm on the Freeway’ is perhaps a good marker for this. Interesting, and thank you for the historical context, Earsoftin. That's what makes Ian's songwriting so great. He may be writing about a certain period, as you say, but he does it in such a general way that it has broad applicability to similar historical events that preceded or followed the particular event he was writing about. Fallen on Hard Times is another example of this, and so is Commons Brawl, and for that matter, Aqualung. His lyrics have a timeless quality. Jeff
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