For a Song: Any King’s Shilling

Elvis Costello: Any King‘s Shilling

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Elvis Costello is an artist who has recorded music in more different styles than anyone else I can think of, and most of it works. Even by his standards though, Spike was an unusual album for Costello. There are two collaborations with Paul McCartney, six numbers with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and even a couple of Irish numbers. Musically, Any King’s Shilling is one of the latter. The album was unusual enough that Musician Magazine got Costello to write an article for them, discussing the album and its songs. Costello explained that taking the Kings shilling was a euphemism for signing up to the army, and went on to say this about the song:

My grandfather was a first-generation immigrant from Ireland and when his father was murdered-that's another story-he ended up in an orphanage and then the army, He was a trumpet player, a bandsman. He got badly wounded in the First World War and then got stationed in Dublin, ironically. His story was, just before the Irish uprising of 1916, his friends warned him to keep out of the way.

Journeys By Water

The image I have chosen for this post is the tarot card for the six of swords. I enjoy the artwork in tarot decks, and understanding the meaning of the cards helps me appreciate the intent of the artist. But sometimes, people get carried away, and make their interpretations overly esoteric. The classic image for the six of swords says it all: the card signifies a journey by water. This can be taken literally. Metaphorically, it represents a rite of passage. This kind of journey often involves a triggering event, often emotionally painful, which prompts the journey in the first place. The card shows the journey in progress; it has nothing to say about the outcome.

Al of the above applies equally well to songs about journeys by water. Let’s consider some examples.

Hem: Sailor

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Sailor is a song of yearning. The narrator is in love, but does not know if her love is returned. She will leave the shore to see the object of her affection, and hope for the best. The lyric is pretty simple, but Hem does a beautiful job of filling in the blanks with the musical setting.

Richard Thompson: Mingulay Boat Song

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Mingulay Boat Song is thought by many to be a traditional Scottish folk song. It describes the life of a crew of simple fishermen, eager to come to shore and be reunited with their families. But the song is actually a nostalgic piece, idealizing a life that no longer existed at the time it was written.. The island of Mingulay, of the coast of Scotland, had been occupied continuously for at least two thousand years, until it was abandoned in 1912. Mingulay Boat Song, however, wasn’t written until 1938, by Sir Hugh S Roberton, in Glasgow. Roberton wrote the song for the Glasgow Orpheus Choir, which he directed from 1901 to 1951. The choir started as an amateur choir associated with a men’s work society, but Roberton set high standards for the group. In time, they would achieve a measure of fame, both in Europe and North America.

Mingulay Boat Song has passed into the folk cannon by now. Richard Thompson’s performance clearly shows why.

Elvis Costello: Last Boat Leaving

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Returning to our theme of rites of passage, we come to Last Boat Leaving. Elvis Costello wrote this one, under his given name of Declan McManus, for a movie called The Courier. The film tells the story of a man who discovers that the courier company he works for is a cover for a big-time drug dealer. After Costello finished the song, the film makers changed the ending of the movie, and the song no longer worked. So a shorter instrumental version was used in the film, and the full version heard here was released on Costello’s next album.

I assume that the original version of the movie had the hero going to jail at the end. Last Boat Leaving is a tale of a man regretting his actions once he finds that he is to be separated from his family and sent to prison. Clearly, for him, this will be a rite of passage. The man who left will not be the same man who returns. It’s not necessary to see the film to appreciate this song, and I have never seen it. The song speaks for itself.

John Wesley Harding: William Glenn

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William Glenn is another song of crime and punishment. Glenn is a sea captain who has committed a murder on land for the love of another man’s wife. When he and his crew set out to sea, they are beset by a deadly storm. Once the crew learns of Glenn’s crime, they cast him overboard. Immediately, the storm ceases, and the crew is saved. Glenn’s journey takes him to the point where he can admit his guilt, and save his crew if not himself.

The song lightly touches on an old Celtic belief. Death, the ultimate rite of passage, is often depicted in the old tales as a journey over water. The spirits of warriors who fell in battle would be collected and taken to the sacred island of Tir na Nog. In many of the oldest songs of the British Isles, one finds death and the ocean side by side.

Sting: The Wild Wild Sea

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The Wild Wild Sea, it seems to me, is a tale of a haunted dream. The black sails suggest death, and the way the character appears in the song suggests that the father is a ghost. Indeed, the song comes from Sting’s album The Soul Cages, which he wrote while dealing with the deaths of his parents. Just as William Glenn presents the journey toward death as a voyage through a stormy sea, so is the journey through the mourning process. I have several friends, and I can also include myself in this, who recently lost a loved one. May this song help us on our journey as well.

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So there are many different kinds of rites of passage, and there are many different kinds of songs of the sea to describe them. Likewise, the six of swords embodies all of these different meanings. I see no reason to look for more.

Radio in the 80s

The music of the 1980s grew out of reactions to what was on the radio. Remember that, in the 1970s, radio was the main way people had of learning about music. AM radio in the 60s was all about the pop charts, but FM radio grew to fill a need to provide alternatives. In the 70s, that meant art-rock and the first wave of singer-songwriters. Meanwhile, the charts were full of lushly produced love ballads and the macho posturing of hard rock. A two word description of the music of the period might be, “artful pose”.

Towards the end of the seventies, some musicians sought to break away from that. The big idea behind punk was to smash down the pose, and present something real. Coming close on its heals, new wave confronted the artful aspect, by presenting ditties, songs the reveled in their disposability, and therefore made great party music. It is ironic that punk itself eventually became a pose. And some of those disposable new wave songs were created with such love that they have become impossible to dispose of. New wave music also reacted to the overt emotionality of 70s ballads by presenting an aloof attitude, and exploring themes of miscommunication and alienation.

Meanwhile, radical changes were in store for radio itself. By the mid 80s, MTV had become the main source of new music, with radio following its lead. As MTV scaled back their music programming later, the internet took over, and radio permanently lost its primacy. Meanwhile, radio stations were being bought up, and becoming parts of large corporations. This tended to homogenize what could be heard on the air. The corporate owners also created niche programming, so that a station might only play country, or only hits of the 70s.

Songwriters were thinking about all of this as the late 70s became the 80s became the early 90s. And sometimes, they wrote music about it.

Elvis Costello: Radio Radio

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Elvis Costello thought about how listening to music on the radio could limit or broaden, but mostly limit, your choices. And his conclusions became a classic. Costello considers how a musician must rely on radio to gain and hold an audience, and how this can dictate what and how you play. This is both more and less true now than it was thirty years ago. Radio formats are stricter than ever, and maximizing your reach on the internet may mean making artistic compromises too. But it is also easier than ever to seek out unusual music.

Thomas Dolby: Radio Silence

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Where Elvis Costello’s radio tries to dictate what kind of music he makes and sells, Thomas Dolby’s serves to expose him to the world. Radio Silence is all about keeping secrets and maintaining privacy in an age of communication overload.

Wall of Voodoo: Mexican Radio

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Stan Ridgeway of Wall of Voodoo presents radio in a foreign language as a metaphor. Lines of communication are open, but no communication is occurring. There must also be mutual understanding, no matter what the technology.

Chris Whitley: Dust Radio

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In all these radio songs, Dust Radio gives off the most puzzling signal. Chris Whitley even emphasizes this. The song ends with a potential listener retuning the radio to try to get a better signal, and getting other stations by mistake. Whitley seems to be saying that this relationship feels so strong to him that it must be giving off its own signal, but it is nevertheless a private thing.

R. E. M.: Radio Song

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R. E. M.’s Radio Song brings us full circle. R. E. M. had been a cult band throughout the 80s, never achieving mass success. By 1991, they were leading off an album with this song, about how a song can get stuck in your head. There is a definite element of sour grapes here. Ironically, the second song on this same album would get stuck in a lot of people’s heads. It was called Losing My Religion.

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