I really have no grasp on the world. Until last year i had no conception of escalators over hills possibly even existing (we just don’t have them here), but also until this morning i had no idea of Carla Bley’s 1976 jazz opera of the same name. So now i don’t know where to place this song. I had always thought that it referred to some imagined, wonderous, impossible place of memory and longing, but now it might be a real escalator or perhaps refer to that opera, both themselves equally investable as wonderous, impossible places of memory and longing.
I had to look up the lyrics to this song to see how close it was to the film Bringing Up Baby, or moreso Katharine Hepburn, complete with her name at the end. It’s in plain English – the plainest – but i’ve never been able to hear it before. But it’s not exactly congruous with everything in her life or movies, and it drives me crazy. What is this song about? Maybe it just is about her, and everything that doesn’t fit is the result of misheard details that ring too much suitable for their venerated image of her to be fact-checked. Sometimes the particulars simply don’t matter. I’m just glad there’s not only a band who sounds like this, but sing songs about things such as this. A chart hit for Talulah Gosh. The indie charts, but still it was a hit.
You can trace it, all that fed into Talulah Gosh – every influence, every circumstance, every precedent. You can examine the state of the world and the music scene at the time they found themselves able to be this band. You can also precedent the kind of reproach and repugnance this can stir. But despite it all being so exemplifiedly possible, there is one thing: Bands are simply not meant to be like this.
Bands are not meant to sound like this. They are not meant to be as sweet as this. They are not meant to be made this way, consist of what they do, be about this, be as Talulah Gosh were. It’s no miracle that Talulah Gosh were the band they were (though i hold them with as much devotion and reverence as anyone has ever held any miracle [not really, but close]). It’s just that they were the band they were, perfectly so, in the face of everything that would deem them wrong and objectionable.
How easy would it have been for them to never have tried? How frighteningly possible is it that they could never have had that realisation that they could try? This extends to so many bands, but today it’s Talulah Gosh. The punkest band there ever was (not really, but close).
This is one of those songs where its immediacy and ubiquity in reference, recommendation and assignation as a genre defining song overshadows what a great song it really is. That it is the go-to song for this kind of music, that it is the depth delved not only of Talulah Gosh’s output but of every similar band one with any weakness for this kind of music should find, i kind of lose enthusiasm for a song when it arises solely again and again as the only song deemed worth of anyone’s time.
But then it comes to my head one day, and to my stereo to make it precise, and all recollection of why i fell in love with it and where i was in this life then rushes back and guilt sets in for admonishing its prevalence and overuse. That this song perhaps means so much to people – it is their favourite song, they are going to want to offer their favourite song. That someone like a younger me will find this, find similar bliss, and set out on a similar voyage through wonderful music (only to arrive at the same point of exasperation of its entry level overuse).
I used to not like how this song sped up during the chorus, wanting to remain in the lazy, soothing sunshineness of the verse and finding it hard to bear such a jolt in tempo and feeling. I was wrong about that. This song could be no other way. It is the link between the earlier, faster, more straightforward punky songs and other Talulah Gosh songs like Escalator Over The Hill and what would happen with Heavenly. That’s some journey. I love every part of it. To be on it…
When i write, or dare to speak, or express myself in anyway, it stems from either from obligation or some force impelling me to do so, with such burst of ideas from the outset in either case that soon it becomes too much to organise all of it, or too much effort to pay tribute to all those ideas and the ideas that stem from those and so on. The uphill. I write so slowly and awkwardly that if i want to get away and do something of a day i really should keep these to a minimum, writing a sentence or two on the instant, most base aesthetic response to these songs. I don’t know why i feel i should have to do more, especially because i have no readership. It is to take responsibility for appreciation of these songs to a level i can’t avoid feeling is due them.
So i do have a lot to say, but… effort. I wish i could make it, to tell you something about this song other than i love it and the layering of voices/harmonies within is the best in all recorded music.
Adding Machine 