Some songs are about nothing, some songs tackle the big questions & some are for entertainment value alone.
Within this there is a type favoured by C&W, the narrative version; songs that tell stories.
Johnny Cash sang a few.
The Ballad of John & Yoko is a ballad about John & Yoko's mad marriage & honeymoon (you all knew that).
Even Barry Manilow had one or two up his sleeve. At the Copa, Copa Cabana.. and as for “if you like Pina Colda...” (whoever sang that???).
We could devote a whole thread to Tom Wait's and his tales of misery, woe & weirdness alone....

Closer to home, I think that Jawbone & the Air -Rifle is an absolute masterpiece mixing a creepy story worthy of the House of Hammer with a suitably twisted & driven soundtrack to give it all the power possible.

However, I wondered if here, we could take a song we like & explain the story in any kind of detail.

I'll kick off with my current faves, Handsome Family, “my sister's tiny hands"...
In this song, a brother and sister are born as twins, their closeness is immediately identified.

He goes on to give some background of their life together. Briefly.
Tragedy strikes (well they are a country band) and she is killed by a snakebite.

Gradually the surviving twin descends into madness, initially trying to kill as many snakes as he can whilst drunk.
He is tortured by her voice and visions of her at the riverbank and ultimately he exacts his revenge on nature itself by

Set to a haunting melody with auto harp & ambient background sounds that add to the sense of disengagement.
Cheery stuff eh?
But a ripping bloody yarn.
And a great great song.

over to you...

Lots of early Momus.

"The Bishonen" is about a boy brought up to live "the myth of the bishonen,
The youthful hero doomed to fall like blossom"

He is taken on various adventures by the retainer hired by "Old eternal bachelor" who he has been given into the care of, taught how to fight with a sword, how to be a misogynist ("The fun would come when I'd got them to love me"), how to be good with words, and various other things.

When the "Aging Martinet" dies, and the retainer goes to be a mercenary, he gives it up, gets a job in a bank (where the junior ranks call him "Fairy") and gets married, while still feeling guilty that no one has yet killed him, as should happen to a Bishonen.

The last verse:
"Father spare my shame, let me pass my name
To a boy with greater beauty and more bravery
For if I have a son I'm going to raise him to die young
And lay him in the grave that you prepared for me."


All done with a kind of Japanese Scottishness feel to it - difficult to describe, though it's there if you listen.

MR L Reed,tells a few stories in his songs, here I think is an interesting one.
A man (l reed) is beginning to see a light. Some people are working very hard, but are not getting it right. They are breakfasting at night, with their teeth in their hands, so they can mess the hair of the Knight. There are some bells up in the sky,
but noone can ring them because the string has been cut in two.
At this point Mr reed meets himself in a dream, and proceeds to tell himself that everything is alright. Two men are coming down the road(presumably Mr reed 1and 2, they have a decision to make, based upon their preference between the colours black and blue.
There are problems, but none of them are Mr reeds.(He must have picked the correct colour.) Whereupon he again begins to see a light.

See this country rockabilly cat is getting jaded; played all over the world and the sameness was wearing and wearying....Spain, Italy...it was all like Memphis to him. He was hungry for a new kind of kick[thanks Lux] and none was available clef-wise. So he decided to take a long cruise to the southern hemisphere. At a port of call on the African continent, he was engrossed by new sounds and rhythms even though at first he found them off-putting. As he became more familiar with the music and accompanying dance, he concluded that it was not only beyond his experience, but different than anything he had been told about.
He decided to leave the cruise ship so he could become friends with the musicians including the one who was generally acknowledged to be the musical leader. He began to play the indigenous music and became enthralled. He even took up a percussion instrument which he had not played before.
It was through percussion that he felt he had become genuinely attuned to the music which pleased him greatly. As he continued on with the new music, he found that he was coming under the spell of something else too: the band leader's daughter. As the infatuation was becoming deeper, the captain of the cruise ship came and ordered him to reboard and leave it all behind. Even though the rockabilly cat had only been in Africa a short while, he knew that here he was destined to stay. It was without remorse that he conveyed to the captain his intention to remain among his new musical comperes and the alluring Mae.


"I rocked in Italy and I rocked in Spain,
I rocked in Memphis, it was all the same
Til I rocked over Africa and rolled off the ship
And seen them natives doing an odd looking skip
I parted the weeds and looked over the swamp
And seen them cats doing the Ubangi Stomp"

"The Ubangi Stomp it's rock n' roll
That beats any thing that's ever been told
Ubangi Stomp, in Ubangi style
The backbeat drives a cool cat wild"

I looked up the chief, he invited me in
He said "Heap big jam session about to begin"
He handed me a drum and I picked up the beat
That crazy thing sent shivers to my feet
I rocked and I rolled and I skipped with a smile
I done the Ubangi Stomp Ubangi style"

"Well we rocked all night and part of the day
Had a good boppin' time with the chief's daughter Mae
I was making the time and gettin' in the know
When the captain said "Son we gotta go"
I said that's all right, you go right ahead
I'm gonna Ubangi Stomp til I roll over dead"

One Reason why I rate Doctor Faustus so much is because its an intriguing synopsys of the historical story.

Here is a summary of the story, the lyrics are set below:

Doctor Faustus, a well-respected German scholar, grows dissatisfied with the limits of traditional forms of knowledge—logic, medicine, law, and religion—and decides that he wants to learn to practice magic. His friends Valdes and Cornelius instruct him in the black arts, and he begins his new career as a magician by summoning up Mephastophilis, a devil. Despite Mephastophilis’s warnings about the horrors of hell, Faustus tells the devil to return to his master, Lucifer, with an offer of Faustus’s soul in exchange for twenty-four years of service from Mephastophilis. Meanwhile, Wagner, Faustus’s servant, has picked up some magical ability and uses it to press a clown named Robin into his service.

Mephastophilis returns to Faustus with word that Lucifer has accepted Faustus’s offer. Faustus experiences some misgivings and wonders if he should repent and save his soul; in the end, though, he agrees to the deal, signing it with his blood. As soon as he does so, the words “Homo fuge,” Latin for “O man, fly,” appear branded on his arm. Faustus again has second thoughts, but Mephastophilis bestows rich gifts on him and gives him a book of spells to learn. Later, Mephastophilis answers all of his questions about the nature of the world, refusing to answer only when Faustus asks him who made the universe. This refusal prompts yet another bout of misgivings in Faustus, but Mephastophilis and Lucifer bring in personifications of the Seven Deadly Sins to prance about in front of Faustus, and he is impressed enough to quiet his doubts.

Armed with his new powers and attended by Mephastophilis, Faustus begins to travel. He goes to the pope’s court in Rome, makes himself invisible, and plays a series of tricks. He disrupts the pope’s banquet by stealing food and boxing the pope’s ears. Following this incident, he travels through the courts of Europe, with his fame spreading as he goes. Eventually, he is invited to the court of the German emperor, Charles V (the enemy of the pope), who asks Faustus to allow him to see Alexander the Great, the famed fourth-century b.c. Macedonian king and conqueror. Faustus conjures up an image of Alexander, and Charles is suitably impressed. A knight scoffs at Faustus’s powers, and Faustus chastises him by making antlers sprout from his head. Furious, the knight vows revenge.

Meanwhile, Robin, Wagner’s clown, has picked up some magic on his own, and with his fellow stablehand, Rafe, he undergoes a number of comic misadventures. At one point, he manages to summon Mephastophilis, who threatens to turn Robin and Rafe into animals (or perhaps even does transform them; the text isn’t clear) to punish them for their foolishness.

Faustus then goes on with his travels, playing a trick on a horse-courser along the way. Faustus sells him a horse that turns into a heap of straw when ridden into a river. Eventually, Faustus is invited to the court of the Duke of Vanholt, where he performs various feats. The horse-courser shows up there, along with Robin, a man named Dick (Rafe in the A text), and various others who have fallen victim to Faustus’s trickery. But Faustus casts spells on them and sends them on their way, to the amusement of the duke and duchess.

As the twenty-four years of his deal with Lucifer come to a close, Faustus begins to dread his impending death. He has Mephastophilis call up Helen of Troy, the famous beauty from the ancient world, and uses her presence to impress a group of scholars. An old man urges Faustus to repent, but Faustus drives him away. Faustus summons Helen again and exclaims rapturously about her beauty. But time is growing short. Faustus tells the scholars about his pact, and they are horror-stricken and resolve to pray for him. On the final night before the expiration of the twenty-four years, Faustus is overcome by fear and remorse. He begs for mercy, but it is too late. At midnight, a host of devils appears and carries his soul off to hell. In the morning, the scholars find Faustus’s limbs and decide to hold a funeral for him.

The Lyrics:

(parts in [ ] are Brix)

[Yeah... yeah...]
Doctor Faustus
Horseshoes splacking
Swallows hay cart, cart horse
Of the peasants blocking his path
[Yeah...]
Doctor Faustus
Power showing
Spits out hay cart, cart horse hay and box [yeah]
Outside the gates of the town of Anholt

... part...
[Had your chances... you've had your chance
You've had your chances... you've had your chance
Yeah....]

Doctor Faustus
At the court of the Count
Made fruits exotic pleasure-licious
Appear behind curtains in Winter

[Banana... apple... plum]
Faustus [exotic fruits]
At the court of the decadent Count [yeah]
Made animals from sunny lands appear [banana]
In the sparse gardens
[Strawberries... exotic fruits
Had your chances... you've had your chance
You've had your chances... you've had your chance
Banana]

Doctor Faustus [Yeah]
Horseshoes splacking
Swallows hay cart, cart horse [cherry]
Hay and box [cherry]
Of the peasants blocking his path [banana]
Had to leave (apples... cherries)
His drinking student friends (exotic fruits)

[Doctor Faustus... Doctor Faustus]
(? MES quiet background vox])
[Yeah... exotic fruits... strawberry
Doctor Faustus... Doctor Faustus
Had your chances... you've had your chance
Had your chances... you've had your chance
Had your chances... you've had your chance
Had your chances... you've had your chance]

There's a blood silhouette through the ceiling sky
There's a blood silhouette through the ceiling sky
There's a blood silhouette through the ceiling sky
There's a blood silhouette through the ceiling sky
[Banana]
Had your chance... you've had your chances [banana]
[There's a blood silhouette through the ceiling sky]
Had your chance [banana]
There's a blood silhouette through the ceiling sky / [you've had your chance]
[Doctor Faustus, Doctor Faustus]
(?)
[Banana]
[There's a blood silhouette through the ceiling sky
There's a blood silhouette through the ceiling sky
Banana]

[Doctor Faustus
Had your chance
Banana
Had your chances
Banana
There's a blood silhouette through the ceiling sky
Banana]

great art is in what you leave out!

"Had your chances"




:lol:

don't know what "Had Your Chances" means in
this context; but, if you're :lol: than I'm :lol:

I think its a very good summary to cover Faustus's fears before he signed the pact with the devil in blood, and then his ultimate regrets as his 24 years came to an end, and it probably is a quote of what the Devil said.



:lol:

gotcha now - too bad there's not a happy face for satori - and I agree with you 100%.
I am an admirer of Samuel Beckett and own probably most all that's in print by him. I also have a lot of academic studies of Sam too. One is called "Beckett and the Art of Undoing"[or something like that, don't feel like going downstairs now]...anyway, this scholar has gotten Beckett's notes when he was writing his plays and noticed that each revision resulted in less and less text. In an interview, he confirmed that he tried his best to remove any particularity so that the work would be timeless, placeless, and as far from autobiographical as he could make it.
He "had his chance' and took it....

Lyrics are free, my contributions in (,) not all lyrics here, (story flow you know).
The hangman plays the Mandolin, before he goes to sleep, and the last thing on his mind, is the Wild Eyed Boy, imprisoned,;Neath the covered wooden shaft.
Folds the rope into his bag,
And the day will end for some,
as the night begins for one.
((a young boy is imprisoned, he has Kafka,esquely, been found guilty of something))
"Oh Its the Madness in his Eyes"
((next day they are to hang him. He has only one friend. enter friend,))
And the Mountain moved its eyes,
To the World of Realise,
Where the snow had saved a place, for the WILD EYED BOY from FREECLOUD:
((his full title, and the mountains name.))
And the Village Dreadful Cried,
As the rope began to rise,
((gripping stuff))
For the Smile stayed on the Face of the WILD EYED BOY from FREECLOUD:
And the women once Proud, Clutched the heart of the Crowd.
As the Boulders smashed down from the Mountains Hand.
(((Whats this???))).
And the Magic in the Stare of the WILD EYED BOY said,
"Stop Freecloud, They wont think to cut me down!!"
But the Cottages Fell like a playing card hell,
and the Tears on the Face of the WILD BOY,
came Tumbling down, to the Rumbling ground.
And the Missionary Mystic of Peace/Love,(((guess which boy)))
Stumbled back to cry among the Clouds,
Kicking back the pebbles, from the FreeCloud Mountain Path.((with cracked voice))
,
,
,
, Care of Mr D.Bowie space oddity.

that's good twinz2z; good indeed.
I guess Nick Cave has a few story songs too....The Carny for one[live version] and maybe The Mercy Seat

Its difficult to know what to pick, because as somebody said, there are very many songs that tell a story. I chose this one, because it was the first song I labeled in my own mind as being a short story. (Im leaving out "leader of the pack" coz thats a spoof of telling a story, an example of a type of which there is also a number.)
Duckpin,s song is another small, standalone story.
Whereas Snowey,uk,s is a third example. A story summary, that works because the audience already know the plot, and so a few lines as reminders are enough to carry the song, and even give it start middle and ending.
I will give this some thought and see if I can find another.

Nice analysis of Snowey's story; I had not thought of it that way. I get the impression that there are fewer readers of short stories today than years ago so maybe it's a rare one that got picked to make a song and then to end up here.
A spoof that occurred to me that's even more flagrant than Leader of the Pack: the weeper Teen Angel by Mark Dinning. If you're not familiar with it, count yourself lucky.