Children of Concrete and Steel

My all time favourite lyric comes from a song by Living Colour called Type, and it's one of those lyrics that make you want to scream at the band for not being as beautiful with the rest of the song.

We are the children of concrete and steel

This is the place where the truth is concealed

This is the time when the lie is revealed

Everything is possible, but nothing is real

Living Colour, "Type"

on Times Up, 1990

The rest of the song is merely a laundry list of different ism's, but that simple quatrain is such a stunning image for me, and the first line one of the most beautiful invocations of life in cities. 

To me, rock n roll has always been a battle between its roots in the city and its roots in the suburbs, but so very few songs seem to invoke the city as anything more than a place to party. The ones that do, however, seem to strike a cord with me, even more now that I've come to live in big cities. Take Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues:

Johnny's in the Basement

Mixing up medicine

I'm on the pavement

Thinking about the government

The man in the trench coat

Badge out, laid off

Says he's got a bad cough

Wants to get paid off

Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues"

on Bringing It All Back Home, 1965

The city is this corrupt, broken world torn between the counter culture trying to get by and the "system" who seem just as broken and beaten. I was surprised to find out that it was born out of the song "Taking it Easy" by Woodie Guthrie and "Too Much Monkey Business" by Chuck Berry, both of which deal with a common man caught in a corrupt system. 

Dylan also name-checked Jack Kerouac, but it sounds a bit more like Allen Ginsberg to me, particularly An Open Window on Chicago with its series of still shots of the city; "towers winking under clouds", "The girl at the counter", "black uniforms patrolling streets". Actually, this will sound sacrilegious to some, but one of the closest similarities I have seen to Ginsberg's Open Window would actually be Fort Minor's Right Now. 

there's somebody on the curb who really needs a jacket
spent half the rent at a bar getting plastered
Now he gotta walk fourteen blocks
to work at a shop where he's about to get fired.

Fort Minor, "Right Now"

on The Rising Tide, 2005

Not quite the same barrage of imagery as Ginsberg, but then they have the limitations of  beats and rhymes that Ginsberg was free from. The chorus even invokes the same background noise of a television that haunts Ginsberg's poem:

I'm just taking it in
From the second story hotel window again,
The TV's on, and my bags are packed,
But in this world everything can change just like that,

I guess the difference, however, is sustaining the imagery. We explore the same themes, the same images, but as lyricists we feel the need to comment, to explain the moral. Ginsberg is able just keep describing, keep invoking the city. As lyricists we feel the need to pontificate, deliver a chorus that will tie everything together. There is the conflict between exploration and succinctness, elaboration and conciseness. We have to deliver a hook for people to sing along with. We can describe the city in the verse, but at some point we need to deliver the chorus. 

Take T.S.Elliot's Preludes:

And now a gusty shower wraps

The grimy scraps

Of withered leaves about your feet

And newspapers from vacant lots

T.S.Elliot, "Preludes"

His city can just be dirty, and the people in it dirty, but he does not need to deliver his evaluation for your appraisal. In a way, he gets away with condemning the city because he doesn't need to say he condemns it. For rock lyricists, there seems to be a need to find the meaning for the audience. Linkin Park have the ability to explore the same dirt and grime:

There's a place so dark you can't see the end 

Skies cock back and shock that which can't defend
The rain then sends dripping acidic questions
Forcefully, the power of suggestion
Then with the eyes tightly shut looking thought the rust and rotten dust
A spot of light floods the floor
And pours over the rusted world of pretend
The eyes ease open and its dark again 

Linkin Park, "Forgotten"

on Hybrid Theory, 1999

But then they have to deliver the explanation.

In the memory you'll find me
Eyes burning up
The darkness holding me tightly
Until the sun rises up 

They can't leave the loneliness unstated, as Elliot does. They have to explain the metaphor is a metaphor for us. 

Don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to denigrate song lyrics. This is the conflict between the city and the suburbs. If you've been in the city, nobody has to explain that it's can be a dark lonely place, no matter how many flashing lights there are, but rock is also for the kids in the suburbs. It has to connect with the masses. So it is that even a band like System of a Down, that can be as oblique and obfuscating with their lyrics as the best "artistes", can't help but spell out the moral when they describe life in the city:

Now what do you own, the world?

How do you own disorder

System of a Down, "Toxicity"

on Toxicity, 2001

Somehow, we have to be both beautiful and practical. We have to delve into the city, but come back and describe it to the suburbs. We must both sketch and navigate, shade and map.