Trilogy vs. Cinema Show

richardh wrote: If its the studio versions we are comparing then ELP's wins for me just on sheer instrumental power if nothing else. I love the ensemble feel to this which is much better than many other ELP tracks. However if you put up the Second's Out version against it then the gap is a lot smaller. Chester Thompson and Phil Collins take it to a different level making the album version almost redundant for me.

thehallway wrote: Blacksword wrote: I'll go for Cinema Show. Trilogy is among my favourite ELP songs though. Does anyone else think Lake sounds a little like Art Garfunkel, when singing in the gentle opening part of the song? He certainly does! Although I hadn't noticed until you mentioned it.....

Phew! Not just me then..

Two different animals entirely, I'm afraid. And also two different genres of prog.

OK, I’m totally off topic, but I thought this could interest you, and since this is the thread where the disussion about T. S. Eliot started, I post it here.

I wrote a mail to my brother — who is a literary critic — and asked him how the lines quoted from The Waste Land normally are perceived. Here is the answer he sent me (translated from Norwegian to English by myself; any mistakes are mine, not his):

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Among the readings I know, there are none that perceives these lines as a description of a rape. Admittedly, it could be understood as what some feminists call “negligent rape”, but this concept is so questionable that it’s better to avoid it. Anyway, Eliot does here agree with D. H. Lawrence, a man he otherwise doesn’t have much in common with: Modern sexuality is unpleasant, mechanic — especially for the female part. The woman in the poem feels no desire whatsoever to go through it, but she still yields to the man’s passionless assertiveness; the scene becomes a highly discouraging example of “modern love” or “love in the 20^th century”. In the lines following the ones you quote, this is stressed even more:

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,

Hardly aware of her departed lover;

Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: 

‘Well, now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.’

When lovely woman stoops to folly and 

Paces about her room again, alone,

She smooths her hair with automatic hand,

And puts a record on the gramophone.

 

A victim of a rape would hardly be that indifferent, and as far as I can see, this woman is not a prostitute either. She has taken a lover because it’s fashionable; modern, liberated people should do things that — but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they enjoy it. We can only guess what the strictly conservative Eliot would have thought of the sexual revolution of our times — a revolution he certainly witnessed the prelude to — though it’s obvious that he wouldn’t be very happy about it. And strictly speaking, you have to grant him a point; for sure, this sex fixation, that’s been accompanied by an insane fixation on the ego, has not made us more human. Interestingly enough, this has happened in a time where the status of the ego has been challenged philosophically in many different ways.

 

Furthermore, I wonder if Banks and Rutherford has delivered what Harold Bloom calls a “strong misreading” of Eliot’s lines — actually the only kind of reading Bloom thinks is worth anything at all. They are less concerned with soulless sexuality than with an eternally valid erotic play that — as the reference to Romeo and Juliet suggests — very often ends in tragedy (West Side Story has probably some significance here as well). Moreover, in The Cinema Show Tiresias gets a much more vital and vitalizing role than in Eliot’s poem: In The Waste Land, to a strong degree he (she) connotes an erotic/sexual fatigue that’s just as present in both sexes; the song seems more like a feministic myth where the female principle is identified with Gaia. Thus, The Cinema Show can be understood in the same way as Hart Crane’s grand epic poem (or series of lyrical poems) The Bridge — that Crane himself viewed as a more optimistic version of The Waste Land.

 

Well, I’m not altogether sure that this is a valuable input to the discussion at ProgArchives. However, what it once again shows, is how well schooled or — in the best sense of the word — cultivated these boys in Genesis are, something they share with members of the other British prog- and artrock bands. So when I still from time to time see intellectual skeptics claim that rock lyrics exclusively contain formulas like “I love you”, I wonder what side of the moon they inhabit — it’s certainly not the dark side. They can’t be especially close to the edge either, and they have still not found out that the lamb lies down on Broadway (titles by King Crimson and Van der Graaf Generator spring to my mind as well, but I’d better stop while the going is good).

Edited by refugee - October 26 2010 at 08:07

^^ I also thought that she could be a prostitute (working as a typist and earning extra money in her spare time), but the two lines starting with "The time is now propitious" seem to go against that. And you’re right; Eliot is probably deliberately ambiguous — which is often a hallmark of great poetry (I nearly wrote "pottery" ).

refugee wrote: richardh wrote: Gandalff wrote: Chela wrote: Only one of these songs takes me to my happy place.     Namely? Probably The Cinema Show although I read somewhere (probably on here) that the subject matter of the song is apparently about rape. Trilogy is broadly about love lost and moving on and is nicely resolved, but people generally don't say ELP tracks take them to a happy place! About rape? Well, there might be a connection since the lyrics are based on a passage from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. You can read about it here (scroll down until you find Frosteeth’s post): http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/1625/ Is this the description of a rape? To me it doesn’t look like it: Though he "assaults" her and his caresses are "undesired", his hands "encounter no defence" and she seems to be more indifferent than anything else. I guess it all depends on how you define "rape". To the poll question: I can’t vote. I’m not a huge fan of ELP, but Trilogy is amazing. So is The Cinema Show. Maybe I should toss a coin to settle the score?

That's a very interesting link. The full post:

richardh wrote: Gandalff wrote: Chela wrote: Only one of these songs takes me to my happy place.     Namely? Probably The Cinema Show although I read somewhere (probably on here) that the subject matter of the song is apparently about rape. Trilogy is broadly about love lost and moving on and is nicely resolved, but people generally don't say ELP tracks take them to a happy place!

About rape? Well, there might be a connection since the lyrics are based on a passage from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. You can read about it here (scroll down until you find Frosteeth’s post):

http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/1625/

Is this the description of a rape? To me it doesn’t look like it: Though he "assaults" her and his caresses are "undesired", his hands "encounter no defence" and she seems to be more indifferent than anything else. I guess it all depends on how you define "rape".

To the poll question: I can’t vote. I’m not a huge fan of ELP, but Trilogy is amazing. So is The Cinema Show. Maybe I should toss a coin to settle the score?


 

Gandalff wrote: Chela wrote: Only one of these songs takes me to my happy place.     Namely?

Probably The Cinema Show although I read somewhere (probably on here) that the subject matter of the song is apparently about rape.

Chela wrote: Only one of these songs takes me to my happy place.

Namely?

The Cinema Show