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THE_DRUM
October 18, 2023
December 5, 2023
"The Drum" by Slapp Happy
off of their 1974 album:
"Get in line, keep in time with the drum
And don't forget we're nothing yet but water"
In the dance, you're supposed to
stay on the beat, but you also need Some version of this comes up
to be "fluid" about it. often in talking about
dancing:
Here, there's an allusion to You need to know the steps
the factiod that physically without being bound by them.
human beings are primarily
composed of water (though You need to *look* like you're
saying we're *nothing* but moving as you like, even if you
water is an exaggeration of just *happen* to be staying in
course). sync with the beat.
The word "yet" inserted there is really
interesting though, it suggest we may
just be water now but might eventually
become something else.
There's little to hint
at what that something
else might be.
I doubt the song- Perhaps: rhythm
writers really could come more
thought about it naturally to us, and
much: "yet" works we could lose the
as an internal need for a drum?
rhyme with "forget",
so it went in.
In this song, elaborate wording
is often used to get words to This is a song
flow musically, and as a about gracefully
side-effect, this opens the door moving on the
to more complex interpretations. beat, but it's own
flow often seems
As in the immediately following phrases, which a little forced.
could confuse if you took them literally:
"Are you coming to or coming from--
The understanding that I'm handing it to you?"
I think the general drift here is "do you need
to hear this, or do you know it already?"
But to take it literally, you'd have to
note that it's not the "understanding
that I'm handing to you", but rather "the
understanding that I'm handing *it* to you".
So the meaning here may be more like
"do you get that I'm giving you the key?".
Then the following line has a suggestion that the
listener may have a deep psychological reluctance to
acknowledge this message, and that seems very puzzling:
"Or is that a job you don't dare do?"
The idea that there's a need to
be both disicplined and to hang I think it would be unusual
loose would not seem to be so for a shy, reserved person
hard to confront-- to be in denial about a need
to relax and open up, but
that insight just adds to Eaisier
the self-consciousness. said.
But this remark makes the overall framing of
the song clear: it's all some condescending
advice directed to someone else.
It's not unusual for a rock
song to be built on
condescention, though it's
typically with more of a sneer.
A possibility, probably not
intended: it could be the speaker
is conscious of the fact that any
advice from him is unwelcome at
this point, and the difficult job
might simply be recognizing that
he might be right for once.
The following lines start to make the
relationship between the speaker and
listener clear:
"Hey, my pretty flower, there's a letter for you"
"You'll find it on the shelf"
I think the scenario is a roomate--
almost certainly male, despite the female
vocals-- giving advice to someone, almost This seems tremendously 1960s
certainly a young woman, who lives in the to me: "Helping the shy chick
same household. get her head together, man."
The next quip almost totally
undercuts itself however:
"Though it was posted in Calcutta, I know it's
just another that you'd written for yourself"
Okay, I *think* the idea is that this girl is so shy
and lonely that she needs to send mail to herself to
feel connected to the world--
But Calcutta? Did she *go* there and
recently return? But that doesn't
sound much like a shy girl who needs
to be drawn out of her shell. Does
she have friends in Calcutta that
mail things back to her on request?
But that sounds even less isolated.
And if she's someone doing capricious things
like sending mail to herself, that's sounding
like a pretty interesting, unusual person.
Maybe shes already going her own way, and might
not actually need this cool dude's advice.
In the next lines, we go back to the first
theme, we're on the beat again:
"We watch a distant drum a-flashing "Pierrot", is a
On the beat in all his, Pierrot fashion" figure coming out of
folk theater from
the 16th century.
Excuse me,
"Commedia
dell'arte"
Here are some of the lines in the
song I like best back on the (His romantic competitor
discipline and fluidity theme: Harlequin is probably
better known.)
"Don't move your feet until the next beat comes
One of the laws says pause between Pierrot is a sad clown:
I would hate to make the game seem mean" in white face with black
tears, wearing baggy
There are indeed "rules" here, and they can white clothes with black
seem facist-- and perhaps positively trimmings.
torturous to a shy person without any
confidence about both following them and
"looking cool" at the same time.
Then we're back on the second theme:
"Hey, my pretty flower, can you guess where I've been?
Can you guess at all?
Well, I've been to your room and learned you have all the mirrors
Turned against the wall"
This stuff is okay by me, but it's hard not wonder
"why are you poking around in her room, you creep?" Arguably it's
very dated.
And before the song's end, there's
one more burst of puzzles:
"It won't be pleasant when the present time is done
Testing nightly 'neath a sprightly summer moon
Your spirit like a jelly in a spoon"
Waiting to be eaten? (Perhaps by her stalker housemate?)
I'm afraid it all begins to seem like they were just slapping
words together, but to read a little into that Rorschach blot,
let's say the present/pleasant time is the summer night
times, and the "testing" is dancing to the drum...
"Hey my pretty flower there's a cat in the room
And it's not the type you're used to"
There's another Slapp Happy song about "Riding Tigers",
which hints what kind of cat he might have in mind. A possible,
probably not
But I throw up my hands at figuring this one out: intended
interpretation:
"Though I think I led it to the sink the shy girl is
And tried to make it drink "the cat".
It refused to"
A sleeping tiger.
You can lead a horse to water,
but you can't lead a cat anywhere, Then "being led
so WTF? to water" is the
speaker's attempts
at handing out
"understanding".
Most simply, I guess:
The tiger is sexual desire,
the singer has been trying to get
his pretty flower interested,
but she's not letting this
register on her-- that "cat"
refuses to drink.
And the dance is a as a dry
run for sex ("testing nightly").
The history of the band Slapp Happy is brief,
but complicated, with lots of collaborations and
overlaps with some heavy hitters like Faust and
Henry Cow.
Similarly, the history of the song
"The Drum" is complicated:
There was an earlier version
from 1973 that was only Far more popular than either Slapp
released later-- that one had Happy version, was a cover by the
Faust acting as rhythm section. band Bongwater, who evidently
adopted it as their theme song.
Unfortunately, they
swapped in the word
"bongwater" for "water"--
a silly joke than mangles
the meaning of the lines
I care about most.
Though in all other
respects the Bongwater
version is really good.
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