I've never 'got'

Heroin is not a fun thing, but it being illegal is about as damaging as the addiction is in the first place.

Not sure I can say I'd agree with this but I see what you're saying

Anyway, fucking red light jumpers hey

I'm one of those too.

awkward cricket sounds

Heroin is not a fun thing, but it being illegal is about as damaging as the addiction is in the first place.

Much consensus agrees with this statement. Lots of social experiments to support it too. Seeing something as an illness/problem as opposed to outright criminal, has quite a lot of positive ramifications.

That's something I never got. People who have such stonewalled views in relations to drugs, but so very little experience regarding any aspect of it.

It was but then someone spoilt it for everyone.

Heroin is loads of fun, just give it a little try.

RLJers can get to fuck.

Opera. The characters are all so stressed. A few yoga lessons would do them a world of good.

I found opera didn't really make sense to me until I went (was dragged along to) a couple. It's still often silly and overblown, but less so when the music is matching up with what's on stage.

Hard to sing while doing downward-facing dog. You'd end up with ballet. And healthier opera singers, ofc - something they could clearly do with.

As long as it's not in english.

IDLES

blinks

Yup.

Witchita Lineman

Prosaic MOR love song/Mawkish ode to a shit job/grade A Marie-Antoinette shit

always depressed me

Love that song, but I've always been a little bit country
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRzU7-4e2M8

I don’t mind country...I genuinely don’t get the song and it’s hallowed status, I’m sure I’m missing something fundamental

More like a show tune than country.

People specifically like the lines: 'And I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time.' I think it's an overrated song, too, but anything that was once that successful will have an afterlife. There are reasons for the success of the Glen Campbell recording in particular, quite apart from its major label status and consequent marketing power, etc. Glen Campbell was a superb performer, one of the best in music at the time. The sound is certainly not 'country' but has huge crossover appeal, excellent production, and the 'Wrecking Crew'. Again, I think it's overrated (and I can't say I much like the sound, especially the string sauce), but I do sometimes wish today's MOR stuff still had the same production values.

Lyrically, it certainly isn't an 'ode to a shit job', but about the supposed connection the lineman feels with his beloved, who it is implied has rejected him, through the telephone wires. I've never understood how that image is supposed to work. For a while, before I looked it up, I thought the lineman had a device that enabled him to listen in on conversations by attaching it to the wire, but it seems that's not possible. (I don't understand any of the technology.) So, for some reason, the lineman hears her 'singing through the wire' and is therefore still somehow connected to her, 'still on the line'. I can only assume that people think this a highly convincing image, although I'm not sure it stands up to scrutiny.

(With my usual talent for putting my foot in it, I once used 'Wichita Lineman' as a fairly randomly-picked example of a song I considered overrated. It turned out that the person I was talking to considered it their favourite song. Oops. :) )

Didn't know the song by name, but obviously recognised the tune. I was going to make a sarcy comment. Then I read this:

As an infantry soldier in Vietnam (1970), I had a battery operated cassette player and Glen Campell's cassette with this song on it. So many evenings after foxholes were dug and fighting positions readied, this is the song that brought a bit of home to us as we'd watch the sun go down hoping to survive the night to see that sun again and play Campbell's song yet once again.

Overall I think there's just an inherent melodic peacefulness that really resonates from it. idk how old you are, but for me it's a like a Moby song - one that you've already heard somewhere else, so I never experienced what it might have been like to hear properly for the first time.

like a moby song

Very Fucking harsh dude. I said I didn’t get the reverence surrounding the song, not that I thought it a crime against humanity.

Edit: above is me exaggerating for comic effect

I love it. Yes it's total schmaltz. I'm old enough to remember Terry Wogan playing it on Radio 2 when I was a kid and my Mum had him on every morning. Good memories.

How does it compare to "Benson, Arizona"?