IMITATION OF LIFE by Juanky Ruido“That sugar cane which tasted good…” There are times a song takes you by the lapels, shakes you, grabs you like a limpet and there is no way of letting it go… (I can hear the voice of my pal @albzumbido while he smiles… "a whole post devoted to a single song? Are you crazy, Juanky???") And those who agree with this will be damn right (and will have my understanding if they decided to stop reading this post after the video…). The fact is that I was actually working in another post but thia song got stuck in my head… and basically it hasn’t let me think about anything different! And all this is because I’m talking about… “Imitation of Life”… To make things worse, I can’t even hold on to the usual excuse of “it is a pseudo-unknown song which deserves to be put in a better place”… because “Imitation of Life” is a great, brilliant and widely-recognised song -a practical hit- from a super-seller (although always alternative) band as R.E.M. were… @sarmientpepper and his blog “A Rienda Suelta” (in Spanish) are to be blamed again: some months ago, he wrote a post which included an astonishing videclip by an Ucranian director (watch link), whose conception reminded me to the incredible video of “Imitation of Life”. From that moment on, there hasn’t been a way of taking the tune out of my head. The video deserves some extra comments: we find a scene taken from a party, in the style of Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights": so many actions happening at the same time that it is impossible to consider all of them. And it is there where the magic of the clip resides: zooming in-zooming out we get every action dissected, finding the small details of each zone: so we can see couples cheating their lovers, characters running away from prison, friends arguing… and Michael Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills “hiding” behind the actions… Everything lip-synched with the lyrics, sung now by Stipe, sung now by other characters, or showing in a prompter inside the composition… The video was directed by Garth Jennings (who had been doing Pulp, Blur and Fatboy Slim clips and is currently Radiohead’s principal visual editor) who thought of a curious (and complex) cinematography: the whole scene lasts just 20 seconds and -theoretically- was recorded in a single shot, being the rest of the clip a considerable effort of post- (and pre-) production. A masterpiece, a true stroke of genius which we enjoy once and again. The song, being a huge one, was surprinsingly the lowest chart for R.E.M. since 1986 (before Automatic for the People and their great success); though it is even more shocking for us to discover (some years later, in the compilation “Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage” -could you thing of a better title/definition for a rock band??-) that the song was on the verge of not being included in Reveal (Warner Records, 2001) because the band from Athens had some doubt about the song. Perhaps one of the reasons could have been that they considered the song repeated some structures which had been used in previous tracks. It seems the melody repeated (unconsciously) part of a song they had released in their first years: “Driver 8”. In this curious video (don’t miss it) you can find some unrecognizable, incredibly young, members of R.E.M., with a surprising Michael Stipe (not only with hair, but hairy!) and you will also find the coincidences between both songs... About the lyrics… Michael Stipe is known for his denial to include the lyrics to the songs in the albums because, according to him “usually fans have better explanations to the words than I do”… Stipe’s composition method, as he has acknowled repeatedly, is chaotic: he lets himself go, listening to the music, singing the first thing to come in mind, and he doesn’t pay attention to the actual words until he listens to them... Lastly he “polishes” the lyrics when needed. Stipe's lyrics don't mean a literal intention but a poetic one, using with a technique similar to the “stream of consciousness” which Joyce or Virginia Woolf used, letting his ideas flow freely. The result leaves us a rare combination midway between Japanese haikus and an impressionist picture, where the global feeling which the song causes (and not the “linear story”) is the important thing. “Charades, pop skill, water hyacinth named by a poet. Imitation of life” “Like a koi in a frozen pond, like a goldfish in a bowl, I don’t want to hear you cry” A possible (and personal, I might be wrong) interpretation is that the song reflexes the feelings of a film star living in Hollywood, with the luxuries (that "Hollywood lifestyle” of the first lines, the “teenager in the fashion show”, “you want the greatest thing, the greatest thing since bread came sliced” ) And the dark side (“That freezing rain”, “that tidal wave”, “that avalanch”) which could refer to "fame", which ruins so many things, so many talents and makes that “no-one can see you cry“... Let me say it again: this is just my personal interpretation (you may agree on or not). What I do not have any doubt about is the value of the song; a song we never get tired of watching (in the clip, on tv…), and we never get tired of listening to… (in the album, live, or in acoustic…)
Because the song is “cinnamon, it’s Hollywood”... It’s... “that sugar cane which tasted so so good”… ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ps.: Impossible not to include one of the various covers of this track. In this one, Kevin Devine, NewYorker musician, takes our breath away with this delicious cover… Uhmmmm
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