Amy Correia - The Bike

Artist: Amy Correia

Song: The Bike

Album: Carnival Love (2000)

Tactile experiences played a prominent role in Los Angeles singer/songwriter Amy Correia's construction of a song. Sometimes, the imagery took her back to a childhood memory as was the case with the bearded lady winking at a tattooed man in her song "Carnival." Other times, a poem did the trick. "Daydream Car" came from poet Patrick Cavanaugh's The Hunger. A Louisiana nightclub experience helped to produce the mournful song "Blind River Boy." Correia, from Lakeville, MA, made waves with her 2000 debut CD, Carnival Love (Capitol), with its richly melodic mix of mournful tales and whimsical stories created from a childlike, imaginary dreamworld. Her background as a short story writer and lover of literature surely contributed to the emotional depth of her songs. She confessed a love for short stories by writers as diverse as James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and Flannery O'Connor, whose writings she explored as a student at Barnard College. more

The honeyed rasp of Massachusetts native Amy Correia is the perfect vehicle for the sharp melodic sense and captivating imagery that's on display throughout her debut. Highlighted by the endlessly striking likes of "Daydream Car" and "The Bike", Carnival Love introduces a performer with an intriguing future. --Rickey Wright

In an era of ethereal female singer-songwriters, Amy Correia's Carnival Love marks the arrival of a talent whose concerns are rooted in the earthly. In a voice that at once conveys a sense of both itch and scratch--and often accompanied, Waits-like, by her own baritone ukelele--this East Coaster delivers tales of damaged people (the devastated Korean War vets of "Chinatown" and "The Bike," the grownup "crying in a company car" in "Angels Collide") and dented romance ("Gin," "Starfishin'"). Even Correia's moments of escape and whimsy are fully grounded; "Daydream Car" acknowledges that hanging out is a game best played by two, while "Carnival" updates "Wild Billy's Circus Story." Correia is outstanding in a crowded field. --Rickey Wright

review

I became the heiress to a red and rusted bicycle
Built like a tank from Sears Roebuck circa 1952
It had been entrusted to me by my late great uncle Pat
And I guess he didn't ride it much
Both tires on the bike were flat
Pat had died at Christmas time in 1991
He had fallen off the wagon
And he sunk into a Christmas funk
My father he had found him
Two days after he had died
Well he drank himself to death one night
In a little home he owned by the seaside
So I took the bike and I cleaned it up
My father he patched up the tires
Am I going to town or just spinning my wheels
And when I die I wonder how it feels
Hey and I'm riding around riding around on it
Hey just riding around riding around on it
Hey you know I'm riding around
riding around on it. Hey!
The funeral service was a few days later
At a place down the street from where he had lived
There wasn't a hell of a turn out
He had never married and he never had kids
The coffin lid was open
Pat was lying inside
His sister had a picture of a poodle named Pepper
She put it in his hand and then she cried
Now I'm riding around in the city
Through the smog and the summer heat
And I'm blowing through all the red lights
I guess you could say I'm feeling lucky
And the taxis and the trucks
Everybody's blowin' their horns
And I got a bicycle bell to ring
And I got a notion to sing as I'm riding along

Well I didn't even really know him at all
And I wonder can he see me
As I'm riding along
Riding along
The day that Pat was buried
The air was cold and clear
And we drove out to the cemetery
And snow flew around in the air
And a hired man from the State
He played taps on a coronet
And a flag was presented to his sister
For time in the service that Pat had spent
When he used to ride on the bike
Way back in 52
He was starting out a life
And the bike it was brand new
And life was laid before him like
a platter before a king
He was young and he was handsome
and the world was alive with meaning
The world was alive with meaning

The Jam - Wasteland

Artist: The Jam

Song: Wasteland

Album: Setting Sons (1979)

 

The Jam was an English rock band active during the late 1970s and early 1980s. While they shared the "angry young men" outlook and fast tempos of their punkrock contemporaries, The Jam wore neatly tailored suits rather than ripped clothes and incorporated a number of mainstream 1960s rock influences rather than rejecting them, placing them at the forefront of the mod revival movement.

Setting Sons was originally planned as a concept album about three childhood friends who, upon meeting after some time apart, discover the different directions in which they've grown apart.

 

(…) It had been reported prior to release that the album would deal with the concept of how 3 childhood friends had changed as they became adults after a modern-day English civil war (described in the song "Wasteland"). In essence, it was to be a Weller-generation version of The Kinks album Arthur,or: The Decline and Fall of the British Empire. (The two albums do make very good companion pieces.)

 

music

review

 

Meet me on the wastelands - later this day,
We'll sit and talk and hold hands maybe,
For there's not much else to do in this drab and colourless 
place.
We'll sit amongst the rubber tyres,
Amongst the discarded bric-a-brac,
People have no use for - amongst the smouldering embers of 
yesterday.

And when or if the sun shines,
Lighting our once beautiful features,
We'll smile but only for seconds,
For to be caught smiling is to acknowledge life,
A brave but useless show of compassion,
And that is forbidden in this drab and colourless world.

Meet me on the wastelands - the ones behind,
The old houses - the ones - left standing pre-war -
The ones overshadowed by the monolith monstrosities - 
councils call homes.

And there amongst the shit - the dirty linen,
The holy Coca-Cola tins - the punctured footballs,
The ragged dolls - the rusting bicycles,
We'll sit and probably hold hands.

And watch the rain fall - watch it - watch it -
Tumble and fall - tumble and falling -
Like our lives - like our lives -
Just like our lives.

We'll talk about the old days,
When the wasteland was release when we could play,
And think - without feeling guilty -
Meet me later but we'll have to hold hands.
Tumble and fall - tumble and falling -
Like our lives - like our lives -
Exactly like our lives.