¡VIERNES! And we usher Friday in with a Psychedelic Palate Cleanser. No peyote needed! Continuing a recent tradition here at UMX, I offer you a double-feature YouTube in a mestizolicious manner of recognizing the duality that is (at least in my experience) at the core of human existence and perception.
IT IS A TRADITION not always followed, the YouTube Viernes. Sometimes I take part because I think the collective feeling on Fridays is to want to let go, relax, get loose. Not get deeply thinky angsty feely. A “palate cleanser” as used to be said in the earlier days of the Intertube (1.5 years ago or so? Aeons!!) Sometimes I don’t get to it and then, sometimes I will do a double-feature YouTube in a mestizolicious manner of recognizing the duality that is (at least in my experience) intrinsic to human existence and perception.
Okay, the length of that chunk of text (ironically) negates the YouTube lightness that I was talking about, but hey. Walk with me.
This primero bideo is of the Ace of Base song It’s a Beautiful Life. I admit, I’ve had this on my playlist (on and off) since it came out. It’s so sappy and happy and poppy that it can serve as a momentary dose of tonic that when too many clouds congregate. (Yet, I don’t think I ever realized how unreal the song was until I watched this video, and I’ve actually never watched it until now. I laughed almost the entire way through. It was in disbelief. It’s very weird. It begins con una rubia with the strangest morning breath you’ll find and just gets stranger.)
And this is a song by an early favorite band, DEVO. I had one of their albums as early as ten or eleven and still love some of their work. They are like abstract painters reborn as musical geeks. I love it. They appeal to the clown in me, the trickster, the jinxster, the robot dancer! But I’ve caught up with certain videos and been disappointed, after years of loving the music. (Such as Whip It, where there are a couple really ugly misogynist and racist moments.) I like this one a lot better. Really love the impressionist feeling of it (as opposed to “80s Flavored Hallucination” style that Ace of Base used). It compliments the bitter-flip sarcasm and disjointed feel of the song’s message well. And the moment or two that employ poor societal views seem to do it (or feel it) in context of the song’s disenchantment with society’s holding those views.
If a tune can be said to be sad, angry, and happy all at once, it would be Devo’s It’s a Beautiful World.
It’s an odd coupling of odd pieces, maybe. But these two songs paired—as different in tone, message, and method as they are—might be said to offer a more complete picture of the life each one attempts to describe.
Happy Viernes, Beautiful Gente! Or not!
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I’m thinking of a line from the song Central Reservation by Beth Orton “everything that’s good right now, I don’t wish for it to last”…:D I think that song, too, is celebrating the beautiful times in life, accepting life’s messy ups and down, enoucraging to get involved with things and risk getting hurt, and her happiness leading her to peace. But that one line seems to be seeing the duality, nothing wrong with enjoying this moment and accepting that happiness can be fleeing, but I don’t think she wants her peace to be just as fleeting and she wants that more than happiness.
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