Clockwise from top left:
Haywire Mac / Napoleon XIV / Jaz Coleman / Siouxsie Sioux
There are almost as many songs about being mad or going insane as there are about falling in love; so many in fact, that attempting to compile a full and definitive list of such would probably drive you crazy. This, therefore, is simply a short post in which I discuss a few of my favourite songs on the subject.
I'm not saying they're the best four songs ever recorded to do with madness, but they are the ones that have most struck a chord with me. Note that they're arranged by release date and not in order of preference.
'Aint We Crazy?' by Harry McClintock (aka Haywire Mac) (Victor, 1928): click here to play.
"Ain't we crazy, ain't we crazy
/ This is the way we pass the time away
Ain't we crazy, ain't we crazy
/ We're going to sing this song all night today."
Malcolm McLaren dedicated his 1983 album Duck Rock to Haywire Mac and insisted that I get hold of Hallelujah! I'm a Bum, (Rounder Records, 1981), a remastered compilation of some of McClintock's greatest songs - including 'Ain't We Crazy?' and 'The Big Rock Candy Mountain', for which he is probably best remembered today [1].
'Ain't We Crazy?' is a type of nonsense song, in which the singer is the kind of anti-Socratic hero whom Roland Barthes celebrates; i.e., a figure who abolishes within himself all fear of being branded a madman via an amusing disregard for that old spectre: logical contradiction [2]:
It was midnight on the ocean, not a streetcar was in sight
And the sun was shining brightly, for it rained all day that night
'Twas a summer night in winter, and the rain was snowing fast
And a barefoot boy with shoes on stood a-sitting in the grass.
Such a man, as Barthes says, would be the mockery of our society, which subscribes to a psychology of consistency and says firmly that you can't have your cake and eat it.
'They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!', single by Napoleon XIV (Warner Bros. Records, 1966): click here to play.
"They're coming to take me away, ha-ha! / They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-ha!
To the funny farm / Where life is beautiful all the time ..."
Written and performed by Jerry Samuels (aka
Napoleon XIV), this curious record was an instant smash in the US and UK and I loved to sing it to amuse
myself and entertain friends as a child [3].
However, I very much doubt it would be made, released, or played today,
living as we are in an era that is far more sensitive to issues
surrounding mental health. Indeed, even at the time several radio
stations stopped playing the song in response to complaints about its
content. Predictably, the BBC also refused to play the record.
The joke reveal at the end of the song is that it is not a departed lover who has caused the song's narrator to lose his mind, but a runaway dog ...
'Happy House', by Siouxsie and the Banshees, single release from the album Kaleidoscope (Polydor, 1980): click here to play.
"This is the happy house / We're happy here in the happy house
[...]
It's safe and calm if you sing along ..."
I was never a big Banshees fan, but I used to love to hear this song on the radio back in the day and as it was a Top 20 hit - peaking at number 17 in the UK Singles Chart - one heard it fairly often.
I assumed at the time that the title was a synonym for an insane asylum - like funny farm, or loony bin - but later read in an interview with Siouxsie - who wrote the song with Steve Severin [4] - that, actually, it refers to a conventional family setting; to home, sweet home and the madness that unfolds therein beneath the veneer of normality and domestic bliss.
It's interesting to note that the follow-up single, 'Christine' (released in May 1980 and also taken from Kaleidoscope), again dealt with the theme of madness; the lyrics being inspired by the story of a woman who reportedly had 22 different (often conflicting) personalities [5] - which explains why she is referred to in the song as a banana split lady (i.e., it has nothing to do with her having a sweet tooth).
'Madness', by Killing Joke, track 6 on the album What's THIS For ...! (E. G. / Polydor Records, 1981): click here to play the 2005 digitally remastered version.
"This is madness
/ This is madness
/ This is madness
/ This is madness
/ This is madness ..."
This track, despite the title, isn't actually about madness in general, but, rather, about Christianity as a very specific form of religious mania; the product of sick minds in which there is a need to believe in a dead God and life itself is interpreted as a sin.
It is, if I'm honest, quite a challenging listen and will appeal only to a few. But then, as Nietzsche might say, to appreciate this track, the listener must be honest to the point of hardness so as to be able to endure the seriousness and intensity of Jaz Coleman's passion [6].
Th-th-th-th-that's all folks! [7]
Notes
[1] One of the very earliest posts on Torpedo the Ark - 5 May 2013 - was on Haywire Mac and his hobo vision of an earthly paradise (i.e., the Big Rock Candy Mountain): click here.
[2] See Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller, (Hill and Wang, 1998), p. 3.
[3] The song was re-released in 1973, when I was ten-years-old, and that's probably when I remember it from - not 1966, when I was still singing nursery rhymes. However, I was a fan of at least one pop song released in that year; 'Yellow Submarine' by the Beatles.
[4] Guitarist John McGeoch (previously of Magazine) and drummer Budgie
(previously of the Slits) also play no small part in creating the distinctive
and atmospheric (post-punk) sound that makes this track so
unforgettable.
[5] Christine Sizemore (née Costner) was an American woman who, in the 1950s, was diagnosed with what was then termed multiple
personality disorder, but which is now known as dissociative identity disorder. Her
case was depicted in the book The Three
Faces of Eve (1957), written by her psychiatrists, Corbett H. Thigpen and
Hervey M. Cleckley. The film of the that name, directed by Nunally Johnson and starring
Joanne Woodward, was based on this work. Readers interested in hearing the track 'Christine', by Siouxsie and the Banshees, can click here.
[6] I'm paraphrasing from Nietzsche's Preface to The Anti-Christ (1888).
[7] I have borrowed this closing phrase and title for the post from the animated short film series produced
by Warner Bros. between the years 1930 and 1969, starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, et al.
Readers might be interested to know that the famous Loony Tunes theme was
actually based on a crazy-sounding love song written in 1937 by Cliff
Friend and Dave Franklin entitled 'The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down': click
here
for the version by the American jazz pianist and bandleader Eddy
Duchin, with Lew Sherwood on vocals. And for an additional treat,
courtesy of Larry David, click here.
