Here is The Web Pen’s official entry into The Spicy Cauldron’s Spicy Awards. The rules stipulate that ‘cauldron’ be used somehow. After wracking my brain for ideas I figured that a write-up of an obscure song from an obscure album by an obscure British band would be just the ticket. I’m writing this introduction before created the piece itself so I have no idea where this is going to go. To make things even more confusing, I’m going to listen to ELO while writing it.
XTC is a band known for its trippy, catchy, psychedelic-era Beatles sound especially due to the excellent songwriting of Andy Partridge (no relation to the 70’s musical family — mostly due to the fact that they were fictional). Partridge’s lyrics are many times full of excellent metaphor and clear meaning although there are times when he dives into the obtuse lyrical content that is Tori Amos in its massive discombobulation. “Summer’s Cauldron” is the first song on the album most regard as their best, Skylarking. (Personally, I prefer English Settlement, but this isn’t about my ego-inflated opinion.)
Let us see if we can decipher Partridge’s meaning in this excellent song.
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The song begins with noises of nature — frogs, crickets, flying insects, birds — which give you the feeling that you have been planted firmly where they are no shopping centers, gas stations or outlets to recharge your iPod! How horrible! And then Partridge starts to sing:
Drowning here in Summer’s Cauldron
Under mats of flower lava
So we are to assume that the season of summer is like a giant bowl made to mix potions and cast spells. Okay, I can see that, but flower lava? I can only assume he is talking about pollen, which is the reason summer is my least favorite season. Oh, yes, I said it. The flower lava being produced gets into my sinuses and makes me feel awful. Suddenly all the plants are having sex and I get their sexual by-products shot up my noses and in my eyes. Have you ever had pollen shot in your eye? It iiiiiitches and burrrrrns!
Please don’t pull me out this is how I would want to go
Translation: Summer makes him want to commit suicide. I totally understand.
Breathing in the boiling butter
Fruit of sweating golden Inca
Um, ew. I just looked up how hot butter has to be to boil. 428°F / 220°C. Breathing it in would cause all sorts of damage to your mouth and bronchial system. We’re talking scalding, blisters, damaged tissue, infection and possibly death. The good news is that it would burn off your taste buds so you wouldn’t have to register the sensation of drinking the sweat of a gold-painted, long-dead member of a conquered society.
Please don’t heed my shout I’m relax in the undertow
Translation: “Even though I’m screaming in agony from the boiling butter and pollen in my lungs, I’m relaxed as I’ve accepted death.”
Trees are dancing drunk with nectar
Grass is waving underwater
So here is where the hallucinations so commonly associated with dying come to play. Or he’s watching Fantasia after eating a dozen poppy-seed bagels. Wait, don’t plants produce nectar? That means the trees are drunk on their own waste product. Ah, that means this entire passage is about his urine fetish — golden showers and such. In fact, there is a lot of yellow either invoked or mentioned in this song. I see now that the ‘grass’ is a metaphor for his own manhood and guess what it’s doing? That’s right, it’s waving water — spraying it all over. In fact, he’s probably writing his name in the ground. That’s just gross! (Pssst, Mr. Partridge. Caaaaall me.)
Please don’t pull me out this is how I would want to go
Okay, now I’m just confused. He obviously wants to “pull it out”. Oh, wait, I get it. He wants to “go” in his jeans. Got it. I think I saw that in a porn once.
Insect bomber Buddhist droning
Copper chord of August’s organ
Huh-huh, he said ‘organ’. Is his bladder full again already? What the hell is he drinking? And what the heck is a Buddhist bomber? Death by large belly, I would presume. Even more puzzling is why there is a copper-pipe organ in the middle of nature?
Please don’t heed my shout I’m relax in the undertow
Oh, he’s relaxed all right. …in his pants.
When Miss Moon lays down
His ass is tired…
And Sir Sun stands up
…but he’s horny.
Me I’m found floating round and round
Like a bug in brandy
In this big bronze cup
I have to pee so badly right now.
Drowning here in Summer’s Cauldron
I believe that cauldron is his metaphor for chamber pot and he wants to drown in it. Again. Ew.
Wow, I never realized how disgusting this song is. Here I was thinking that it was some drug-induced ode to one of the seasons. I mean it segues directly in to Colin Moulding’s “Grass” so I just automatically thought they were connected in theme. Remind me to never study music theory. I’m going back to English Settlement with realistic songs about Jason and the Argonauts, how woman are better than man, violent juvenile delinquents, and overstimulation of the senses.
There’s always trouble brewin’ at humor-blogs.com.
Listening to: “Endless Lies” - Electric Light Orchestra
