The Fall of Rome hardly ever crosses my mind

I recently decided that most of James' Reyne's songs can be described in one sentence:

"Being rich and pretty isn't all that it's cracked up to be".

I give you Exhibit A:

'Oh No Not You Again'

I give you Exhibit B:

'Beautiful People'

I give you Exhibit C:

'Errol'

I give you Exhibit D:

'Hammerhead'*

I give you Exhibit E:

'Motor's Running Way Too Fast'


However, while this is a clear theme in many of his songs, the one that has been bugging me lately is 'Fall of Rome', which goes like this:

Everybody says
'What's that sound?'
(Put it in a skillet and slap it all around)
Everybody says
'Can't stay home...
Still thinkin' 'bout the fall of Rome'

Seriously people. What the hell does that mean? And then there's this:

Where'm I gonna buy it
Where'm I gonna buy it
Gotta give a dog a bone

I posit that if James Reyne was some scruffy-looking homeless dude walking along the street reciting the lyrics to this song, he'd be locked in the booby-hatch before he could get half a block.

I grant you that perhaps this is a step up on the banality of currently available lyrics (if P!nk is "not here for (y)our entertainment", what the hell is the point of her?), but still worry very much about my Dad's generation of music fans that they went out and bought this song/album in DROVES and then tried valiantly to sing along to it.

Perhaps it's an elaborate con on JR's behalf because he knows that no one can understand his songs, they might as well be intellectually incomprehensible as well?

Neil Finn has been known to observe that sometimes he just likes the way that words sound together, more as a collection of sounds than anything meaningful**, and Camille does a similar thing with her tracks. Don't think James Reyne can use that as an excuse.

On the other hand, at least he's not hosting appalling morning television. For god's sake Channel 10, how hard is it to employ some shit-kicker at $10 an hour to google the interview guests/topics and hand those people a goddamn briefing note? Is it really too much to ask that we be spared from David Reyne asking the foremost ovarian cancer expert in Australia

"why don't pap smears (detect ovarian cancer). Surely it's all in the same area isn't it? And what about that vaccine? Maybe that will work for it too!"

after which the expert in question patiently explained that the TYPE of cancer cells were completely different and restrained herself from jumping across the coffee table to smash his face in.

My friend LM claims that perhaps they're trying to get them to "ask the kind of questions that Gen Pub would ask". I'd like to think that the gen pub understands what a placebo is, but maybe I am wrong.***


* Although challenge you to tell me in actual sentences what it is this song means. When I was a kid I thought that the line "some silken slip of evil/Hammerhead" was actually "some soup gets left by me for a Hammerhead"...which if you think about it makes sense. You want to leave your leftovers for a shark. Just so they don't eat you.

** Which is why I'm not writing this post about 'Don't Ask Why' which includes the lyrics "Error Gorrilla/Know what I mean?" and "Maybe some one shook a leg/on a sailboat, south of China"

*** I did something funny in my links here. Promise.