Repeat – Day After Day
A very good part of rock n’ roll, as is modern entertainment, is patronising, insulting, and shows little understanding of the lives of the people who serve as its audience. But it’s always been this way.
That’s the reason, perhaps, why a guy like Andy Warhol, drawing soup caps, whenever he wasn’t busy taking someone else’s work without compensation, was viewed as someone living the artistic life, someone who ought not be bothered from his dreaming.
Rock’ n’ roll, similarly, is supposed to be about fantasies. But often these mirages stand in too sharp contrast to reality. Repeat understand all of this, and know that their songs are meant to pick up people who have been weighed down by the burdens of life.
Repeat’s “Day After Day” is a song about the grind that accompanies modern life, regular existence, and time spent in the rat race. This one is a workman’s anthem, a song for everyone who bites their tongue, fights for their life, and has to do it all over again the next day. Repeat show that they understand their fans, and besides, can fashion some convincing hooks to go along with the rhetoric.
Elway – Down The Lane And Far Away
What exactly was happening to the world while we were all busy hoping that somebody else would take care of all of its troubles? What were we really thinking about while all of us had our noses buried into some screen?
Punk-rock has always been about a world that needed saving. But the music also always hinted at there being truths that the people who adhered to punk principles could agree on. With so much information and so few places where it’s useful anymore, nobody can agree on anything.
Maybe the hippies weren’t so dumb after all. Elway’s musicians certainly are no peace-loving, pot-smoking, peaceniks. But they, along with the rest of the people of the world, who have not yet been lulled to sleep by machines programmed to entertain them and news anchors paid to scare them.
Elway’s “Down The Lane And Far Away” is a very well-crafted mix of pop-punk and alt-rock. But it’s also an important song. It’s a political song that’s not stupid enough to blame one party and praise the other. What are you fighting for? And what’s going to be left of this world once we’re done fighting? “Down The Lane And Far Away” is a song about our feet touching the earth more often and our lungs, hopefully, getting enough fresh air to keep us going. It seems like small grievances, but wait until those things are gone for good.
