Thursday, January 29, 2009

The Frames: "People Get Ready"

Ruthless and unposed passion,
consistent honesty,
self-effacing humor,
artistic integrity, skill and creativity..
God-haunted...

Sound like church, so far?

I wish...

it sounds more like the Frames.


Glen Hansard's The Frames never cease to amaze me.
But I just heard the sweeping live version of
"People Get Ready"
(no, not the Curtis Mayfield gospel song that U2 often cover).

Hansard often speaks, acts, sings like a pastor to the audience.
The spoken intro to "Fitzcarraldo" is a classic here.
But the comments leading up to this performance of "People Get Ready"
...laced with the F-word, so don't say you weren't warned; he's Irish..
is fascinating..
Talk about honesty, I'll bet that for many that he's speaking to about picking up a Gideon Bible in a motel room to absolve yourself of the guilt after watching porn is something they can relate to...

And his reference to the temple tantrum;
(noting the other gospels picture more of a "floating Yoda" than an angry revolutionary)
suggest he has been sneaking peaks at the Bible more than many official Christians.
No surprise he once did a straight-up cover of "The Blood of Jesus Never Failed Me Yet"
a song which itself has a checkered and gospeled past)


Well, listen for yourself;

audio here.

But what may hit you is the epic emotion of the music.
Of course, the lyric subverts the message we expect from the title,
who else is singing "we've got all the time in the world."?
But note how the song ends.


The official video of the studio version/lyrics below.
Interview of Hansard by (Pastor) Steve Stockman here.




People all get ready
'Cos we're tearing down the stand
Rebuild what's gone unsteady
And see it through with newer hands
And what has gone between us
Is a lot, is a lot
And who'll be there to clean us
If you're not, if you're not

People all get ready
'Cos we're breaking down again
Rebuild what's gone unsteady
And see it through with wiser hands

And what has gone between us
Is a lot, is a lot
And who'll be there to ignore us
When you're not, when you're not

We have all the time in the world
To get it right, to get it right
We have all the time in the world
To set alight, to set alight

People all get ready
'Cos we're breaking down the band
Rewrite what's gone already
And see it through with wiser hands
And what has gone between us
Is a lot, is a lot
And who'll be there to ignore us
When you're not, when you're not

And we have all the time in the world
To get it right, to get it right
And we have all the love in the world
To set alight, to set alight
Just look up, just look up

We have all the time in the world
To get it right, to get it right
And we have all the love in the world
To set alight, to set alight
Just look up, just look up

We have all the time in the world
To get it right, to get it right
And we have all the love in the world
To set alight, to set alight

People all get ready
'Cause we're coming to a stop


3 comments:

  1. Sound like: Everybody's talking about
    Ministers, Sinisters,
    Banisters and Canisters,
    Bishops and Fishops, Rabbins and Popeyes.
    Bye-bye Bye-byes. Dave what's is your email?

    ReplyDelete
  2. SQ:

    I knew that sounded familiar, but i actually had to google it, Great connection.

    As you probably know, putting on email on line here means the bots steal it to spam you, unless you disguise it.

    So it is simply my name (first and last) and then the "at" part is sbcglobal dot net.

    Please keep in touch

    ReplyDelete
  3. Got it will do. Thanks Dave.

    ReplyDelete

Hey, thanks for engaging the conversation!