Monday, February 11, 2019

Music Monday ~ "...they try to sock it to ya...."

Joe South - I remember him only from a hit song he wrote from the late 1960s, with its interesting and ever-relevant lyrics: The Games People Play. The song's title was taken from a book by Eric Berne, a bestseller on the psychology of human relationships.

There's a full post about Joe South and his natal chart in an old post of mine HERE.

That old song often comes to mind when reading about Theresa May's Brexit fumbles and foibles. Is she playing games, running out the clock, gaming the dissenters to her Withdrawal Agreement until toes are over the cliff edge and that dreaded "crash out" is nigh? Or is she.......?

On this side of the Atlantic, our current president has his own favourite gaming table: Twitter! Also, it's more than likely that games are already being played, prior to the 2020 presidential election, to ensure that anyone daring to voice policies even a smidgen left of establishment Democrat line (which, translated, means conservative) will never bask in the sunlight of media celebrity, but be constantly ignored, criticised or dismissed as "socialists". Socialist, a term which describes nobody currently on the list of candidates, and probably no more than a few dozen individuals in the whole of the USA! The word 'socialist', even though most don't understand its meaning, has gathered the same kind of horror here as 'leper' had in biblical times. ("Unclean, unclean!").

For this Music Monday, I was about to post Joe South's own rendition of his song, when I noticed this exuberant old version of it by Engelbert Humperdinck (now 82), Tom Jones (now 78) and Billy Preston (who, sadly, died in 2006 aged 59). Joe South, the song's writer died in 2012, aged 72.




Oh the games people play now
every night and every day now
never meaning what they say now
and never saying what they mean
while they while away the hours
in their ivory towers
till they're covered up in flowers
in the back of a black limousine

la da la da da da da,
I'm a talkin' about you and me
and the games people play

You know we make one another cry
we break our hearts and we say goodbye
we cross our hearts and we hope to die
that the other was to blame
we need a woman that will give in
so we gaze at our eight by ten
wanderin' 'bout the things
that might have been
and it's a dirty rotten shame

[chorus]

People walkin' up to ya
singing glory haleuajah
and they try to sock it to ya
in the name of the Lord
they're goin' to teach ya how to meditate
read your horoscope and cheat your fate
furthermore to hell with hate
c'mon and get on board

[chorus]

Look around tell me what you see
what's happening to you and me
God grant me the serenity
to remember who I am
cause you've given up your sanity
for your pride and your vanity
you turn your back on humanity
and you don't give a damn da da da......


2 comments:

Wisewebwoman said...

I would play that along with "Little Boxes" to reinforce my overall ennui and cynicism with modern life back in the day. Thanks for the reminder.

Not much has changed - well, truly it's gotten so bad that I, for one, could never have anticipated fascism in my time. I had a struggling belief in democracy which has now vanished both here on the Edge (we have our own capitalistic corrupt nightmare) and of course in the USA where insanity and empire reigns like never before.

What a joke democracy has become, it's like a cuss word now.

XO
WWW

Twilight said...

Wisewebwoman ~ Yes,indeed! Still though, we've just switched off the TV after watching an episode of Season 3 of Poldark, and a movie titled "Ithaca" about a telegram boy and his family in 1942 USA - and quite honestly the horrors and cruelty of the late 1700s in
England and France, and the pain and distress for families in the years of WW2....well - I felt - like saying as I switched off - "Even with Trump, Brexit and the rest of the shambolic political scene all round - it's still so much better that what has gone before." A bit of history therapy, that was, I guess! :-)