Cup Of Wonder
The Annotated Jethro Tull Lyrics Page

Annotations, information, comments, references

Annotations

Your Round: Unreleased & Rare Tracks

Silver River Turning

• Although 'Silver River Turning' was recorded during the Catfish Rising sessions of 1991, it would perfectly fit into the Rock Island songs (1989), taking in account its theme and athmosphere. At first sight the subject - like in many other songs - seems to be the effect of industrialization on the environment: "Where they built their industries on the edge of town, leaching chemicals from underground. Now it's true that silver river turning blue". But I take the ambivalent, mixed feelings the narrator experiences, when watching what has changed over the years ("silver river turning") in the small town where he was raised, as the true subject:

• For in the first verse we see how (1) warm memories from his childhood come back, reminding him of growing up in a small, safe and secluded town with the silver river and its environment as playground: "through a child's eye saw places where I used to go". (2) That harmonious world has been lost, due to the industrialization (evoking melancholy?), (3) that on the one hand spoils the environment (regret, bitterness?), but on the other hand brings jobs for the people in the town (consent?). (4) He has to accept these changes: "Face reality and stare it down" (resignation?). (5) As there is no job for everyone, life has become though. Many are forced to leave finding a job elsewhere and those who stay have to face hard times:"Sometimes it's harder hanging on. Much easier to look around. But I need that job"(dispair?). (6) The narrator realises that he is one of them: the people in this town: "we're just small players here" ... "drinking poor man's beer" (a feeling of connection?). Not even the local tradition or folklore can 'chase away' (7) the feeling of alienation caused by this dilemma: choosing for industrialization and jobs or choosing for preservation of nature and poverty: "But there's no easy answer in the green man's song".

• What Ian describes here is what has happened in many small towns in 'written off' parts of Scotland and Cornwall e.g. during the seventies and the Thatcher era. Note the double entendre in "the silver river turning blue". 'Blue' might refer to the pollution of the river and to a feeling of sadness about what has been lost.
  * Jan Voorbij

Crew Nights

• The song depicts the stressful and hazardous life on the road as led by the roadies, who have to make sure that everything works well and the band can make it's gig into a success. I take this song as a kind of tribute to 'the underrated, anonymous men in the background who make it all work'. The ingenuity of this song lies in the tempo and variety of images: both underline the fast lives roadies are living. Ian must have known by experience what he was talking about, for in the 'Production Manual' issued for the Broadsword tour, he describes how life was when the band couldn't afford a professional crew and "trundled up and down the motorways and trunk roads of Britain in a rusting Ford Transit van (...) with one roadie-cum-driver to aid and abet, we did a great deal of the humping ourselves, struggling manfully with 4x12 cabinets upstairs and down cellars and setting up and wiring everything in a blind panic before the doors opened".
  * Jan Voorbij

• "Crew nights, no bar fights or 'Reader's Wives'...". 'Reader's Wives' is a porn magazine, the sort of thing roadies might 'read' on tour, being away from their wives and girlfriends. There is no need for porn magazines on this occcasion, since there are real women around!
  * Neil R.. Thomason

The Curse

• In "The Curse", Ian sings "Went down to the local disco, In what used to be the one-and-nines..." The "one-and-nines" referred to are the cheap front seats in a UK cinema, referred to in pre-decimal UK currency, which was introduced in 1971. They invariably cost one (shilling) and nine (pence). In the 1970's a lot of cinemas in the UK closed down and were turned into discos, bingo halls and the like. Another similar reference is to be found in "Taxi Grab", with the line "Teatime calls, the bingo halls, Open at seven in the old front stalls".
  * March the Mad Scientist

A Small Cigar

• Particularly in the early 1970's, many people assumed Ian was a regular user of 'mind-expanding' drugs. As he said in an article he wrote for Trouser Press Magazine, in October 1982: "Of course, people who saw me jumping about on-stage thought I was taking every drug under the sun. No matter how many times I would say politely, "No, thank you, I would not like a joint ", they'd say, "Aw, C'MON, man, HEY... " Rather than be rude or get angry bottled it up, all these feelings of growing up among a generation I felt I didn't belong with surfaced on Benefit". This attitude to drugs is apparent in the second verse of 'A Small Cigar':
  "If you ask me they're on their way
  to upper-middle-class oblivion.
  The stupid twits, they roll their only one cigarette between them".
  The other people at the party are sharing a joint:
  "My small cigar's redundant now
  in the haze of smoking pleasure.
  Call it a day, Get the hell away".
  The smell of cannabis fills the room, so Ian leaves early:
  "Go down the cafe, For a cup of real tea."
  'Tea' being a slang term for cannabis, of course, as distinct from 'real' tea, the drink!
  * Neil R. Thomason

Broadford Bazaar

• Broadford is a small town on Skye, with a ferry terminal (presumably the one mentioned in 'Ears Of Tin' ). It's quite a chaotic place, with tourists wandering about, locals getting on with their daily business, and far more traffic than the road system was designed to cope with. Hence the image of a bustling Middle Eastern bazaar. In addition to the usual shops of any Scottish market town, there are plenty of gift shops and opportunities to separate tourists from their money. It's the nearest town to Ian's old estate at Strathaird. The implication of the song is that there's a market in Broadford - not just livestock, groceries and souvenirs, but homes, jobs, heritage and land - everything is for sale.

• "Dirty white caravans down narrow roads sailing.
  Vivas, Cortinas, weaving in their wake."
  The song begins with the image of holidaymakers driving around Skye, towing caravans. The Vauxhall Viva and Ford Cortina were models of cars common in Britain in 1978. More to the point, they were family-saloon type cars, ill-suited to the narrow rural roads of Skye.
  "With hot, red-faced drivers, horns flattened, fists whaling,
  Putting trust in blind corners as they overtake".
  The drivers are struggling to manoeuvre their unwieldy vehicles on the narrow, twisting minor roads, complicating matters by their arrogance and poor knowledge of the roads. A situation I've frequently seen in rural Wales is where a queue of traffic builds up behind a tractor or slow-moving car towing a caravan. Invariably, someone gets impatient and attempts to overtake. However, the road is also invariably inappropriate for overtaking - blind corners, the brows of hills, etc. suspect Ian had frequently turned a corner to be confronted by a tourist hurtling towards him on the wrong side of the road!

• "And it's "All come willing now,
  Spend a shilling now,
  Stack up the back of your new motorcar."
  There's home-dyed woollens, and wee plastic Cuillins.
  The day of the Broadford Bazaar".
  The Cuillins are the mountains of Skye. I presume the 'wee (small) plastic' ones are snowglobes, keyrings, and other tourist mechandise. The home-dyed woollens are probably made in Taiwan, too. Incidentally, the British shilling became obsolete in 1971, but the word was still used colloquially to mean five pence. doubt he meant specifically spend 5p, just "give us your money !"

• "Out of the north, no oil-rigs are drifting.
  And jobs for the many are down to the few.
  Blue-bottle choppers, they visit no longer.
  Like flies to the jam pots, they were just passing through."
  The deep waters around Skye were used as a construction site for oil platforms, subsequently towed out to the North Sea oilfields - they weren't drilling for oil around Skye! By 1978, development in the oilfields had reached its peak, so few new offshore platforms were required. The construction side of the industry therefore declined and withdrew from Skye:
  "Where once stood oil-rigs so phallic
  There's only swear-words in Gaelic
  To say at the Broadford Bazaar".

• "All kinds of people come down for the opening
  Crofters and cottars, white settlers galore".
  A croft is simply a small farm, the traditional unit of agriculture in the Scottish Highlands. 'Cottier' is the Irish version, with different implications in law. A cottar is a Scottish peasant occupying a cottage in exchange for labour; i.e. an agricultural worker who gets a cottage as part of his employment - his employer owns the cottage, and if the worker leaves his job, he has to vacate the cottage. A cottier is an Irish tenant holding land as the highest bidder. As understand it, residence is for a fixed period, then the bidding process is repeated, for the tenant to renew the lease or for someone else to take over the tenancy. However, I suspect Ian was thinking of cottierism in this case, where rich outsiders are able to outbid the poorer locals, so the Skye locals become displaced from their own homes. 'White settlers' is a term evoking colonialism in Britain's imperialist past, where British people moved to live in foreign countries, particularly India and South Africa, generally taking the best properties and reorganising social life to their preferences. In this case, it's outsiders taking over the small Skye communities.

• "And up on the hill, there's an old sheep that's dying,
  But it had two new lambs born just a fortnight before".
  A hopeful metaphor - the old agricultural economy may be declining on Skye, but newer variants, better adapted to modern life, are evolving within the community. Several crofters have managed to keep the ir livelihoods by farming part-time, and doing other work from home - with a phone, fax and computer with e-mail, Broadford might as well be Bradford, Boston or Beijing. And there's always fish farming...

• "We'll take pounds, francs and dollars from the well-heeled,
  And stamps from the Green Shield".
  Green Shield stamps: a system whereby people could save money a little at a time, to spend on groceries, etc.; a way of spreading everyday expenses. Also mentioned in Genesis' "Selling England By The Pound" (1973). Note that this was a saving scheme, not US-style Food Stamps. The hypothetical shopkeepers in the song will happily charge premium prices to foreign (including English!) tourists, but will support poorer locals by accepting the trading stamps instead of cash.
  * Neil R. Thomason