Before we get into that, however – Amanda and I want to extend our condolences to the family, friends and loved ones of @DDStolenLeopard, known to the rest of the world as Sandy Ahrens. Sandy passed this weekend, and we are heartbroken for her family and friends. While neither of us knew Sandy personally, she was known for making us laugh with her tweets and we had begun to make plans for a get together when we come to North Carolina in August. Once again we are reminded of just how short life really is – and how at the end of it all, it will be the memories we share with friends that have made this journey in fandom completely worthwhile. Yes, the band is wonderful (that’s a given, right?), and yes the shows are amazing, but they wouldn’t be anything without the time we’ve shared with our friends. That’s truly what’s important. While I hate that it’s these moments that serve as that reminder, perhaps if there’s a silver lining to be gained here, it’s being given the gift of time to get past the insipid drama and recognize the gift of friendship that we’ve been given. Bless you Sandy. Rest in Peace.
-Rhonda & Amanda
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Night Boat
Rhonda’s take:
Musicality/Instrumentation: One thing I can say about Duran Duran is that they know how to create an atmosphere. While it’s easy to point at Nick Rhodes and say it’s all about the synths, I dare say that on this song – it took the entire band. Yes, Nick begins the song with almost a not-quite-dreamy and yet not-quite-nightmarish synth background. Before I ever saw the video, I had this vision of being in one of my dreams where I am walking down a dark hallway, not quite sure where I’m going, and pulling back sheer curtain after sheer curtain until I finally get to the end of the hallway where there’s one door. You’d think I’d just learn to turn around and retreat back to my own bedroom, but no. I open the door, and that’s when Simon’s voice comes out of nowhere to scare the hell out of me. (you can laugh here. It’s OK. I did.) My point of course is that the music does absolutely everything it can to make this song scary, and it works. That’s musicality at it’s finest. Every single instrument has it’s own part in this song to create the intended mood, and while yes, Nick starts it – I think every instrument and band member fully commits themselves to the storyline, and it works.
Vocals: It’s a good thing that they recorded this song back in 1981, because I’m just not sure they could recreate the mood if they tried it again today. During this point, Simon had such a unique way about his voice. There was a darkness and edge to it that I just don’t know if he has any longer. I don’t know why that is – I hate blaming these things on age, but perhaps that is the case? I’ve heard them do this song live and I just don’t think it’s the same (that could very well be due to the production on the album, though). That said, I think this song is a perfect example of Simon’s talent as a lead singer. So many bands try to do a song that is a horror film come to music and they fail largely due to the singer not being able to properly convey the mood. This is not the case here. This song is a testament to Simon’s training not only as a singer but also as an actor. There’s no lack of emotion in his voice as he sings, it’s very clear that the song is meant to engage the listener and create a sense of anxiety. Let’s just say that this is one song I choose not to listen to at night! 🙂
Lyrics: It’s true, I never really understood the point of the song. I never connected much with the lyrics beyond being scared to death of the song when I was young. I would honestly race to the record player and move the needle to skip the song. My overactive imagination would envision Simon coming for me as a zombie, and I just wasn’t into it. I much preferred the visions of the boys on a yacht, basking in the sun, or seeing them dressed up in military uniforms. So, all I knew was that the song scared me. It still does. The interesting thing about this song is that one doesn’t even need the lyrics in order to understand what the song is trying to convey. Sure, there’s a lot of talk about a boat coming and the apparent anxiety that this is causing Simon…but ultimately the real punch to the song is in the music, not the lyrics. That isn’t to say that the lyrics aren’t excellent, it’s just that the music is what really brings the meaning into focus.
Production: I can’t complain about the production here. There isn’t a song on the original album that I can say was overdone. There’s complete balance: each instrument is allowed to tell his story without yelling over someone else. Who knew that eventually this would become a thing of the past?!? Even with all of the extra effects on synthesizer, it’s not overdone and it’s complementary to everything else. I wish today’s type of production took notes off of songs like these. There is something to be said for allowing the instruments to do the real work. Then again, there’s something to be said for real talent that doesn’t need to be manipulated in order for it to sound right.
Overall: Tough as it is for me to admit, this is not one of my favorite Duran Duran songs. I just never quite enjoyed it, although I do have appreciation for the song. I respect how it was done and the talent involved, even if it is the one song I always skip when the CD is in my car or it comes up on my iPod. While I might not ever call it among my favorites, the song is good in it’s own right and I respect that.
Cocktail Rating: 4.5 cocktails!
Amanda’s Turn:
Musicality/Instrumentation: Confession time here. I truly do enjoy the dark side of Duran Duran. I like those times when they skirt the edge of being gothic like and this song truly is an example of this! The word that always comes to mind when listening to this song is “eerie”. The music is supposed to creep you out. It is supposed to create a fear or an anxiety. Right from the beginning, from those first notes on Nick’s keys, you know that this isn’t going to be one of those happy, bouncy Duran songs. Nick’s keyboards remind me of classic goth in the sense that I almost hear organ in the first minute to minute and a half of this song. There is very little going in the beginning of the song but Nick’s haunting keyboards. Then, John’s bass enters. This sound doesn’t distract from the creepiness but adds to it. The drums and guitars eventually come in with the lyrics and chorus to round out the sound. While the song starts with Nick dominating, by the end, everyone is fully involved.
Vocals: This song has always represented the best and the worst of Simon’s vocals to me. I love the deep Simon vocals on this track. These vocals were present throughout the first album and I will always love them. In many of the songs on the first album, but especially this one, Simon’s vocals seem, to me, to be an example of someone trying desperately to control one’s emotions. It isn’t that Simon is calm but he is trying to seem that way. Yet, if you pay attention, you can feel the anxiety just waiting to jump out, which it does, at times. Those times, in my head, are when his vocals suddenly become much higher. For example, he often is deep but then jumps to a higher note when singing “Nightboat,” with the boat being the high part. These moments bothered me as a kid and they still bother me today even though I think they are fitting with the song. In these moments, I can really see and tell that Duran was an art school project. Their songs were never just straight up songs but ones that went beyond the traditional song. Each song was like a different piece of artwork with different emotions and tones. This is Duran at their best. Nonetheless, while I get this element in his vocals, I still don’t like those high parts.
Lyrics: This is honestly where the song doesn’t work as well as it could have and should have, in my opinion. The music is absolutely brilliant. Yet, the lyrics don’t hold up as well. I don’t really get why the nightboat is such a big deal exactly. We know that we should be worried about it but I don’t really know why. If Simon was going to be cryptic here, he should have been more cryptic. If not, he should given more of a storyline. When I think of other dark, classic Duran songs, the ones that work the best have bigger storylines. I think Nightboat needed that.
Production: Like every other song on the first album, the production is great. The instruments work individually and blend perfectly. Simon’s voice, for the most part, matches the instrumentation and the atmosphere. I don’t think you can ask for anything better. One thing I am amazed by is how Duran was allowed to create songs like Girls on Film to songs like Nightboat on the same album. The producer could have pushed them more towards songs that could have seemed more mainstream like Girls on Film. Yet, they were allowed to make art pieces like this song. They were given enough freedom to show every side of themselves.
Overall: I love the instrumentation/musicality on this song. I love when they are/were dark and atmospheric. I love Simon’s vocals when they are deep and seem to show barely controlled emotions. I wish that the lyrics had been stronger, however, and I could have done without the high notes at the end of “Nightboat” in the song. Yet, despite any weaknesses, this song fits so perfectly with the rest of the first album. It shows how dark Duran can be and shows their amazing ability to create a mood. While songs like Anyone Out There created a feeling of loneliness and isolation, this one creates an anxiety, a nervousness. It is interesting that they chose to place this song at the beginning of the second side to the album. It definitely told the listener that the second half of their debut album wasn’t going to be light and pretty.
Cocktail Rating: 4 cocktails!
I had to dust off my VHS recording of the first videos to get reacquainted, because I do recall that Simon quotes something, mythology I believe, which I will return to momentarily.
I do know form my daughter, the Latin minor, that the “Nightboat” refers to the boat that takes people to Hades (hell).
So here's the introduction spoken by Simon before the song begins “She'll be here soon” Simon says [hee hee]. JT, looking hot, replies “Who is she anyway?” Simon then starts to recite Queen Mab speech “She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;”
It's hard to make out more from Simon once the music has started. Good luck trying to figure it out.
Here's the video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbEoUPqP2mo&feature=colike
I'm no Shakespeare, but Queen Mab's speech is a key scene in Romeo and Juliet, where Mercutio hints to Romeo, in a sense, that something dark is coming, that his dream to be with Juliet forever is not exactly what Romeo had in mind.
So, very foreboding.
Back to the “Nightboat”–the lyrics aren't really rich with storytelling and I am left with the video images to piece the whole thing together. There needs to be a Spark's Notes on Duran Duran lyrics and videos! [Back in the day, I had Cliff's notes.]
Then, in Cliff notes, I found that the definition for night-boat is “the ferry that departed Dublin every evening for Liverpool, England.
Still doesn't make sense.
A fairy from Romeo & Juliet, zombies, a ferry to Liverpool, anyone else as confused as I am?
As an academic, me thinks too much. So in the case of this “Nightboat” — I will just take it at face value. Artistic dramatization with moments of eye candy, though not the zombies, the band!
Yes, this all is true – but in our case we were only reviewing the song, not the video. 🙂 Those will come at a later time. I do have to disagree though, because the lyrics are incredibly rich with imagery, and what they lack Simon more than makes up for in sheer emotion. Even if the words don't make sense or leave wide gaps in what they might mean, his singing fills them. Of course, that's just my opinion – even Amanda tends to agree that the lyrics don't work as well. My argument would be that due to the musical composition, they really didn't need to fill in much. -R
Yeah. I do like the song and your review led me to just listen and not watch this time. Your review helped me notice things about the SONG that I didn't notice before, so thank you!
Since my introduction to this song was a result of my most prized VHS of DD videos in 1983, and I tend to skip over this song when it comes up in shuffle, I really never sat down to consider the song separately from the video.
I like Simon's vocals on this track, hitting sharp notes quite well. But other than “I'm waiting….waiting for the Nightbooooaat, wooh I'm waiting…..waiting for the Nightboat” and “I'm waiting for the Nightboat”….my comment about there not being much there lyric wise to make sense, is a result of the repetitive nature of the refrain. Yes, there are maybe two brief stanzas of other words that convey meaning, to me, it is not one of my favorite songs.
But the music stands out and wow the voice!! Agree on that. Three and 1/2 cosmos for rating [but who can drink a half a cosmo anyway. So I'll go along with the 4 😀
Deb
I agree that the lyrics are almost like the accent piece to this song with the instruments and Simon's haunting voice doing most of the work. It's never been a favorite of mine, but I do appreciate the diversity that DD has always brought to their music. No song, no album sounds the same and they aren't afraid to experiment.
I remember Simon saying he composed that song waiting for… a bus. One of my favorite from the band. There is a dark side and horror movie feeling. I think the lyrics capture that feeling more than telling a story. Superb drum very organic there. Perfect music. Rhonda, you said that you don't think Simon can sing that the same way now. This is a good question. I don,t think in show he can perform it the same way because of the intensity he give singing live. We can see the same now when he sing Before the Rain. He has to push it not to be under the music loudness. That can be an explanation. Or maybe as you said he is just an old man… I am only one year younger so I doubt that can be the truth 😉
Pat
I would never call him an old man. 😀 (no really though, that isn't exactly what I meant)
I just meant that on that album, his voice is much lower. He tends to sing in a higher range now, and I don't really think his voice has that same dark quality. I mean, maybe it does and maybe it's really just that I haven't HEARD him sing that way in a long time… ???
-R
But could he ever really match the record in live performance on this song? I never thought the early live versions matched the record in that sense. I don't think they were worse but I don't think it's really got anything do with age. Esp given that Simon's voice still sounds pretty young. I do think the lyrics were good though, I think they painted the right picture for the music.
I really liked the version he did with Smashing Pumpkins live in 1998 though(doesn't include those vocal hiccups on the chorus Amanda doesn't like either). It's not like the original but as a somewhat different take on the song I thought it was good. (link here if anyone hasn't heard it to make their own decision: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfAcuQfXitU )
I don't think the lyrics are supposed to “tell story”, just describe a moment, thus the short lyrics. It's really more like a 12 line poem but as a song it's got a repeating chorus. As mentioned has by deb's daughter, the nightboat has to do with the boat that takes people to Hades(and all that comes along with that so that in and of itself tells a kind of story). Now it's fairly obscure so it's not like it can said it means this or that – but I think there are lots of options. It's more like the end of a story(or perhaps the start of another)_rather than a whole story, you can take it a lot of places.
It could be describing the moment of someone's death, waiting for his passage on Charon's ferry. (Now knowing what we know about Simon, he certainly wasn't above imagining a little scary fantasy/sci fi scene, I remember him once talking about what he was imagining when he wrote the The Chauffeur and it was actually a sort of sci fi setting – you don't necessarily get that in the lyrics but that's where he had it set in his head–so maybe he imagined having died and ending up waiting by the River Styx for the ferryman to come collect him). It could be a metaphor – the moment where someone's life is about to change. Either way there is uncertainty and a fear of what is to come. And the song doesn't tell you what happens, he's still waiting when it ends.
Some of it describes the physical setting(standing by a quay, yellow water rippling, a moonless/lightless setting, etc) and some of it describes his mental state(fog in my mind, darkens my eyes–now see this could be death itself–the mind goes foggy, blindness occurs so it could also be a physical state depending on what it means or it could be the physical state mirroring the mental state).
But basically to put it simply, I think it's just describing a nightmare scene–either realistically or metaphorically– and like in real life, how scary something is can depend on your state of mind at the time you're viewing it. Hey maybe you don't find a foggy, dark night by the river particularly scary tonight BUT maybe on another night you might be terrified and convinced you were about to die. 🙂 And there doesn't really need to be anything more to it, at that moment by the river, for whatever personal reasons you have, you're scared.
But then again I was an English Major, I made my way through years of school trying to decipher poetic meanings so I'm used to looking for things like that–whether they are there or not. 🙂 Of course I became an English Major because I already liked doing that and gee I wonder who helped me develop that with hours of staring at lyrics. It's all Simon Le Bon's fault!
Well, as I said – I really don't know if he could match the vocals, and you are right that the early live performances still didn't match the record. I think it's nearly impossible on some of these songs simply because when he's singing live he's got to be able to project his voice. I don't agree that his voice still sounds young though. Go back and give the early albums a good listen. His voice has a much smoother feel to it, and that's perfectly normal. It's expected as you age, and given the vocal issues Simon has had over the years, it's especially impressive that he sounds as great as he does (and he DOES still sound great overall) -R
I don't think any of us are disagreeing with what you're saying here. Amanda and I simply said that we think the music tells the real story, and I think it's rare for a Duran Duran song to be that way (not a bad thing at all). A story can certainly take place within a moment. My goodness, even poems tell a “story” of a moment in time, don't you think? -R
Hey Anon, maybe you and I can co-teach a course on DD! I know R&A are busy but could be guest speakers via skype ;)A real in depth analysis of lyrics and videos.
We could put it on itunes U!
I'd sign up for such a class!
Deb
Too funny. So he wasn't waiting for the Nightboat, it was a bus. I guess if we substituted “Bus” everytime “Nightboat” was used, it would be a rather interesting and very different song. But maybe Anon would have some ideas about if he was really using Nightboat as a substitute for bus, the analysis would be quite interesting. Are the zombies in the video all the people going to and fro about their business unaware of surroundings, thus looking like zombies 😉 Does he want to swim in the Thames river when he says “it echoes me”?
I'm just funning with y'all 😀
Deb
I didn't make that clear enough. I didn't say he sounded the same as when HE was young, just that he has a pretty young sounding voice. In a general sense.
There are differences in his voice but he doesn't sound “old”. We can compare how he sounded 30 years ago and his voice has changed in various ways. Some smoothness may be missing but I think it's safe to say he also has more control and can do more with it. However it hasn't changed into an “old” voice. He can still sound closely similar. I think we've all heard enough ravaged rock star voices to know what they sound like: trouble sustaining notes, wobbliness, raspy and/or rough, etc.(beyond whatever they might have normally had in their prime)
The singers who get away with it are usually the ones who give up smoking at a relatively young age, which I believe he did. I think smoking does more to ruin singers vocal chords than most of the other wear and tear put together.
I'm sorry – I completely misunderstood what you meant! You're exactly right about Simon's voice though. He doesn't sound “old” at all. I don't want anyone thinking I meant he sounds old! He does still sound remarkably similar to what he did on that first album, and I don't mean to take credit from him in saying that it's not the same. You are right, he doesn't have that smokers raspy “gargled with nails” sound to it (not that I'd expect it at 50). I'll give a little on his not sounding quite as “dark and smooth”…fair enough. Thanks for commenting and being patient with me! -R