But the Scar, That Scar Remains

I may have mentioned it to you before, but I detest, absolutely detest, that whole ‘it’s so crap its brilliant’ we-love-kitsch stuff and so when I profess my undying love for this next record I’m not being ironically cool, coolly ironic, or ironically uncool.  I genuinely do love it.  Its like a bad relationship, I know she’s no good for me and all my friends are disappointed in me and she’s been around the block; Like a great big coward I may even have sneered at her myself when my friends were around, but deep down I know that when we’re alone and the lights are just-so, I really can’t help myself, all those long-repressed feelings will just floor me again.

We both lie silently still
In the dead of the night
Although we both lie close together
We feel miles apart inside

Oh yes, I’m talking about Poison’s Every Rose Has It’s Thorn, the shaped picture disc of which is genuinely one of my favourite records.  I know its a great big saccharine Hollywood take on real sentiment, but I don’t care.  I love every note, I love the story (I’m a real sucker for songs with stories in them)and this is just perfect.  I bought this on 17 February 1989, almost 23 years ago now when I was a lovelorn 17 year old; I seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time being lovelorn, in fact looking back on it all doesn’t everyone?  I have no doubt whatsoever that I have shed real tears to this song on several occasions, especially the bit about ‘instead of makin’ love / we both made our separate ways’.  I’ll spare you the girls’ names, after all I don’t want the poor souls besieged by a baying pack of paparazzi, but this song just dials me straight back into that state of being, those feelings again; hearing this for me is something akin to Proust’s madeleine, but with a better guitar solo and fewer 200 page dinner parties, obviously.

Every so often serious newspapers wheel out eminent musicologists to explain to us, the common herd, about why certain songs just work for us and so I’m sure my feelings on this song can be explained by the hyper-emotional erotically-charged state in which I first encountered it, coupled with a G Major 7th in the fourth bar, plus the fact that everyone knows cowboys are really tough customers and for them to be singing a sad, sad song …

But now I hear you found somebody new
And that I never meant that much to you
To hear that tears me up inside
And to see you cuts me like a knife

Oh God, stop it 1537 – stop doing this to yourself !!  I’ll post again, once I’ve stopped being a blubbering wreck.

The B-side is a big pile of pants called ‘Back to the Rocking Horse’, which I had to really force myself to listen to, so its not all good!

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