BS: We Didnt Start The Fire

Subject: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: s6k
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 02:46 PM

This is an enquiry.

If Billy Joel Didnt start the fire, and indeed it has always been burning since the world has been turning, then there is a question that must be answered...

who DID start the fire?

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: Amergin
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 03:01 PM

Gugh did. Ugh watched.

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: GUEST,Mrs Olive Whatnoll
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 04:04 PM

It was John from 'Ull wot done it! The daft bugger. 'E's capable of anyfink, 'e is. 'E thumped me cousin Rutherford over a fag. 'E should be locked up!

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: GUEST,Mr Pistol Don
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 04:26 PM

'E thumped me cousin Rutherford over a fag.

I am a North American. Exactly what does this mean?

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: Teresa
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 04:36 PM

Beat him to a bloody pulp over a cigarette?

Beat him to a bloody pulp over a lover?

;););)

I'm a North american, too, so your guess is as good as mine!

and Sir jOhn from Hull may be a lot of things, but "daft" is certainly not one of them.

T

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: s6k
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 04:50 PM

Sir jOhn from hull started the fire?

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 04:59 PM

Well, I guess Mary in Kentucky started the fire. She posted the lyrics to the Billy Joel song here.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: Teresa
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 05:08 PM

Everybody always wants to get into a kerfuffle about "who started it." Even kids do that. :):)

Well, I'm glad Somebody did, Whoever That might be.

T

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: s6k
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 08:25 PM

Mary in Kentucky indeed is a possibility for starting the fire

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: mack/misophist
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 08:56 PM

j0hn from hull may be sharp, he may even be canny; but he's as daft as a white crow. Dafter. Abd he has too much free time.

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 11:24 PM

Peggy Lee, Arthur Brown, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seeger, Johnny Cash, Marshall Tucker Band, Grateful Dead, Pat Benatar, James Taylor, Rolling Stones

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: GUEST,fred miller
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 12:56 AM

i recognised this from the title. mmmm. But we did 'ignite' it. When we tried to fight it. Yep. Indeed, yes, quite. Billy joel might want to look up a few words in a fucking dictionary someday. This is a horrible stupid song, one of his worst, stupidest songs. I don't know what he means and neither does he. He the less. Is he conflagrating 'ignite' with 'incite' or what. he coulda had class. he coulda been a contenda, but he tried to rock without really getting it. Then he tried to rap, getting it even less. best work was stuff like Don't go changing--he could do stuff like that, passably, pretty, nice. He doesn't get his own thing, which is sad for everyone.
who started the fire? JFK! who was blown away! what else do I have to say?! something less pitiably desperate, maybe.

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 02:59 AM

It's a POP SONG Fred, not The Bible, Mein Kampf or War and Peace. Sounds like Billy lit your fire real good! Chill man! :0)

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: alanabit
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 03:14 AM

I'm with Fred this time Johnny. It's not a crap song because it says nothing. It's a crap song because it is posturing as if it did have something to say. It is a lot of silly, pretended anger. It is nothing better than an eighties "Eve of Destruction". At the time, Brusce Springsteen, Suzanne Vega and The Hooters were writing better songs on the back of cigarette packets.

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 04:10 AM

'My Life' is a much more angry song, and one that millions of angst ridden teenagers identify with....

Personnally, my favourite angry song is 'So Strong' by Labe Siffre

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 04:42 AM

But is it worth getting your knickers in a twist over? For example, there are a million innocent men, women and children starving to death in the Sudan (which the US-based Mudcat contingent seem not to have heard about) right now, as we overfed, over-rich bastards pontificate here on Mudcat about a bloody song - in the face of such tragedy, boiling up about about the whys and wherefores of a silly '80s pop song becomes nothing short of ridiculous. Trying to put things into perspective, that's all.

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 04:54 AM

But we sure can feed the flames.....

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: s6k
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 05:20 AM

its not called dont go changing, its called Just the Way you Are, and thats a fantastic song.

i think billy joels best song is Piano Man

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: alanabit
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 06:53 AM

Of course Sudan is more important Johnny, but we were talking about the merits of a song.

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: GUEST,fred miller
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 03:49 PM

no i'm not really in a twist, i just thought it would be funny written that way. I also like to play pedantic with "whiter shade of pale" which would be a tint, not a shade, and you and i should travel to the beatS of different drumS, if the song wants to make sense. It's a pretty annoying tune, though. I really like it how uneven joel's work is--i don't trust people who are never bada and he's sometimes pretty bad. He's off the mark for me, as a rocker. Like, say, the French, who I also feel can't do abstract expressionism. Not to my taste.
Anyone know what a 'real-estate novelist' is?

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 09:15 PM

"'E thumped me cousin over a fag." definitely means: "He beat up my cousin over a cigarette."

I seem to recall there was some altercation jOhn got into recently with someone who wanted to bum a cigarette off him at a bar, and the guy got ugly about it when jOhn said he didn't have any. Olive Whatnoll seems to be on a vendetta over what clearly was not jOhn's fault. He is, however, daft, and probably "crackers" too! :-) I do not think he started the fire, though. More likely it was Paw and Cletus who did that. I smell a rat here. Actually, it smells worse than a rat.

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: GUEST,fred miller
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 12:55 AM

no help? with 'a real estate novelist' in piano man? I'm thinking it might be one of those guys like e.m. forster, or evelyn waugh, writing those books about english real-estate, brideshead revisited, or howard's end, or whatever.

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: GUEST,fred miller
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 07:35 PM

nobody? nothing? Geez, it's been bugging me a long time.

As for the fire question, I looked it up, and quote from the published works of the anthropologist Jack Handy.

"I bet what happened was they discovered fire and invented the wheel on the same day. Then, that night, they burned the wheel."

   and also,

"Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself:'Mankind.' Basically it's made up of two separate words--'mank' and 'ind.' What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind."

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 08:47 PM

Hello,
I dont know who it was, but i know it wasent Jim Eldon, as he cant start fires, [see the thread called "Jim Eldon Cant Start A fire"]!

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: GUEST,britney
Date: 18 May 06 - 08:50 PM

what does the word fire mean in this song?

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: John O'L
Date: 18 May 06 - 09:21 PM

This is based on a paper...pertaining to the social implications of the song.

I post this not with the intention of demonstrating who started the fire, but solely with that of adding to the confusion.

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: M.Ted
Date: 19 May 06 - 01:00 AM

I alway thought that it sounded like a list of cover stories, over the years, for a weekly news magazine, such as Time or Life--the fire presumably, would be the one which spontaneously began in a heap of said periodicals in the back of the garage--the get wet, and soon the bacteria create combustion--hence the "we didn't start the fire"--

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: Grab
Date: 19 May 06 - 07:11 AM

To fan the flames, I think it's a rather good song, and "JFK! Blown away! What else do I have to say!" is a superb line. It's like Hockney's block-colour pictures of swimming pools. You could say "oh, I could have done that". But you didn't, and he did.

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: We Didnt Start The Fire
From: Chief Chaos
Date: 19 May 06 - 09:07 AM

I never thought of it as an angry song. To me, it was always a song that was responding to the ever present situation of the old folks saying the world was going to hell in a handbasket because of the new generation.
And if you understand each topic in the song you're probably the former! I always thought it was a good song for recent American history courses!