Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Wasted Years--The Song

This is great song that I just discovered. It's only been out about 25 years or so. Better late than never, I suppose. The chorus is especially poignant to me, since I've certainly spent more years than I care to count searching for the lost ones. It's a particular fallacy of mine.

This is from the band Iron Maiden, which I admit I'd not given much thought to until recently when I saw a concert of theirs on late one night. Trying to find good music these days is kind of like trying to find a unicorn. As a result, I'm digging back into the 70's and 80's for artistic inspiration and something to listen to. Modern heavy metal sounds awful to me, with dropped tuning on the guitars and singers who sound much like Cookie Monster. I hate it. I'm finding more and more people turning to the older stuff, and I find myself turning with them. And not just to heavey metal. I spent a happy hour a few nights ago playing along to the Bryan Adams album RECKLESS. I shamelessly learned the guitar parts to Bon Jovi's "Dead or Alive" recently as well. I remember fondly the 1980's....

At any rate, this band is worth listening to, especially if you're a fan of bands like Rush, which incorporate cerebral lyrics and virtuostic instrumentals. Not everybody's cup of tea, mind you, but I dig it.

Here's the lyrics to the song, written by Adrian Smith. This is off the album SOMEWHERE IN TIME. Smith is one of the bands' three guitarists (how cool is it to have 3 guitars?). The song kicks off with a classical-sounding riff in E minor, then goes into a nicely overdriven guitar part. Worth a listen to, should you have the chance. The lead singer has been described as a human air-raid siren, and I don't know that I disagree. The guy has tremendous range, and somewhat of an oepratic quailty to his voice with a lot of vibrato. I digress, however.

[(Smith) 5:06]

From the coast of gold, across the seven seas
I'm travellin' on, far and wide
But now it seems, I'm just a stranger to myself
And all the things I sometimes do, it isn't me but
someone else

I close my eyes, and think of home
Another city goes by in the night
Ain't it funny how it is, you never miss it 'til it's
gone away
And my heart is lying there and will be 'til my
dying day

[Chorus:]
So understand
Don't waste your time always searching for
those wasted years
Face up... make your stand
And realise you're living in the golden years

Too much time on my hands, I got you on my mind
Can't ease this pain, so easily
When you can't find the words to say it's hard to
make it through another day
And it makes me wanna cry and throw my
hands up to the sky

[Chorus:]


Yeah. It's like that.