A few things come to my mind when hearing this.
First is the the drum sounds, the Thomas Dolby (sounds like war?) blasts
that are onmipresent. I often wondered if the acrimony that accompanied the
production of "Dog Eat Dog" didn't provide subtext for choosing to recall
that sound to support the lyrical wartime/domestic battle imagery.
The second is the damage to my Americentric ego upon hearing the phrases,
"Sleep little darling, this is your happy home.
Hiroshima cannot be pardoned, don't have kids when you get grown.
Because this world is shattered,
The wise are mourning,
The fools are joking.
Oh, what does it matter?
The wash needs ironing and the fire needs stoking."
While I wasn't alive when the event occured, I think that most US citizens,
and subsequent generations of same rarely considered how the rest of the
residents of this planet felt upon the advent of the Nuclear Era. Being a
late boomer, I only caught the end of the "Duck and Cover" drills, but it
was still evident that many people even in the US felt helpless, diminished
and demoralized by this spectre.
The third is the foreshadowing I see in the repeated line,
"She says 'I'm leaving here' but she don't go"
to these in "Sunny Sunday":
"Then she points a pistol through the door,
and she aims at the streetlight while the freeway hisses.
Dogs bark as the gun falls to the floor.
The streetlight's still burning, she always misses.
But the day she hits that's the day she'll leave.
That one small victory, that's all she needs!"
If there's any first person to be found in "Sunny Sunday", perhaps Joni is
letting us know the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. History, though
indicates something different.
CC
"But it passes like the summer, I'm a wild seed again.
Let the wind carry me." -- JM
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