Oh, my Biedermeier friend
Published November, 2016
by Easterndaze
“And so begins the final drama
In the streets and in the fields”
Well, this article will be about the lyrics of the Hungarian rock band GUSTAVE TIGER, because they have very strange lyrics.
Those are full with historical, mythological and literary references. The series run on RNR666 magazine in Hungarian, but the English versions will published in other magazines every time. This is the first part. The band has been formed in 2013 by two members of most famous Hungarian alternative rock band The Moog. On their recordings The Moog worked together with Jack Endino (producer of Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Nirvana – Bleach) and Ken Scott (one of the main engineers for The Beatles, and co-producer of David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust). I take the lyrics from the recently released GUSTAVE TIGER album Chaste And Mystic Tribadry. Now THERMIDOR, i.e. fall of Robespierre is coming.
Ideas, hopes, state bankruptcy – the French Revolution started with these. It became a nationwide slaughter for years, then a European war for 23 years.
Meanwhile human and civilian rights were declared, the Cult of Reason was promoted, the guillotine was regularized, the king was beheaded, then his wife too.
Then they held the celebration of Supreme Being – starring the leader. They changed the calendar. The first month of the year is March. One month is three weeks. One week is ten days. Every tenth is “Sunday”. Beside Jesus, 25th of Decemberis also feast of Newton.
One month after the celebration of Supreme Being, the leader announced in the National Convention that a newer circle of traitors would be denounced soon.The following day he was imprisoned by the order of the Convent, but was extricated by the troops of the city council, and was conducted into the city hall. But during the night the soldiers deserted. So it was not too hard to arrest him, but during the brawl his jaw was shattered by a shot.
This happened in the 5th year of the Era of Freedom, on the 10th day of the month Thermidor (Heat), on the day of Watering Can. It’s almost as if I would say on Wednesday.
Almost, because everyday of the year got different names. For example 14 March was Daisy, 20 May was Alfalfa, 8 Junewas Pitchfork, 24 December was Sulphur.
Then Napoleon came, and the Frenchmen rushed at Europe. And that soldier, who shot into the leader’s face in 1794, died as a general in Borodino in 1812.
Chaste And Mystic Tribadry by Gustave Tiger
GUSTAVE TIGER
THERMIDOR
Oh, my biedermeier friend, my courtesan,
you’re so pale
When the violins stop playing, wake me up
gently
wake me up
Lily-bosomed empress, shake the starry ways
discreetly
I told you so, I go, as I came, on a flash
Unlike you, unlike you
A flagellant never walks alone
Unlike me, unlike me
Untempled queen-regent in vast peristyle
trembling
Watching the moon and milk with solemn idleness,
dripping
I told you so, I go, as I came, on a flash
Unlike you, unlike you
A flagellant never walks alone
Unlike me, unlike me
Soft yellow light overflow
In the garden of Aurora Bar in Budapest Gustave Tiger said that in this case Thermidor is a metaphor. It must be interpreted in the mirror of the affairs.
“This song takes place in the time of the short lived Hungarian Soviet Republic in Budapest in 1919. Hungarian writer Cécile Tormay is sitting in the opera house with her confidante. The play is about French queen Marie de’ Medici. Because she was an antipathetic and wishy-washy character. They confront Anciene Régime through the play. Tormay is boring, and asking her mate to wake her up in the end. While the revolution of rats is raging outside.”
And a flagellant really “never walks alone”. Because they were members of self whipping movements in the Middle Ages. In the time of epidemics the countryside was infested with them, and in their great devotion sometimes they whipped other sinners too.
– Ok, but how did we get “Biedermeier friend” in here? When biedermeier was a bourgeois artistic style in the first half of the 19th century.
– It is the synonym of philistine.
– And there is a “soft yellow light overflow” at the end of the song. What is it?
– It is an effect of a graphic software. Here it turns the past into nice melancholy. It is a flick for them who think the past times were better, but those were just the same as the recent ones.
After these here is the video clip. It was inspired by Diderot’s ’La Religieuse’, St. Bernard and the miracle of lactatio, and the awe-inspiring ruins and memorials of the disappeared Yugoslavia.
The blonde girl is the new queen of Yugoslavia. The convent is the Schossberger-mansion of Tura, in Hungary. The abandoned objectum is the Haludovo Palace Hotel, that big concrete whatsit is the Monument to the Revolution of the people of Moslavina, both of them are in Croatia.
By Balazs Szabo