parlando

nervus rex - "the god sheila" (1980)

Posted on December 10th, 2006 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.

(song #1 in the Song Project)

Sometimes a great song dies for no good reason. Not weird, not eclectic, not difficult, not offensive, not even ahead of its time; just unlucky. "The God Sheila" by Nervus Rex is such a song. Of all my favorite poppy pop songs in the world, this is the most obscure, and I don't know why. Perhaps because Nervus Rex were a lighthearted pop band who wore silly costumes in New York in 1980 when everyone was Very Very Serious. "The God Sheila" has a bouncy "Walking on Sunshine"-type beat, an incredibly catchy melodic progression with a couple of oddball minor-key (I think) changes and cold, machine-like (until the sultry singing on the bridge) female backing vocals, and a general approach that sounds straight out of the early B-52s songbook. To my ears, it should have been a hit, and should be played on nostalgia stations with affection today. I've never tired of it.

I haven't even had the chance to tire of it since our turntable died. It's never been released on cd or on any compilation, it's never turned up on a file-sharing network or on the web; it vanished from the world, for all I could tell. So thoroughly had I given up on ever finding it that it took me three weeks after Velma showed me the existence of a huge network of websites devoted to uploading out-of-print vinyl for it to occur to me that of course there would be obsessive power pop fans uploading stuff; within an hour of that realization last night, I found it (on Powerpoplovers, naturally).

Listening to it again: Man, this song has great drumming.

And now for the overanalytical part of the post:

My friend Donald Keller and I have been arguing cheerfully about music as long as we've known each other, which is about twenty-three years. We've lived in the same place a few times, and are both passionate about music and cross over on perhaps twenty percent of it, so there's been a lot of opportunity for argument. Donald is good at provoking me into writing more than I had intended to.

rmjwell over on Livejournal said that "The God Sheila" didn't resolve to his ears. I wondered what he meant by that. Here's Donald, and my response:

I understand the objection: the song doesn't either progress or resolve in the sense that it starts at one point and pretty much stays there the whole time, then just stops. This is a description, not an objection; the Smiths' great "How Soon Is Now?" does the same thing.

I'm not much struck by "The God Sheila": the fast 2/4 beat (which =never= alters) is not my favorite, and though the main part of the song is in the minor and there are some interesting changes to the major in the other parts, I don't find the progressions or harmonies that catchy.

However, I love "How Soon Is Now?"—the slower, more syncopated beat never palls, and the guitar slide and chorus are delicious no matter how often repeated.

Another vote for the single-song idea.

Good to see you, Donald!

You're wrong about the song not changing, though. First, yes, the fast two-four doesn't change its absolute rhythm -- the beat underlying everything -- or its tempo, but few songs do. It's nice when they do -- I'll go so far as to say I almost always like it when songs do that -- but is not something I count as a demerit when it isn't there. But the rhythm around the rhythm changes quite a bit: listen to the differences in the beats the drummer is playing from part to part.

Also, the quick call-and-response vocals are a nice use of the fast two-four beat, and I think you'd have difficulty pointing to many other songs that have used that trick at this rhythm and tempo.

But also, Donald, the song isn't the same from beginning to end, not remotely the way "How Soon Is Now" is, unless you're talking about mood (in both cases). (And "How Soon Is Now" isn't the same from beginning to end, either. Sure it repeats that guitar figure over and over, but it has a chorus.) "The God Sheila" is oddly enough structured that it's difficult to say what the chorus or bridge might be, but there a bunch of different parts. Here's the way it sounds to me:

intro, guitar playing same figure over ascending keyboard chords, first 33 seconds.
0:33 - 0:50 full verse A part
0:50 - 0:57 b part ("but I like Sheila") with response vocals
0:57 - 1:13 full verse A part adding response vocals
1:13 - 1:29 chorus
1:30 - 1:36 half verse A part
1:37 - 1:44 bridge, sliding into intro reprise ("I believe in herrrrr")
1:44 - 2:00 intro reprise
2:00 - 2:16 full verse A part
2:16 - 2:24 b part
2:24 - 2:40 chorus, more spare, with spoken response vocals
2:40 - 2:48 half verse A part
2:48 - 2:58 bridge, sliding into intro reprise
2:58 - 3:30 intro reprise, with snares on the 2 in the second half propelling the song to a closing guitar chord at 3:30 that I don't know if it occurs previously in the song; it's an odd resolution, an unexpected one but not attention-grabbingly dissonant, either.

Now, that looks like an admirably built song to me. Not just not the same all the way through, but not precisely like any common pop song model. Whether the listener finds it catchy or not is of course a matter of personal taste; but it's an excellent piece of craftsmanship.

I agree that the whole song is in the same mood/style/feel, and that it's easy to hear it as variations on a theme. But to me, that's a strength, if you like the theme. And if you like the theme, of course the variations separate themselves the more often you listen to the song. I am so used to admiring the way this song is put together that I admit my initial emotional reaction to "it starts at one point and pretty much stays there the whole time, then just stops" is a stuttering, "but- but- !" There is so much in that song for the pattern and variation lover in me that I could write a couple more pages on specific things changing from part to part. I resist doing so because it would look like a dry technical analysis -- I'm afraid what I've written above already looks that way -- when in fact all those changes and pattern and variation give me great emotional pleasure, and the analysis follows (I know you, Donald, understand that). Those pleasures are different in kind but not in strength from the pleasures I get from swings of mood or style in a song. (And both pleasures are visceral -- different in what kind of emotional response they generate in me, but still, both are pre-conscious reactions.)

13 comments.