Skip to content

Random Connections

A collection of photography and exploration focusing on Upstate South Carolina and beyond.

  • Home
  • About Us
  • Photos
  • Resources
  • Other Voices
  • Post Archives
  • Home
  • Miscellaneous
  • Roxanne

Roxanne

Posted on March 25, 2010 By Tom No Comments on Roxanne
Miscellaneous, Music

red-light

The other day I walked into our office and heard “Roxanne” by The Police playing on the stereo in our lobby. It was turned down low, but Andy Summer’s dry guitar pattern and Sting’s distinct voice are hard to miss. This wasn’t an arrangement of “Roxanne” scored for the 101 Strings or some such nonsense. This was the original 1978 recording. Apparently it was also being fed into our intercom system, because I heard it softly playing as I walked down the hall.

Normally I don’t pay attention to the office music. As usual the system was tuned to an easy-listening radio station that’s just one tick above Muzak. However, this song struck me as odd. Was it really appropriate to have a song about dating a prostitute playing in a school district office?

When this song premiered 30 years ago it was quite radical. The sparse, dry instrumentation with a simple quasi-Reggae beat was a departure from either the disco dance beats or heavily orchestrated progressive rock of the era. While double-entendre was common in lyrics, this one was fairly straight-forward – “Roxanne, you don’t have to put on the red light, walk the streets for money, you don’t have to sell your body to the night…” The lyrics could be heard clearly, and it was far below the acceptable norm for the time.

But, even the radical eventually becomes commonplace. Most people walking into our office would have completely tuned it out. Now punk rockers such as the Ramones don’t sound as radical as they once did. Songs from even further back, such as the Who, Rolling Stones, and The Beatles are hardly given a thought if encountered in the background, and they were just as radical for their time. Heck, back in medieval times a major third interval was radical. Things change.

Even if the radical does become more widely accepted, I’m still a firm believer in the appropriateness of certain songs and types of music for certain settings. I’m not a prude – I don’t believe in a wholesale banning of certain types of music, such as what Bob Jones University does with its students. I like loud raucous music, and even some that’s fairly radical even by today’s standards. However, I don’t think it belongs everywhere. For example, I’m very much a traditionalist when it comes to church music, and have never really cared for contemporary Christian.

That being said, the purpose of the radical is to shake things up, especially with traditionalists such as myself. When done with purpose, it can be very effective – either for good or for bad. (Notice I said “effective” and not “appropriate.”) Its power lies in the unexpected, and the departure from the norm. When I hear a great ground-breaking song like “Roxanne” casually mixed into a school setting, it strikes me as being worse than inappropriate. I get the feeling that the song has lost something. It’s been tossed onto the scrap heap of most popular music, and can now be ignored as background white noise. And that is unfortunate.

Tags: Music The Police

Post navigation

❮ Previous Post: US 1
Next Post: Three Collaborative Google Earth Projects ❯

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Categories

  • EdTech (200)
  • Entertainment (202)
  • Family (121)
  • Gear (115)
  • General Technology (99)
  • Geocaching and Maps (208)
  • History and Genealogy (266)
  • Internet (144)
  • Local (451)
  • Miscellaneous (550)
  • Music (196)
  • Paddling (248)
  • Photography (779)
  • Podcast (6)
  • Rambling (227)
  • Rants (161)
  • Recipes (34)
  • Religion (48)
  • Restaurants (165)
  • Science (48)
  • Things Overheard (29)
  • Travel (411)
  • Uncategorized (129)
  • Washington Sabbatical (113)
  • Weirdness (60)

Recent Posts

  • In Search of the Road Builder
  • The Phoenix Riots and Dr. Benjamin Mays – An MLK Day Ramble
  • An Obsession with Steak Knives
  • An Epiphany on Patriotism
  • Kayaking Bates Old River and Running Creek

Recent Comments

  • Walter Kokoszka on Mysterious Mayucha and The Wolf Pit
  • Elizabeth on The Temple of Health: Ground-Truthing in Antreville
  • The Bay Area Basketball Fan’s Guide to March Madness on FU All the Time!
  • Why You Should Root For This March Madness Underdog on FU All the Time!
  • Gregory Davis on Ghost Towns of the Pee Dee – Part 2, Centenary

Tags

blogging cemetery Christmas Columbia Edisto River edtech Entertainment family Flickr Florida Furman Furman University gear Georgia geotagging Ghost Town Ghost Towns Google Earth Google Maps GPS Greenville Greenville Chorale history Instructional Technology kayaking Lake Jocassee LCU Lowcountry Unfiltered maps Music North Carolina Paddling Photography rambling restaurant Restaurants review singing social networking South Carolina time-lapse Travel video Washington Washington State
March 2023
S M T W T F S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  
« Jan    

Copyright © 2023 Random Connections.

Theme: Oceanly by ScriptsTown