Machiavelli and the Four Seasons
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Machiavelli and the Four Seasons is a 1995 album by the Australian rock group TISM (This Is Serious Mum).
The unusual title stems from a conceit found throughout the cover, although not in the tracks themselves, that this is actually an album by a group called "Machiavelli and the Four Seasons" (an obvious parody of the doo-wop group Frank Valli and The Four Seasons). Although very little information about the group is given, the picture on the front would suggest that they are almost the antithesis of TISM's image, looking like a clean-cut American or British group of perhaps the 1950s or 1960s. The liner notes include an essay on the band's music, written as a parody of the gushing prose sometimes found in these essays. Track titles are also given, entirely revolving around the words "I", "Love", "You" and "Baby". The final song on the album, Phillip Glass's Arse (which features after a minute of silence on the final track, Give Up for Australia), is a melodic, a capella harmonised song, perhaps giving some idea how the album might sound if Machiavelli and the Four Seasons had recorded it.
The actual tracks contain many fan favourites from TISM's catalogue and continue in the typical lyrical vein of parodying and insulting most elements of popular culture, often in surprisingly literate style. Singles such as "Greg! The Stop Sign" (featuring a famous falsetto chorus referencing one of the infamous traffic safety commericals produced by Victoria's TAC) and the live favourite "(He'll Never Be An) Old Man River" (a song deconstructing celebrity hero worship, containing the lines "I'm on the drug that killed River Phoenix" and "I drank the slab that Bon Scott drunk/I injected some of Hendrix' junk/I booked a seat on Skynrrd's plane/Mama Cass's sandwich, I ate the same") are among the better examples of this style.
References are also made to significant works of literature and politics, including Fyodor Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" (referenced explicitly in "All Homeboys Are Dickheads"), Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" (the inspiration for the title of the fiercely nationalistic "Aussiemandias") and Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" (referenced in the lines "Mein Kampf-fire/Mein Kampf-fire/Is burning bright" in "How Do I Love Thee?").
The album also contains the slightly controversial track "!Uoy Sevol Natas", an inversion of "Satan Loves You". The most common explanation for this track is that it is a parody of the belief that many classic rock songs contain backwards-masked Satanic messages.
London, New York, Berlin, Springvale
If the liner notes and cover art is to be taken literally, then the album would in fact be by a band called Machiavelli and the Four Seasons and the actual title of the album would be London, New York, Berlin, Springvale. Though it can be said that the liner notes are clearly a joke and that it's actually a TISM album, some fans take it to heart and refer to the album by its "correct" name, though usually acknowledging that it is, in fact, a TISM release.Track listing
The official track list for the TISM release of Machiavelli and the Four Seasons.
- (He'll Never Be An) Ol' Man River
- All Homeboys Are Dickheads
- Garbage
- Lose Your Delusion II
- !UOY Sevol Netas
- What Nationality Is Les Murray?
- Greg! The Stop Sign!!
- Play Mistral For Me
- How Do I Love Thee?
- Jung Talent Time
- Aussiemandias
- Give Up For Australia/Phillip Glass's Arse
Side One
- I Love You Baby
- You And Me, Baby Love
- Baby, I Love You
- Love, Baby-You
- Its You I Love, Baby
- In Love With You, Baby
- Baby, Baby, Baby
- Love, Love, Love
- Baby Love
- I.L.Y.B
See also
External links
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