Readers recommendMusicRR regular sonofwebcore gives us his pick of the answers to last week's question: what are the best songs about philosophers?Readers recommend old hand Pairubu reckons the brainy kids haven't enough friends to form a band. Nevertheless, plenty of songs about philosophers and philosophy turned up this week. But it's reasonable to ask: who exactly decides who or what is a philosopher and how? Do they have to be German or French or Greek, and recommended by a book-writing colleague? Surely an Inuit elder or a Kalahari bushman has equal credentials when it comes to describing and passing on a way of life or way of thought to enhance the lives of future generations.
We have to consider Black Elk, an Oglala Sioux shaman whose philosophy was recorded in 1932 and translated by his son for an author. Black Elk was a 13-year-old at Little Big Horn, and only a little older at Wounded Knee. CG Jung was a fan, as are the British band Hawkwind, whose Black Elk Speaks allows his words to stand up for themselves.
The Shaggs' Philososphy of the World was released 36 years later, demonstrating how much the US had failed to progress since the Native American wars. It's an uncomplicated philosophy – I want what you got, you want what I got. No change there.
By the 70s we were able to laugh at intellectuals. Eric Idle thumbed his nose at philosophers in general as Monty Python's Philosophers Song portrayed the highest echelon of thinkers as a gang of sodden old boozers. And why not? Surely they enjoyed a dram or two. Don't bother reading biographies of Kant and Heidegger – trust Idle's portrait of a bunch of gin sots.
Famous shredder Marnie Stern's Plato's Fucked Up Cave confronts the conceit of the philosopher's analogy in which assumption is piled upon assumption. He even throws in Socrates as narrator. Marnie wants out, and she is is spot on; it's a mess reminiscent of Harry Enfield's Oi character braying: "If I saw David Beckham run over an old lady in his Porsche I'd shout, 'Oi Becks, bad one, mate!'" The music is delightful, though.
Qingyuan Weixin wrote that before he studied Zen Buddhism for 30 years he saw mountains as just mountains. But when he arrived at knowledge he realised that mountains were not mountains, until he understood their very substance, and then he knew that mountains were just mountains after all. He didn't waste those years, because he inspired Donovan to write a very fine tune, There Is a Mountain – and being the smarter of the two, Don had the perspicacity to ask Danny Thompson to play bass on his record. "First there is a mountain then there is no mountain then there is."
Sometimes there just isn't time for philosophy. Rancid's Matt Freeman has 3,000 miles to cover. She left in a plane, he left in a van. He has books by Ralph Waldo Emerson ("Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of nature and the soul") and early environmentalist Henry David Thoreau, but all Matt reads in Black Derby Jacket are road maps.
One band with time was the Grateful Dead. They had the gift of transforming a three-minute pop song into a 30-minute meditation. Their fans, true philosophers, spend years discussing the optimum version of Quodlibet for Tenderfeet. Fortunately, the Dead could play a bit and maintain their audience's interest. Their St Stephen is about the first Christian martyr – the original missionary who was one of the seven deacons who tried to spread Jesus's philosophy around the Holy Land but was dragged outside Jerusalem and stoned to death. Stoned? The Dead?
Neo-Platonist, Plotinusist and closet Manichaeist St Augustine had a contentious game as right-sided linesman in the classic match between Germany and Greece, allowing Socrates's diving header despite Marx's claims for offside. Bob Dylan dreamed that he met him, "alive as you or me", in the gorgeously understated I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine, from the post-motorbike crash LP John Wesley Harding.
Karl Marx is at the core of Randy Newman's The World Isn't Fair. Typically deceptive, and adopting a rotter's persona, Newman's character favourably describes Marx's youthful aspirations to create a world where everyone is equal … then dismisses the idea as a naive failure, celebrating the fact that it's not fair, but hey, I'm all right, Jack.
What is it with those German chaps? Great footballers, top thinkers, great drinkers, a few decent boxers … but their music is like aural philosophy. Klaus Schulze's piece is nominally about Friedrich Nietzsche, but listening to it sets your mind a-wondering …
Money Can't Buy Music's We Will All Asphyxiate is a rare and perfect example of five consonants appearing consecutively in a single word. In itself worthy of an A-listing, though the music and words are fabulous.
Finally, Peleus on Thetis stares, and copulates in the foam. What's the internet for, eh? Mike Scott dramatically intones WB Yeats's News for the Delphic Oracle in the Waterboys' song of the same title.
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See all the readers' recommendations on last week's blog, from which sonofwebcore selected the songs above.
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