The Power of Song: Handlebars

OK, like I said last week in starting this series, Kyle and I have been listening to music a lot on the road to polo lately.

Last Friday, we heard this for the first time (sorry if it's old news to you... it's new to us):

"Handlebars" by the Flobots

A gentle plucking (arpeggios?) of an acoustic guitar sets up the chord progression. Then as a soft bass comes in, the singer begins (as if through a telephone or over a taped message):

I can ride my bike with no handlebars
No handlebars
No handlebars

I can ride my bike with no handlebars
No handlebars
No handlebars

And at this point, there's a drum fill, and a syncopated beat kicks in, and the singer begins to rap:

Look at me, look at me
hands in the air like it's good to be
ALIVE

I've felt that childish joy (just not as often now that I'm 45).

and I'm a famous rapper
even when the paths're all crookedy
I can show you how to do-si-do
I can show you how to scratch a record

Haven't felt this per se, but it still has the youthful exuberance and bravado (a la Springsteen's "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)") that I can relate to.

I can take apart the remote control
And I can almost put it back together

[now at this point, on first listen, we thought it was a comedy piece (especially as the vocal sounds a little "Weird Al"-ish here)]
The narrator can take something apart, but he can't put it back together... destroy, but not create. Is this a statement about childhood? or is it a statement about this narrator?

I can tie a knot in a cherry stem
I can tell you about Leif Ericson
I know all the words to "De Colores"
And "I'm Proud to be an American"
Me and my friend saw a platypus
Me and my friend made a comic book
And guess how long it took
I can do anything that I want cuz, look:

And I'm feeling a shift toward adolescence (with the cherry stem, and Viking history). Now the first time I heard this, I heard the "De Colores" reference (which is a song Lisa teaches in her two-way immersion language academy), and then I heard that the narrator was "proud to be an American"... which gives me a good feeling (multicultural knowledge coupled with patrotism)... but the reference to the Lee Greenwood song... well, that threw me. Now I see the beginnings of a dichotomy, between understanding and jingoism. But then the lyrics go back to childish pleasures (as the adolescent years often do swing from the adult to the childish and back again).

I can keep rhythm with no metronome
No metronome
No metronome

And with this stanza, we can hear the faint buzz of a distorted electric guitar creeping into the background.

And I can see your face on the telephone
On the telephone
On the telephone

After the first "telephone," we hear a muted trumpet come in... just as we realize that he's now talking about doing the impossible (had he said "cell phone" I wouldn't feel this way, but he didn't [no matter what the video shows]).

Look at me
Look at me
Just called to say that it's good to be
ALIVE
In such a small world
I'm all curled up with a book to read

The rapping is becoming a little more urgent, and the tone moves from childish joy to another kind of joy: complacent arrogance. And he begins to rattle off all the things he can do, each a little more outlandish than the one before:

I can make money open up a thrift store
I can make a living off a magazine
I can design an engine sixty four
Miles to a gallon of gasoline
I can make new antibiotics
I can make computers survive aquatic conditions

Then he moves from what he can do, to how he can do it, becoming a packager of product (only the product is him)...

I know how to run a business
I can make you wanna buy a product
Movers shakers and producers
Me and my friends understand the future

And with this "understanding," we hear his arrogance begin to run out of control:

I see the strings that control the systems
I can do anything with no assistance

And now we're back to the chorus (if there is one), and that buzzing electric guitar is now pushed to the fore, giving the music a harder, angrier edge, folding in nicely in tone with his megalomania:

Cuz I can lead a nation with a microphone
With a microphone
With a microphone
And I can split the atom of a molecule
Of a molecule
Of a molecule

And as the instrumental break begins, we hear that trumpet come in again, and it (rather than the guitars) take over the solo. The calm melody line of the trumpet, on first listen, makes you expect the narrator to pull back from his messianic tendency, but...

Look at me
Look at me
Driving and I won't stop

The rap now is urgent, intense, almost spat out. And on "stop" the music stops, as if obeying its master, the narrator. Then he allows it to restart and he tells us

And it feels so good to be
Alive and on top

Again, a stop, but shorter this time, just to accentuate his position "on top." And then his totalitarian ambition is achieved:

My reach is global
My tower secure
My cause is noble

[what despot didn't think he was doing it for the good]

My power is pure

And he proclaims his god-like power:

I can hand out a million vaccinations
Or let'em all die in exasperation

[God giveth, and the taketh away]

Have'em all healed of their lacerations
Have'em all killed by assassination

He can have people killed, or imprisioned:

I can make anybody go to prison
Just because I don't like'em and

And then, at least to my reading, we get a little glimpse into our own "leader":

I can do anything with no permission
I have it all under my command

Sounds an awful lot like Bush's theory of the Unitary Executive, no?

And all the time this rant/rap has been going, the guitars have become more swirling, distorted, and angry.

Because I can guide a missile by satellite
By satellite
By satellite
And I can hit a target through a telescope
Through a telescope
Through a telescope

And here's the path of our narrator taken to its logical extreme.

And I can end the planet in a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust

And the truly scary part is, every time he says "holocaust," his audience cheers. After the last holocaust, the music crescendos and falls, and the narrator immediately returns to the first image:

I can ride my bike with no handlebars
No handlebars
No handlebars

And the acoustic plucking now drowns out the fading buzz of the distorted electric.

I can ride my bike with no handlebars
No handlebars

And the song ends, full circle.

Kyle says it starts as a child, the beginning of life... and after the end, there will be a new beginning... only the cycle never ends.

And they say 14's not a cynical age.