Your Funny Uncle
A windy day, the cars in slow formation.My propensity for hard pumping bass-lines and big drum patterns in my pop songs is well known. I love a strong melody, but I also like a bit of kick, so it's rare for me to get on with plain acoustic tracks or ballads.
Not far away a final destination.
One mother's son, his father's distant gaze regretting
Where they went wrong - he always found it too upsetting.
It is, however, not unheard of. I discovered this weekend that of the many many Pet Shop Boys tracks that I love passionately, "Your Funny Uncle" is probably my favourite track of theirs ever.
Given that that it's basically Neil and a piano this is something of a shock.
Me and my friend, we lived our lives completely"Your Funny Uncle" is the mid-point of the "Being Boring" trilogy about a friend of Neil's who died of AIDS. The Trilogy begins with "It Couldn't Happen Here" while his friend is still alive, reminiscing how they never thought AIDS would affect their lives in the UK. And of course the trilogy ends with "Being Boring" itself, the friend having passed on and with Neil looking back at the parties they used to hold and attend.
From start to end, you and your friend so sweetly.
With strength and pride in spite of everything and swimming
Against the tide, to obstinately hope of winning.
In the middle though is this song, set at the friend's funeral. It's a simple vignette, really, focusing mainly on this army gentlemen, uncomfortably attending his obviously gay nephew's funeral and all of his nephew's obviously gay friends and yet still doing his duty as a family member.
And, at the end, your funny uncle staringI often state that the Pet Shop Boys write the soundtrack to my life. Their arch sense of humour perfectly chimes with mine. And I'm a melancholy soul at heart so the resigned bittersweet emotional aspect to much of their work matches my general background mood. Plus the whole "Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat" perfectly aligns with my feeling that there is much high art in the humble pop song (as Noel Coward said it's "funny how potent cheap music can be").
At all your friends with military bearing.
And stopped to stand, to smile and speak of you directly.
'Good-bye', shake hands, like you did everything correctly.
On top of that I'm constantly finding they have a song for every aspect of my life. I've had relationships where "So Hard", "Domino Dancing" and "Jealousy" resonated horribly at the time and yet I felt oddly powerless - or maybe because of my melancholy nature, unwilling - to change things. (And as for "You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk" and "I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Any More" well... say no more.)
So it seems strange that ultimately the trilogy I have come to regard as collecting my favourite songs together has not much to do with my life. Of course I've watched loved ones die, attended far too many funerals (one of them for my own funny uncle) but there's still a certain detachment for me with these tracks.
Yet still they capture such a beautiful picture of lasting friendships and affections even in death that I find them desperately touching, even oddly optimistic.
And it's probably the optimism in the final verse of "Your Funny Uncle" that makes it just pip the others in this cycle for me. I believe it's inspired by a passage from Revelations, and it's such a lovely sentiment:
To wipe away the tears. No more pain, no fear.
No sorrow or dying, No waiting or crying.
These former things have passed away.
Another life begins today.