hi everyone,

today i woke up thinking about "ironbound/fancy poultry". maybe because, a few weeks ago, i wrote a small something, which i'll share with you at the end of this post, that echoes similar feelings.

this song is about feeling a-part and longing to be a part. from the title with the slash, separating a reality and a wish, the carefully
scripted - cinematically scripted - morning walk of the character, the 'fancy poultry' insert which is like a dream sequence, to the song's very long fade out which gives it an achingly beautiful sense of suspension, everything speaks of confinement, but also of resilience and "search for the light" and "try(ing) to make sense". it's a song where everything seems to be and feels like in slow motion, suspended, waiting for a release that only feels possible through the escape of the mind and spirit.

here's what i wrote the other day:

the space between the
beak of a seagull
outlines a cry and
a triangle of infinite
sky in its sharp blue
of faraway sea

"...and wings are nearly free,
nearly free..."

with affection,
fatima

Hi Fatima,

This suspension, space and slow motion you speak of are very recognizable when I listen to Ironbound / Fancy Poultry.

A while ago I dreamt I was walking down the marketplace, and suddenly I fell to the floor; I started floating up, slowly, I saw only the sky. When I was higher in the sky, I turned to look on the street; I saw my own body lying on the ground. It became smaller and smaller, and I saw people crowding around 'me'.

Every time when I listen to Ironbound now, as the last part kicks in "Fancy poultry part sold here..." I see this photoslides of parts of chickens and humans (male & female) before me; breasts, thighs and backs. Chickenhearts, but no human hearts; as a substitute I see hearts on necklaces, clothing and shoes. At "wings are nearly free, nearly free..." I feel the main character of the song falling to the ground, as in my dream; and then in the long fade out levitating up to the sky, and eventually looking down to the ground to see people gathering around his/her(depends on the day I listen) own body.

I don't know what this means exactly, but it feels kind of weird everytime I listen to the song; "wings, free" associated with dying...

I hope it made sense to you,

Greetz,
Spikey

hi spikey,

thank you for sharing your very interesting dream and experience while listening to "ironbound/fancy poultry".

dreams and experiences are so personal and subjective that i won't even try to analyze them. but i can offer some comments in regard to the song. the main character is "bound up in iron and wire and fate", and this reality she lives in makes it impossible for her to 'afford' those
wings that could take her "away from the ironbound border". in the reality she inhabits there are "no human hearts", as you point out, only symbols of them.

so, like i said in my previous post, the character can only escape through her mind and spirit. a dream is the work of both of them and
in it those wings and the freedom they offer are possible. so instead of just connecting it with dying, i see your interpretation of the song as a dream depicting a sort of out of body experience, which can obviously be associated with death, but not just. i see it also as a metaphor for the gulf between the reality the character lives in and her longing for freedom, "falling to the ground" and "levitating up to the sky". but in your view of it you bridge that gulf because you describe it all as a continuum, as a progression to a possibility of freedom. and therefore i see it as a hopeful and beautiful view of the song.

now i hope i made some sense to you. thanks again.

with affection,
fatima

Hi Fatima!

Thanks for your crystal clear words. I think the reason I connected the out of body experience to death because I guess it felt that way when I dreamt it; this could have to do with the slowmotion feeling that is stressed in the end of the song. More important is that it was not a deliberate mind/body disconnection, like the story I always imagine when I hear Pilgrimage.

But every story I imagine listening to a song changes every time (sometimes they are so vivid that I write them down) but they are always very similar. I like to think my main character in Ironbound / Fancy Poultry does not die in the end of the song, but merely...collapses, blacks out, breaks down. In this state of half-unconsciousness, the character steps out of the body for a while; nearly free wings (price is jeopardizing the body, leaving it unguarded). I think I'll try that the next time I hear the song.

Thanks again for your insight, Fatima!

Greetz,
Spikey

hi fatima and spikey!

i feel the same way about ironbound - it's definitely among my favorites on solitude standing. i especially liked fatima's comment that the song "is about feeling a-part and longing to be a part." i think this aspect is worked beautifully into the lyrics: i can't think of any other song by suzanne in which the main character is so fragmented. first of all the woman stays anonymous throughout the whole song, which is unusual if you're thinking about all the other tracks on solitude standing such as luka, calypso or caspar hauser's song. even buildings have names on that album: tom's diner. but the woman in ironbound is only referred to as "her" or "she" - and most of the time not even that! there is always only a part of the body, a part of the woman that is referred to: the coffee color of her skin, her feet, her fingers. and sometimes she is completely omitted from the sentence: "steps off the curb and into the street" or "fingers the ring". she simply vanishes from the lines. she is there but not there. apart and longing to be a part. and the motif of parting from something that is part of you is then taken up in the verse when she watches her kid walk away from her to school.

like spikey i, too, always have a very visual impression when i'm listening to the song. as fatima said: it's cinematographic. in a way it is its own video clip. the images are build into the words. how the camera moves, how the light is set, from which angel the scenery is shot, how the setting looks like: it's all already there.

i think that the real protagonist in the song is not the woman but the city. or rather the beauty that lies in the violence of the city. because for me this is the most astonishing aspect of the song: that the words are about such a sad and bitter topic, but the song itself is just unbelievably beautiful. not just the mood that the music and the melody create, but also how the lyrics are crafted and what kind of imagery is used. i mean contrasting the longing of the woman to be free with the caged urban scenery that is closely connected to a) capitalism or symbolic exchange (the market place) and b) death and violence (the dead animals and the blood and the feathers) and on top of that having the coda in which wings (the symbol for freedom and liberty) are sold is just awesome! and to make it a masterpiece the fading line is "nearly free" which combines the economical, metaphorical and emotional level in two words. also i think the last line is a prime example of contrasting two opposite feelings (the longing and the hopelessness) with minimal means: in the end there are just two alternating chords left: A major and F major which represent the two emotions, it is like a constant opening and closing and opening and closing again. and this change is achieved in the melody by only one single note, because although both versions of "nearly free" have a totally different character they only differ in the last note.

i'm not sure whether the fancy poultry part is a dream sequence. when i discussed the song with a group of students the other semester somebody said that the words of the coda are spoken or thought by the woman. but i always thought that it is a seller who's shouting this all over the marketplace, with a bloody apron on and not realizing that his porfane words are just changing into the most delicate poetry within the context of the setting. for me the song tells about the ironic beauty that can be in the most desperate situations. a beauty that might not be realizable for the characters caught within the scenery but which is certainly there for us as onlookers. it is the beauty that you see when you perceive the world with a "passionate eye". suzanne has found the language and the music to capture these impressions.

remember me philipp www.200lurkers.com

hi philipp,

thanks for your beautiful and truthful words. i agree with what you say about the woman's anonymity and fragmentation and the contrast established with the constant and full presence of the city.

i really like this thought of yours: "the beauty that lies in the violence of the city". it reminds me of what francis bacon used to call "the brutality of fact" and the beauty he saw in that. and although this song is, as you so rightly say, "its own videoclip", i think you can also compare it to one of bacon's paintings of human figures caged within all sorts of frames. just like the main character in this song, bacon's subjects are "nearly free", in all the senses you so perceptively attribute to those two
words.

i also share your interpretation that the words in the 'fancy poulty' part feel more like the ones of "a seller who's shouting this all over the marketplace". but, to me, the violence of the words resonate in the woman's mind as an hypnotic melody, almost with the power of a lullaby, that soothes her and helps her escape from her cage just for a little while. in that sense, and only
in it, did i say it "is like a dream sequence". but i feel that in the 'fancy poulty' part lies a chance of transcendence, if you're able to see beyond the brutality of reality and into the "ironic beauty", as you say, that it hides. just like you, i don't think the woman herself is consciously aware of any of this, but we certainly are, as listeners and witnesses to this song and all the others in suzanne's songbook which work as a meditation on the human condition.

thanks again for your great contribution.

with affection,
fatima

Hi again!

About the part of the shouting seller; to me, those are words of a seller, too, echoeing in the head of the woman.
Now the last time I listened to the song (I'm listening it on daily basis now ) I imagined the marketseller shouting the words, and the woman hears it in her head over and over again, with the flashing images I described before, while blacking out & falling down to the marketplace, which is still followed by leaving her body...

I would like to say that I have strong and vivid videoclip that I imagine with every song that Suzanne has written; but Ironbound / Fancy Poultry makes a stable story because of the clear and unclear details tied into the story. I like the oppressing sphere that is described, I can almost taste the rust and smell the street. I hope it is as much an experience as it is to me as it is to you!

Love,
Spikey

That's what I love about Ms Vega's works. They are so vivid. So many pop songs today lack any feeling. Almost every song of hers moves me in some way.

Ironbound is my absolute favorite. I get chills just reading the lyrics. I can also feel the struggle of being a single parent, and just getting by day to day. I love my kids, and I want them to have it better than I do. I can feel that she wants that too.

I REALLY like the music in this song, especially the last 2 minutes, as well as Suzanne's clear crisp vocals. If I had been in radio in 1987, I would've tried to push this as a big hit. Much moreso than Luka.

When my best friend died in 1994 - I remember writing in my diary the whole "nearly free" Chorus - imho - that whole album is so well produced - esp. this song...

Mike R.

This may be an older thread by now, but I just listened to this song again the other day so it's fresh on my mind.
This has always been a favourite of mine too. It really haunts me, especially the "fancy poultry" part. I really like the chord progression - A maj. to some kind of suspension, F maj something - I haven't tried to figure it out. Actually it may be one of my favourite chords - in school it was referred to as a "Schoenberg chord" and it is a tritone (aug. 4th) on top of a perfect fourth. F-B-E for example. Add the third (A) and you get what I refer to as a "Janet Jackson chord" because she uses it so prevalently on her ballads such as "Come Back To Me".

This is not really what I meant to write about, but since other people have discussed the lyrics I might as well discuss the music. The lyrics are good, too.

Brady

Hey Brady,

Seems you know your chord theory! You a musician or summit? Ah, a quick peek at your profile reveals that you are indeed a musician.

The Fancy Poultry bit of this track is most probably the track that sprung me into my love of acoustic guitar; it's the one bit of the documentary I so fortuitously caught that I have a vague recollection of. Since then it's been my favourite SV track. Incidentally, it sits rather nicely in the Passionate Eye.

According to the song book I have, the chords for that part are:

Aadd9, A9(no 3rd), Aadd9, A9(no 3rd), Fadd#4, Fsus2add#4, Em - if that helps you any. It wouldn't me - I just read the tab!

Cams

There have been calls for this song at the last 2 gigs.

Uncwilly (leaving for Las Vegas)
Now Playing: Mas, Kinky
Cheese: Figue

Wow---this is quite interesting reading these heavy analyses on "Ironbound..." When I first heard this song, I agree 100% on that chord progression on the second half of the song being almost rather "Bacharach-like" in its arrangement. I guess taken the song as a whole, I have this weird interpretation of what was being sold in that poultry market on Avenue L. Could it be that those "breasts, thighs and hearts..." are referring to the women selling themselves on the streets? And that "....backs are cheap and wings are nearly free" is a literal take on--well, those two things are least expensive parts of a chicken at the market, right? And by the repetition of the words "free" well into the end of the song until it fades kinda leaves this---oh, I don't know---rather unsettling and unfinished feeling that I couldn't really describe. All I know now as I write this is that "Ironbound.." is one of the most interesting and powerful songs on this album, and certainly performed live in her '87 tour, one of the ones that just stuck with me like some grim, yet poignant memory.}

Thanks Cams for the chord symbols!
Guitar symbols are a little different from the chord symbals I learned in school (figured bass). Perhaps you could confirm my interpretation:
A9 no 3rd: A, E, B
F add #4: F, A, B, (C?)
F sus 2 add #4: F, G, B, (C?)
Is this right? I can't remember if there was an E in the F sus 2 chord, and it seems the C would clash horribly with the B.

thanks,
Brady